I can't get my page to rank. What am I doing wrong?
-
I'm new to this forum and this is my first question. So if I'm not supposed to ask this type of question, please forgive me. I'm trying my best to get http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/#!roofing/bbb1e to rank on the first page in Google for "roofing contractors" in the following SW Florida cities: "Naples, Bonita Springs, and Fort Myers."
Our company has a physical address in Fort Myers only so I understand it's going to be harder to get it to rank for Naples and Bonita Springs. But I can't even get this page to rank well for "roofing contractors in Fort Myers." The page authority is 25 and our domain authority is 27. Our home page authority is 39.
Our primary category in Google is building restoration & preservation. But we have divisions in our company:
- Roofing
- Concrete
- Ornamental metals
I would love it if our roofing page could rank higher than the third page, which is where it currently sits. I worked really hard to get each of our roofing-material manufacturers to link directly to our roofing page, not the home page.
My hope is that you can help me because I'm really discouraged. Thanks in advance.
-
hello i would like to show you my case study....
i did a seo service for a website in my country for a really competitive keyword 'wedding dress'. total of 15,000 searches a month!
from checking my competitors (the firsts google result) i found out easily they used wix!!
nice website - not to go crazy about. with really thin content - only big image slider and 5 words on the ranking page
now how did they get there? compering to others who offers much better content!
they did a really good link building. their links are coming from major big websites!
and their on page seo is ... sorry for the word ... !@#$hit
-
Brent,
Thank you for pointing out the two H1 tags. I thought it was one tag, but now I see that it's not.
As for breaking out _flat, metal, tile, and shingle, _that's the way WCFE's previous site was set up but those pages didn't rank well. I figured it was due to them not having enough content to stand on their own. So I decided to combine them into one page, thinking that Google would reward it with a tremendous amount of helpful content. That hasn't been the case, unfortunately.
Thanks for all the other links too. I've got a lot of homework to do!
-
Hey Jake!
My pleasure, and I hear you on trying to compare one client to another. With geography/competition both playing such major factors in how well any given business ranks, it can be like comparing apples to oranges. Wishing you good luck!
-
No worries about the single page site, Miriam.
I have created other websites on the wix platform such as MontessoriAmerican.com and this site ranks fine for preschools in the Chula Vista, CA area. But there are others that aren't ranking as well. So it's been hit or miss.
Thanks for the Moz community article "wix, is it any good for seo?" I have to say that there is much more functionality now than when that thread originated in 2013. Even since 2015, it's gotten better...many of my pages are getting indexed by Google.
Your suggestions for a unique page for each city and a unique page for each service are probably what I'll do. We are a small-to-medium company. Thanks again!
-
Hey Jake!
First, I need to apologize. I misread the # hash bangs in your URLs as skip links and mistook your website for a single page. I'm sorry about that. We've had some good debate on Moz about the pros and cons of Wix sites you might like to look through (https://moz.com/community/q/wix-is-it-any-good-for-seo) to decide whether there are any SEO drawbacks to your platform, but as I've never worked with a Wix site, I can't say first-hand.
That's great that your citations are in such good shape. Super!
No, I'm not suggesting that you make a page for every service/city combo. While that is an approach that can be taken, it's one I'd only recommend if the company has really significant resources for differentiating all of the content this would require. In most cases, small-to-medium businesses will be better off with a unique page for each city and a unique page for each service, rather than trying to make pages for every combo of the two.
Hope those links will be useful to you in auditing your scenario!
-
Jake -
A few recommendations for your http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/#!roofing/bbb1e (just know there is more you should be doing)...
- There are multiple H1 tags being used on the page. There needs to be only one H1 tag (you can have multiple H2-6). The H tags set the hierarchy of the content. I would recommend adding a variation of your targeted term to the H1 tag. Right now the two H1 tags are, "West Coast" and "Florida Enterprises".
- I would recommend targeting this page for Fort Myers as this is where your physical business is located.
- Create individual secondary pages targeting the other cities. Make sure you are incorporating the city name + service in the H tags.
- I would also break out "Flat Roof", "Metal Roofs", "Tile Roofs", and "Shingle Roofs" into individual topical pages.
Here are some good references...
