Rankings question
-
We have just taken on a client who is really struggling in the rankings, even for noncompetitive terms.
Here is the URL: www.freshsmiles.co.uk
they are targeting 'dentist york, dental implants york, teeth whitening york, orthdontist york'
The content on the site seems very good (we have been working on ensuring that the content is duplicated and of good quality) They have also been doing blogs http://www.freshsmiles.co.uk/blog/
We've installed webmaster tools and there are no manual spam action warnings and I have checked the inbound links to the website and they don't seem spammy.
Any help would be much appreciated!
thanks in advance
Marcus
-
Hi Marcus
I'm going to just go through a bunch of items in no particular order;
- Internal links in footer - the anchor "private dental practice in york" linking to the homepage is a little over-optimized. As is linking to the marketing and web design companies with exact commercial anchors.
- The actual brand name is a little unclear. Is it "fresh Smiles" or "FreshSmile" or "fresh dental" or "fresh dental smile clinic"? It's super important to have this clear to make a strong brand presence. "Fresh dental smile" and "fresh smiles" don't return a normal "branded" search result with 8 or 10 sitelinks. See this screenshot for an example. This has to be 100% clear on-site and off-site, especially in local listings.
- The homepage title tag for example is a bit overdone. It should be the main keyword / service and the brand name. Also, "cosmetic dentist" appears in almost every page title tag. You want to avoid repetition, have the titles describe the page well, while fitting in the main keyword for that page. Follow Google's guidelines on titles.
- For back links, there's definitely some over optimization going on - see Open Site Explorer's anchor text report - and the use of anchors like "dentists in york" "dentist york" etc is a bit excessive. Get those anchors changed to brand names if possible. Believe it or not, there's just too many links in general, and many of them are keyword links. What I mean is - you're not ever naturally going to see 100's of back links for a dentist. Google knows this. So it sends a red flag to have too many low quality over optimized links. I would stress obtaining a few links but of super high quality.
- Social Media - the facebook feed for example is just a blast of "push" marketing - teeth services, photos and so forth. Very minimal activity in general. They should pick maybe one social network that aligns with where their customers are and use it as a communication medium - a place where patients can leave messages, the office can post fun and engaging things. See Social Media Examinar for plenty of social ideas - I recommend possibly using either Pinterest or Instagram as well. Twitter doesn't make much sense for a dentist. I am mentioning social media because in my opinion it helps SEO.
- Rel Publisher - even if they're not posting activity on Google Plus (same as the Google places page now) use Rel Publisher to connect their website to their G+ page. Check that its set up correctly with the rich snippet tester
- Site speed seems poor - here's a test result from webpagetest - note that many of the images (like this one) are taking almost 1 second each to load. You definitely want to try to get those to say 50-75k with some compression etc. Site speed is a small ranking factor as well as UX factor for visitors.
- The site has a lot of pages indexed for a dentist web site - over 1,000 as you can see here. What I would do is see if they are all getting traffic (check in analytics) - and HIGHLY consider killing off pages like this: http://www.freshsmiles.co.uk/teeth-straightening-in-york/ which are is a blog post format, designed to just target a keyword and even the image is broken now. There are a LOT of pages like that indexed. Here's another: http://www.freshsmiles.co.uk/we-also-offer-patients-facial-rejuvenation-treatments/ - this will all seem like thin content for sure, and affect rankings.
As you can see, a lot to work on! I don't think any one thing is going to fix the site, it's going to have to be a bunch of improvements.
EDITED TO ADD: I would just kill the tag archives. Remove them from navigation and delete them. Check to see if a few might be getting traffic (using my method here) and 301 redirect the few that might be and just remove the rest. I was trying to crawl the site, and it's already queued up to over 1,500 pages - most of them tag archives.
-
Hi Marcus,
When a ranking drop happens, there are typically 3 possible causes:
-
The business has been surpassed by more active competitors
-
There is a temporary shakeup going on, meaning that rankings will likely return in a short time
-
The business has been penalized, meaning that time goes by and the previous high rankings do not return
From your description, it sounds like it may be the last of these. You mention "once they had they transferred over" and I'm not quite sure to what this refers, but a key task here will be to see if the client can put a date on exactly when they lost rankings. If they can't maybe their analytics can help you. Then, perhaps you can tie this time period to a known Google penalty, as well as being sure that all of the bases are covered in my original list of Local SEO requirements.
