Rankings lower than expected
-
It's an age old question, "why is my site lower in the ranking than theirs"
But in this case, I'm really not sure!... and we perform the SEO on both sites in question.
The problem site is www.esp-machinery.co.uk
We are looking for ranking for phrases such as Used Machine Tools, Grinding Machines, Drilling Machines, Used Lathes etc.
We aren't getting it as high as we have already with another customer of ours:
We perform the SEO on both these sites, yet we've put far more work into the ESP one, and still not getting very far.
There are more linking domains to ESP than BW, in truth the BW site has a higher mozrank, but by only a single point.
We did not build the ESP site, whereas we built the BW one.
There have been some URL problems with the ESP site, but we have hopefully improved things enough working with their original developer to be on the right track now.
Any advice most welcome.
-
Hi Baptiste... yes, we failed to get him to even have one /category/ in there... I do not know why he couldn't do this.....!
-
I've read several article about keyword posiiton in the url, my thoughts on this is simple : put it close to the left if you don't have a good reason to put it farther.
In your case, having /category/category/ is useless. At least remove one category, right now /category/ is a duplicate of the home. Even if you remove one category, you should put a breadcrumb on the site to make /category/ indexable, and usefull.
My final advice is to have the category slugs in the root, ie : /lathes/. But this means having a good developer which is not the case I guess.
-
Hi Baptiste, thanks for putting the time in to look for me, much appreciated.
The ESP site is built in a way which we don't like, but we've tried to get those URLs sorted with their developer. Previously they weren't even showing as static style URLs. with every category page showing as category.php?=......
I read up on root URLs vs. folders within folders URLs, and the suggestion was that it didn't make a difference?
Thanks for the tip on the top nav... although not sure hot I'm going to fix that - I guess some clever CSS perhaps!
-
Two quick things I noticed :
On ESP, your top menu, which are the first links of the page, are not about machines. The effect can be seen in the site: request : http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.esp-machinery.co.uk&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla
official&client=firefox-a
You should put the most important menus here : machines ! BW does this.
Second thing : /category/category/sheet-metal-work-machines on ESP vs /sheetmetal-machines.asp on BW. ESP keywords are far from the root whereas BW has a page in the root with the good keywords.
There is several other improvements possible, especially for long tail ranking. For example, you don't have a single item page linked in a category : http://www.esp-machinery.co.uk/category/category/sheet-metal-work-machines. Optimised text on this page is missing too.
-
HI Alan, the content is very similar, they should both have their own unique content, but the navigation is structured very similarly.
They are different sites, so there are differences, but it's certainly not like comparing chalk and cheese.
-
What about the content of each site, how do they differ?
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
-
Are three Adsense ads on a long page a negative for search ranking?
I've not a site whose home page that is #1 for a popular keyword. The page is 1200 words, plus comments following. It's a clean page with no popups, and has one large rectangle Adsense ad above the fold (lots of text around this ad, and a very high percentage of page ATF is text), and another large rectangle Adsense ad that is midway down the article (after you have to page twice to get there). So, it's a very low ad to text ratio and ATF looks very clean. I have room for one more Adsense ad closer to the bottom of the article, which would be about five page downs through the page. My question is, will placing another ad way down the page affect my ranking in any negative way? I'm so pleased with my #1 ranking I hesitate to add it. But the page converts in Adsense so well, and heat maps show a large number readers do read all the way down the page, so I'd like to pick up some more ad revenue.
On-Page Optimization | | bizzer0 -
Sudden drop in ranking for important keyword? No penalty / other issues detected
Hi For our site we previously ranked well for the term "botswana safari holidays" on the page: http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/botswana.aspx We've suddenly seen a dramatic drop for this term, currently ranked #43 on Google UK. There are no penalty notices in Webmaster tools and the only edits to the page recently have been to include the term "Botswana safari holidays" in the page title and the on-page h2 (previously Botswana safaris and holidays). Any suggestions why we have seen a large decrease for this term? We expect to see some fluctuation but this one seems a bit dramatic. We've not lost any backlinks to the page that we know of. Thanks for the help.
On-Page Optimization | | KateWaite0 -
Organic key word ranking
I just noticed we are ranking above our leading competitor for the key words “Joint Care”. Comparing the stats I see the PA for our page is 14, whereas their’s is 18 . (also their DA is 42 whereas ours is 35). So I’m not 100% sure as to why we are ahead of them, is this due to us having 10 links whereas they only have 4 links to the respective pages? jointcarerating.jpg.html
On-Page Optimization | | Hardley1110 -
Keyword in URL: Ranking Factor?
I've got a site about a specific topic, which we'll call "themes" for the sake of this discussion. I personally like to keep the url structure short and clean (for usability purposes, but mainly because I'm a perfectionist and a minimalist). I feel that adding "themes" to the url structure is a bit redundant. However, nearly every keyword phrase that my site should rank for includes the word "themes." So I'm wondering how much I'm handicapping myself by not including the keyword "themes" in the url? The domain name itself sort of includes the keyword . . . although it's in Italian (I chose the domain for it's brand-ability, not for the keyword). A quick example: My Url Structure: www.themo.com/topic/abc My Competitor's Url Structure: www.sitesample.com/themes/topic/abc For many of the keywords, the competitors with the keyword in the url rank highest. But, I'm not sure how much emphasis to place on this, because from my understanding Google doesn't pay as much attention to url keywords anymore . . . and those sites might just be ranking high because they've been around for so long (which also happens to be the reason why they coincidentally also include the keyword in the url, because they started the site when that was a high ranking factor). Thoughts? Should I just trash my perfectionism and add the keyword to the url structure? (By the way, the site is only a couple months old and doesn't have any significant backlinks to inner pages yet, so changing the url structure wouldn't be a big deal if I decided to do that).
On-Page Optimization | | JABacchetta0 -
Ranking well with Google but not in Top 50 with Bing and Yahoo?
I have sometimes pages ranking very well on Google but in comparison with Bing and Yahoo they are not listed within the Top50 SERP's What are the ranking factors for Bing and Yahoo? Although Bing and Yahoo play a minor role it would be fine also to rank well with these engines. Thanks for any tips!
On-Page Optimization | | inlinear0 -
How to leverage user reviews & ratings to help in SEO rankings
Folks, We have User Generated Content site in travel domain, we want to leverage reviews & ratings for SEO rankings/CTR . We already are getting micro formats in google but not in all the cases. Any ideas/suggestions will be really very helpful. Thanks in Advance. -Amit
On-Page Optimization | | holidayiq0 -
Does reading grade level affect rankings? What level should I write for?
Search engines measure the reading level of your page. But how does it affect ranking? Should I be aiming more for a low or high Flesch–Kincaid grade level?
On-Page Optimization | | stevenw0 -
Particular page fails to rank well
Hi all We are building, managing and marketing a Danish tourism site for VisitSweden. The site targets a Danish market-group with information and travel tips on going to Sweden. We have one page in particular that has always failed to rank well for some reason. http://www.meresverige.dk/rejser/malmo This page targets the keyword "Malmø". Another page, with similar layout and content seems to rank alot better. http://www.meresverige.dk/rejser/goeteborg Keyword "Gøteborg" Any ideas? Smart tips? Have the best of days Fredrik
On-Page Optimization | | Resultify0