Wireframe for a "perfectly optimized local page". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDAWyZ4i7ks
The Anatomy of an Optimal Local Landing page http://niftymarketing.com/optimal-local-landing-page-infographic/
How to pick (or improvise) the right Schema.org markup for your local business. http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2014/06/30/how-to-pick-or-improvise-the-right-schema-org-markup-for-your-local-business/
34 Experts Share Their No. 1 (Actionable) Local SEO Tip http://seosherpa.com/local-seo/
-
Here are some other folks having issues with their WIX SEO.
https://moz.com/community/q/wix-is-it-any-good-for-seo
http://soundwebsolutions.net/2016/01/why-web-designers-wont-touch-wix-seo/
http://mmthomasblog.com/wix-review/
And I can vouch that many CMS aren't going to give you the kinda control you want and you'll often end up having to " hack " things together to get desired results.
On Bigcommerce I've found a good amount of issues I need to work around just to get basic SEO on point. When I brought these things up to BG, it was either it's not that big an issue for your SEO or we're working on it.
-
Oh I see. I've been wondering a bit if that was the case. Has anyone else had the same issues with their Wix websites that you know of?
-
Thanks for the feedback Miriam.
-
I'm a little unclear as to what you mean when you say a "one-page website." WestCoastFLEnterprises.com has approximately 31 pages. Do you mean platforms such as Wix?
-
Our company has 4 main services with 4 dedicated pages to them:
- Roofing - http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/#!roofing/bbb1e
- Concrete - http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/#!concrete/ui78c
- Steel trusses - http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/#!steel-trusses/vtsgi
- Custom welding - http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/#!custom-welding-ornamental/lc1tj
Our main service area is Naples, FL with secondary emphasis in Bonita Springs, Fort Myers, and Cape Coral. Do you mean I should create a separate page for each service in each city in this fashion? "Roofing Naples", "Concrete, Naples," "Steel trusses, Naples," and "Custom Welding, Naples?"
-
Thank you for these links. I'll check them out.
-
YES!! I put a ton of effort into the content on this page and I almost feel as though Google might be penalizing it.
-
We scored 97% on Moz.com/local! Woo hoo!
Thank you again for your help.
-
-
Hey Jake!
I'm so sorry to hear you're feeling discouraged. That can be tough, when you work hard but aren't seeing results. Now, my main advice to you here is that you're going to want to consider having a really good Local SEO firm audit your entire situation, but in the meantime, I'm going to give you some cursory feedback on this.-
I am really not a fan of the one-page website approach. I know, these have been trendy for the past couple of years, but given the SEO limitations inherent in them (no title tags, fewer link opportunities, difficult to grow content, etc.), they are simply not an approach I would recommend to my own clients.
-
My preferred approach would be to go with a more traditional structure, with an excellent, unique page on the website for each service you offer an each city you serve.
-
Yes, the core of your Local SEO will be anchored to your physical location and you'll put a major focus on this on the website, understanding that it's for your physical location that you'll be trying to rank in the local packs, but as mentioned in point 2, you can also build out great pages for your additional service cities. Here are 2 links that should help you get the gist of this approach:
https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist
https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages
-
I know, it can be tough when you've put a lot of effort into a website to reevaluate whether it's the right vehicle for success or is holding you back. In this case, I'd start with very careful consideration of all of the above.
-
From there, you're going to want to move on to the other things covered in the above checklist. It's believed that several hundred factors contribute to local rank (see: https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors). And you'll definitely want to audit your citations. Our free Check Listing tool (moz.com/local/search) is a good place to start.
I hope this feedback is helpful. It's just at-a-glance and can't replace a professional audit, but I hope it provides some good context for evaluating the efforts you are making to meet your goals.
-
-
Not to throw WIX under the bus, but I've heard not so great things about them, in regards to changing code and so forth. That alone would hinder your SEO prospects, not to mention if they're hindering you with code, what else on the backend are the hindering you with?
You can only optimize onpage SEO so much before there simply isn't much more to do. After that, it's left to tweaks on the backend, content creation and backlinks.
You might only be able to get so far with wix and might need to look at another cms at some point.
-
Thank you for your suggestions.
Actually, it is mobile friendly. I built it in Wix which creates both desktop and mobile versions of the site.
Nope, it's not secure yet. Wix doesn't offer this functionality yet.
You're right about the page source. For some reason, Wix only shows the source code for the home page even when I try to view the source code for all of the inner pages. They explain a little more here: https://www.wix.com/support/html5/article/viewing-your-sites-source-code. So here is the actual source code: view-source:http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/?escaped_fragment=roofing/bbb1e
Yes, I've fetched and rendered through Google Search console but it doesn't really do anything.
- It never seems to save the full url after the domain name. I think there must be an issue with the hashbang (#!).
- There's just a checkmark under the Render Requested column.
- It simply says "partial" under the Status column.
-
Some issues you might want to look into:
Not mobile friendly.
Not secure (https).