Major penalties and troubleshooting fall outside my areas of knowledge, so I am going to request that one of our expert traditional SEOs might also come look at your question. They will likely be able to ask questions and see things that I can't.
-
-
Hi again Marcus,
In this case I used majesticseo to have a quick glance, you will be able to see these links even with the free version. Remember to start slowly with new links and change your anchor + do not link only to home, build a strong net all over your site. Wish you good luck, keep me posted!
Cheers from another really sunny morning in southern Spain.
-
Hi Claudio,
Thanks for that - I had a look at the inbound links to the site via Opensite explorer and it didn't pick up the ones you've mentioned, so I will investigate their link profile a bit further.
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for getting back to me, according to the client, the site enjoyed good rankings previously and it now seems to have dropped (once they had they transferred over). I'm thinking it must be an algorithmic penalty because the site doesnt rank in the first 8 pages for 'Dental implants York' despite the high quality on the page and that is optimised correctly. This is the same for most of their other treatment keywords.
Thanks
Marcus
-
Hi DentalDesign,
Can you provide further clarification as to what you mean by 'struggling for rankings'? Does this mean the client has lost rankings or is struggling to achieve the high rankings they would like to earn?
As a rule of thumb, high local rankings hinge on -
1. Physical location in city of search
2. A lack of violations of Google's guidelines
3. Consistency of NAP (name, address, phone) across all citations
4. A perfectly optimized website
5. Quality and authority of that site
6. Review acquisition
7. Traditional SEO factors
8. Activities of competitors
Local Search Ranking factors 2013 goes into awesome detail regarding the most important positive and negative ranking factors. It's an amazing resource: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors
-
Hi Marcus,
Have a look to 1778 backlinks coming from asooy.com they look definitely spammy... probably others, also would advise you to move cautiously with new links 100´s links per day could show spammy also with a site that previously had no backlinks except those spammy ones and also about 3000 from bradford-webdesign.co.uk which don´t either look to much of "natural" sort of links...
Maybe disavow those ones and start slowly and naturally with new links, change your anchor, and work them from different domains.
Hope you good luck from southern sunny Spain!
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
-
Sudden drop across all rankings
Hi There, I have experienced a strange and sudden drop in rankings for main keywords for a website that has not been penalized (that I am aware of), has a great site speed, does not contain duplicate content and has not had a sudden drop in links. I can't explain this sudden drop in rankings. The site was ranked between #1 - #6 across: Custom Mouthguards Brisbane, Dentures Brisbane, Denture Implants Brisbane, and Brisbane Denture Clinic to name a few. https://denturehaus.com.au/ Not only was this a drop in regular SERPs but also local Google Map listings, where the website was previously #1 - #3, and now never comes up. I can't figure out what has gone wrong with the website to completely lose all rankings. Any troubleshooting or help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks,
Local Website Optimization | | Kim_Lazaro
Kim0 -
US rank worse than the UK
Hi, Can you please advise? We have been focusing on the UK traffic, but this year we are expanding to all English speaking countries, primarily focusing on the US market. Our SEO efforts are not equally fruitful in the US, but they are really good in the UK. Can you please suggest what seriously impacts rank these days? our main domain that we use in the UK is domain.com. The US version uses sub-directory domain.com/us. Is this a problem? we have about 3 times more traffic from the UK than the US, and we have only UK backlinks. Do they still impact SEO significantly? can our poor US rank be related simply to a larger market? Any ideas on how we can improve? Technical suggestions, page organisation etc, I'm open to any suggestions. Many thanks. Katarina
Local Website Optimization | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
How to Rank Local Website in Search Engines?
Hello, I'm the owner of a rubbish removal company based in London - Frank Rubbish Removal and trying to optimize the website of the company for search engines. Until now, I have hired a couple marketing companies but without success. What I want to achieve is to rank for local keywords in the rubbish removal niche, for example, Rubbish Removal Chelsea, waste clearance Hackney, waste removal Harrow...and similar local keywords. I have spent a lot of money on marketing companies and the website still can't go on 1st page of search engines in the UK. Can you tell me what I can do or who can hire to bring my website on 1st page for the local keywords?
