Under-performing blog as part of main site
-
Hi
I was hoping to get some thoughts and opinions on our blog. It is part of our main site (not on a subdomain) but performs very badly, pulling in very little organic traffic (only accounting for 0.6% of our organic traffic).
Every page of the blog is listed in our sitemap, and using Screaming Frog I've done spot checks of several pages to see if they are indexed, which they have been. Looking at Google's text cache, all the content is visible.
Pages are often well shared on social media (for example): http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/blog/2014/10/antarctica-photography-safari-2014-updates.aspx
I'm aware that we do need more links coming into the blog but I still feel that it should be performing better than it is.
Any suggestions would be appreciated!
-
I think that the blog has nice content.
Many of the posts are competing for queries where there is very little search volume.
Go to this page... http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/blog.aspx?destination=india read the titles of the posts. Are people are searching for those topics?
I think that the blog posts will get more traffic if their titles align with search volume or if their topics align with search volume.
-
Kata,
I would suggest the following. I am assuming you are using Moz Pro. What i would do is work with your client on a key word list. I would have them list the searches that they want to show up on and then enter these search strings into the key word tracker.
I would then work with the client on a content plan that is closely tied to ranking on these searches. This works well because the content that you or your client writes that ranks is then shown as the ranking URL in the key word ranking report. This visual feedback seems to really help clients see results form their work. I had one client go from 4 ranking URLs to 67 in under six months once they had this feedback look. This tool also had them go through the web site with the page grader and make sure they had pages on their main site ranking for their most important key word strings.
Hope this helps,
Ron
-
I am not sure the blog is the problem, if I search with a query containing the title of that article: https://www.google.it/webhp?q=antarctica+photography+safari
I can find it as third result. Which keywords are you after? Because if I narrow the search to just antartica+photography things change.
If I look at the keyword density in that article (like just using this tootl http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/), I get the impression without going black hat or irritate google copy could be a little bit more keyword focused.
The body is 900 words which is not so bad. But if I query for antarctica+photography competitors have a much larger copy and a probably better structure (headings are not just dates but do feed keywords to crawler).
Have you run a report on semrush for the domain? http://imgur.com/1pJ3G1i 229 positions is not much. Expecially given the 243 backlinks, which is not bad either: http://imgur.com/cuIwiLa
I would try to improve the copy of the articles, check the html in more depth, and review the backlinks profile for all the usual things (link quality, anchor diversity, deep linking, etc..).
-
Hi Kate,
From a quick browse, one slight improvement that you could implement is a template for your title tags and meta descriptions.
Google uses your title tags as ranking signals, and at the moment, yours don't seem to follow any kind of pattern. Best practice would indicate that you include the brand name at the start or the end, and that you could pull in the title of each blog post to use in the title. You should also try to include some sort of keyword for the page in the title if you can.
Although the meta description is not used as a ranking signal by Google, it is one of the first impressions a users gets, so the meta description should be enticing and make the user want to click through to the page.
Hope it helps! Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Site Migration
Hi, I have been researching the best way to migrate six sites into one, since I have never done it, and I am frankly overwhelmed. Some resources say to do it incrementally, and a/b test; but I would prefer not to have to do it, as won't it present a disjointed representation for visitors? The previous sites are older and a bit clumsy compared to the new design and functionality in the new site. Can someone please tell me the right way to approach this? Or tell me the best resource for a step-by-step prep, migrate, and watch process? Thanks so much in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lfrazer1230 -
Existing 301s during site migration - what to do?
Hi - I'm looking at an old website and there are lots of 301s internal to that site - what do I do with these when I move to a new site? Should I list them and adjust them so they redirect to the new site now (instead of from one URL to another URL on the old site) - I'm thinking that if I don't the user will have to travel through one 301 then another to get to the new site, which doesn't seem like a great idea? Your thoughts would be welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Removing Blogs and 301 redirect to blog home page?
Hi, I was at the MozCon conference in Seattle this Summer and heard great concepts about deleting a lot of pages on your site that are deemed excess. It got me thinking to remove all of our old blogs that were: Sales(ee) less than 400 words Flat out bad blogs When i begin removing these links, i know i will get a lot of 404 errors because of previous social links. So in your opinion, what would you do? Do i just 301 those blogs to my main /blog page? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Severe health issues are found on your site. - Check site health (GWT)
Hi, We run a Magento website - When i log in to Google Webmaster Tools, I am getting this message: Severe health issues are found on your site. - <a class="GNHMM2RBFH">Check site health
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
</a>Is robots.txt blocking important pages? Some important page is blocked by robots.txt. Now, this is the weird part - the page being blocked is the admin page of magento - under
www.domain.com/index.php/admin/etc..... Now, this message just wont go away - its been there for days now - so why does Google think this is an "important page"? It doesnt normally complain if you block other parts of the site ?? Any ideas? THanks0 -
How best to structure wordpress site.
I need help on how to structure my wordpress site to avoid duplicate content issues. Basically I have a main category page for each of my targeted keywords (about 12). From each of those though I want to create a category for each county in the uk and then about 15 towns within each county. This means I'm creating a LOT of categories. Eg: /plumbers/lincolnshire/lincoln x 15 other counties and towns /local-plumbers/cambridgeshire/cambridge x 15 other counties and towns (I have about 12 main keywords I'm going after) I'm basically creating a category for every town in the UK going after long tail keywords. What is the best way to manage this in wordpress? Advice from another question I posted on here is to write a unique category description for each one as the posts in each category are almost identical. The other problem here is I'm ending up with hundreds of links on a page. (They can't all be seen by the user as I'm using a drop down menu plugin). Any advice appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Does Google prefer Wordpress Blogs?
In creating a regular brochure website such as one for a dentist or doctor, do you see any SEO benefit to having it based in a Wordpress blog? I do see the SEO benefit of having an actual blog on the site and continually updating that, but simply using the Wordpress platform as a CMS - does that give the site any benefit? If there is a benefit, is there a way to duplicate that advantage without going through the trouble of creating a Wordpress template for the site? Maybe just publishing a sitemap.xml, and feed, etc? Thanks! Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomBristol0 -
Scapers and Other Sites Outranking
Post panda, there is definitely more talk about scrapers or other (more authoritative) sites outranking the original content creators in the SERPS. The most common way this problem is addressed (from what I've seen) is by rewriting the content and try your hardest to be the first one to be indexed or just ignoring it from an on page standpoint and do more link dev. Does anyone have any advice on the best way to address? Should site owners be looking deeper into their analytics and diagnostics before doing the rewrites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Troyville0 -
New sites what is the first things to do?
Hi Guys, If you have a baby of a domain which is only a few months old what should be the priorty for getting establish once all the on site stuff has been done? I know the directories are not as important as they use to be but is there a top list that should be worked through steadly to get the new site setup on? Kind regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ao.com0