When I view page source, I'm not seeing any of the copy that I see when the page loads. Is Google seeing this? Have you tried fetching and rendering the page using Google Search Console?
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
-
My pages are absolutely plummeting. HELP!
Hi all, Several of my pages have absolutely tanked in the past fortnight, and I've no idea why. One of them, according to Moz, has a Page Optimisation Score of 96, and it's dropped from 10th to 20th. Our DA is lower than our competitors, but still, that's a substantial drop. Sadly, this has been replicated across the site. Any suggestions? Cheers, Rhys
Local Website Optimization | | SwanseaMedicine0 -
Site Audit: Indexed Pages Issue
Over the last couple of months I've been working through some issues with a client. One of my starting points was doing a site Audit. I'm following a post written by Geoff Kenyon https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015 . One of the main issues of the site audit seems to be that when I run a "site:domain.com" query in Google my homepage isn't the first page listed in fact it isn't listed in this search when I go through all of the listings. I understand that it isn't required to have your homepage listed first when running this type of query, but I would prefer it. Here are some things I've done I ran another query "info:homepage.com" and the home page is indexed by Google. When I run a branded search for the company name the home page does come up first. The current page that is showing up first in the "site:domain.com" listing is my blog index page. Several months back I redirected the index.php page to the root of the domain. Not sure if this is helping or hurting. In the sitemap I removed the index.php and left only the root domain as the page to index. Also all interior links are sent to the root, index.php has been eliminated from all internal links everything links to root The main site navigation does not refer to the "Home" page, but instead my logo is the link to the Home page. Should I noindex my blog/index.php page? This page is only a compilation of posts and does not have any original content instead it actually throws up duplicate content warnings. Any help would be much appreciated. I apologize if this is a silly question, but I'm getting frustrated/ annoyed at the whole situation.
Local Website Optimization | | SEO_Matt0 -
Website ranking issues
Hi Moz, I have a question about one of our websites that has been ranking very poorly on it's current domain (fancydoorsedmonton.com) lately, but was ranked at #1 for the search term "Edmonton Doors" until last month. The main search terms we're targeting are "Edmonton Doors" and "Doors Edmonton". I made another post regarding the on-page SEO value and had some feedback from that, but there is another issue that seems more likely to cause an issue. There are 2 more domains set up to forward to their main domain: fancydoors.com was their old domain but was registered by someone else and had some questionable, X-rated content put on it. The domain has now been reacquired and redirected to their main domain. There isn't any more questionable content on there anymore. Would this domain's past affect it's current ranking? fancy-doors.com was another old domain of theirs now set up as a redirect. In the past they had another SEO provider work with this domain and did some bad SEO work for them with automated citations, etc. We changed the domain to fancydoorsedmonton.com to get away from that and also include Edmonton in the domain. If you have any ideas or feedback to provide based on this information it would definitely be a huge help to us. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | Web3Marketing870 -
Improve my on-page SEO
Hello, I am a photographer based in the UK, I have recently increased my prices, so SEO has become more important then ever as I need to target additional cities and wedding venues. I am looking for suggestions on ways I can ethically improve my websites on-page SEO and regional landing pages. I am running out of ideas, so any suggestions would be welcome. Do you think search engines will see these regional pages as low quality spammy pages are they not advised! If so how can I target other cities with out paying for PPC. Home page Additional Issues Is the 404 server script any good? I also have an issue, with old deleted wordpress pages, redirecting them even though there are no redirects set up in SEO yoast. I am not sure the server script on the shared hosting for 404 errors is any good, does anyone have any experience with this. For example this page returns the 404 page, however the header status is 200. http://www.robertsail.co.uk/derby-wedding-photographers-2/ If I moved to a dedicated server would this help me out.
Local Website Optimization | | Roboto19701 -
What is the effect of CloudFlare CDN on page load speeds, hosting IP location and the ultimate SEO effect?
Will using a CDN like CloudFlare.com confuse search engines in terms of the location (IP address) of where the site is actually physically hosted especially since CloudFlare distributes the site's content all around the globe? I understand it is important that if customers are mostly in a particular city it makes sense to host on an IP address in the same city for better rankings, all things else being equal? I have a number of city-based sites but does it make having multiple hosting plans in multiple cities/ countries (to be close to customers) become suddenly a ridiculous thing with a CDN? In other words should I just reduce it down to having one hosting plan anywhere and just use the CDN to distribute it? I am really struggling with this concept trying to understand if I should consolidate all my hosting plans under one, or if I should get rid of CloudFlare entirely (can it cause latency in come cases) and create even more locally-based hosting plans (like under site5.com who allow many city hosting plans). I really hope you can help me somehow or point me to an expert who can clarify this confusing conundrum. Of course my overall goal is to have:
Local Website Optimization | | uworlds
1. lowest page load times
2. best UX
3. best rankings I do realise that other concepts are more important for rankings (great content, and links etc.) but assuming that is already in place and every other factor is equal, how can I fine tune the hosting to achieve the desirable goals above? Many thanks!