Local Website Optimization | | korado112 -
Weird SEO Problem - No Longer Ranking in Some Areas
Hi Everyone, I’ve got a weird SEO issue that I hope you’ll be able to help with. I’ve broken it down in to the key points below: Impressions for our primary and secondary keywords dropped dramatically on 02.10.17. Impressions have only dropped on non geographical keywords. “UK” variants are still ranking well. Investigation shows we’re not ranking outside of London at all for primary and secondary keywords. Primary and secondary keywords are still ranking well in London, the city where we’re based We’ve looked at our competition who do rank for the primary keyword both in and outside London. We noticed we have our “postaladdress” in our schema. The competition don’t have their address in their schema. We updated our schema 2 weeks ago and now use the Yoast schema which is the same as our competitors use. Approx 1 week after removing the schema we started showing up for primary and secondary keyword again, but very low - fluctuating between page 15 and page 24. It’s been 2 weeks now and no improvement. AHREFS and google webmaster, both incorrectly detail that we rank top 5. Which is true to a degree, but only in London. Thank you in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | rswhtn0 -
Multilocation business, how can you rank for different categories in different locations with only branch pages?
Hello Mozzers, I am wondering how do you rank for categories locally where when you operate from multiple branches. Currently our eCommerce website has location pages for every category but I know that this is now classed as doorway pages and spammy so I am in the process of sorting out our site structure. I understand that the general format for having sites with multiple branches is to have a branch page per physical location and that's about it. Is there any more to this ? However, What confuses me though, is that if you offer all these services in all these branches, how are you going to rank for them locally if you don't have a specific page for each of them in that location? So for example - We rent Carpet cleaners , floor sanders, generators in each of our different branches. My site currently has a carpet cleaner hire <location>url , floor sander hire <location>url and a generator hire <location>url. Every branch has a url for each of my categories.</location></location></location> So if I was to get rid of all of my location category pages. How am I going to rank for these renting these products in different cities where our branches does without having specific location pages for them ? Is it just a case that google knows that because I have branch pages at locations x, y, x , then my carpet cleaner , floor sander and generator category pages will rank locally in those locations providing I have decent citations etc etc etc thanks
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC12
Pete0 -
SEO and Redirecting Site to a Different Firm's Domain while Maintaining Current Domain's Rankings
I am a plaintiffs' attorney with a website that ranks well for my major practice areas. I am considering taking a position with a new firm. As part of the discussion, the new firm would allow me to keep my current site so long as it redirects to my bio page on their firm's site. My goal is to keep my current site ranking well and continuously work on SEO efforts, in case I leave the new firm and want to rely on my current site in the future. My questions are: Is there a way to redirect my site every time it shows up in the listings (I have 1000+ indexed pages) without sacrificing its current rankings b/c of bounce rate issues, etc and 2) If I continue to add pages and work on SEO for my site while it redirects to another, will those efforts be worthwhile due to the redirect? I want to keep trying to build my site even though it redirects to a page on a different domain.
Local Website Optimization | | crpoll0 -
Do you need exact match geographically targeted keywords for ranking within a specified city limit?
For example, I have a personal injury law firm in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. I only care about potential clients searching within the city limits of Sheboygan (and not within the state of Wisconsin or on a national level). Do the following elements need to contain an exact match geographically targeted keyword if I only care about ranking locally in Sheboygan, Wisconcsin? (The type of keyword phrase I'm referring to would be Sheboygan Personal Injury Lawyers, Sheboygan Car Accident Lawyers, etc.) Title Tag Meta Description Main Headline Body Content Should I not include an exact match geographically targeted keyword in my content and trust that Google can make the association with where I'm located by other factors on the website? Website factors: Google local business page is setup linking to my website Other local listings have been claimed and setup properly My contact page contains our full address and phone number My footer contains our full address and phone number on every page
Local Website Optimization | | peteboyd0 -
How to rank in Local Google Without physical address and phone number?
Can We Rank Well in Local Google without Physical address and Phone Number??? If Yes. How??
Local Website Optimization | | Dan_Brown10