Mark0 -
SEO Client not rankings in Google
Hello, I have a client that has continued to be problematic for my team and I. They have fair to middling rankings in Yahoo and Bing, but none in Google. I realize that they are three separate search engines each with their own criteria, but this client is the only one experiencing this problem. There is no significant duplicate content that can find, same with restrictions in the robots.txt file. These seems to be no reason why all my tools say that this client has no presence at all in google, especially when the client gains most of their traffic through Google. Can anyone assist me in finding out what is going wrong? Client website for reference: http://www.volvethosp.com/ Best, BeyondIndigo
Local Website Optimization | | BeyondIndigo0 -
What's with Google? All metrics in my favor, yet local competitors win.
In regards to local search with the most relevant keyword, I can't seem to get ahead of the competition. I've been going through a number of analytics reports, and in analyzing our trophy keyword (which is also the most relevant, to our service and site) our domain has consistently been better with a number of factors. There is not a moz report that I can find that doesn't present us as the winner. Of course I know MOZ analytics and google analytics are different, but I'm certain that we have them beat with both. When all metrics seem to be in our favor, why might other competitors continue to have better success? We should be dominating this niche industry. Instead, I see a company using blackhat seo, another with just a facebook page only, and several others that just don't manage their site or ever add unique, helpful content. What does it take to get ahead? I'm pretty certain I've been doing everything right, and doing everything better than our local competitors. I think google just has a very imperfect algorythm, and the answer is "a tremendous amount of patience" until they manage to get things right.
Local Website Optimization | | osaka730 -
Stuck on Page 4...is this diagnosis on the right track?
My website's (http://bartlettpairphotography.com) SERP rank is #45 for my targeted keyword: Philadelphia wedding photographers. My site is several years old, with 31-Domain Authority and 42-Page Authority. I've been stuck in SERP 40's for about a year now (I used to be top 5) and I have been pulling my hair out trying everything to no avail. I have an inkling that some configuration is seriously wrong, and would be very very appreciative is someone could point me in the right direction! I'm evidently not an expert at this, but here are my high level thoughts, though I could be totally off base here: Homepage problems (ranking 45 for highest priority keyword: Philadelphia wedding photographers): The #5 rank has a flash website, homepage = 33-DA/44-PA (slightly better than me). This makes me wonder if my problem is off-page? I have recently been submitting my photography work to many relevant wedding blogs so I think I will get some nice relevant backlinks in the coming weeks/months. The #11 rank has the same wordpress theme as me (ProPhotoBlogs), and homepage = 26-DA, 35-PA (somewhat worse than me) and similar homepage content etc...this makes me think I have an on-page problem? As you can see, my targeted keyword starts off with a geographic location. Geographically, our location is ~1 hour outside of the location, so ranking on Google maps etc. is very competitive (hundreds of competitors that are closer). Therefore, I'm mostly focused on non-local ranking. Both of the competitors I mentioned are ranking non-locally and both are 1 hour outside Philadelphia. With that said, would it still benefit me to add local content to my homepage (insert google maps, address, hours etc.)? NON-homepage problems (ranking ~30 for longer tail keywords, i.e. specific wedding venues) My blog page (http://bartlettpairphotography.com/blog) is ="noindex,follow." My reasoning for the "noindex" is because I'm showing FULL posts rather than excerpts (because I want my brides to flip through ~5 weddings rather than only clicking on 1). My thinking was that the FOLLOW aspect would pass along the link juice, while avoiding a duplicate content penalty by noindexing? I don't think this problem affects my higher priority homepage problem, but still wanted to point it out. We have ~100 published posts, but honestly I only care about ranking for ~30 of them. What should I do with the ~70 that I don't care about? Are they sucking up link juice that would be better elsewhere? Or should I just leave it because it's more content? Other than that, I'm really lost as to how I can improve my site. I gave the above examples to show that I am trying, but ultimately I feel like I'm looking in the wrong areas. With my SERP in the mid 40s, I feel like many things are broken that I am not able to figure out. I would be so very grateful if someone could help diagnose my issues!
Local Website Optimization | | bartlettpairphoto0