Issue with Joomla Site not showing in SERP's
-
Site: simpsonelectricnc dot com
I'm working on a Joomla website for a local business that isn't ranking at all for any relevant keyword - including the business name.
The site is only about six months old and has relatively few links. I realize it takes time to compete for even low-volume keywords, but I think something else may be preventing the site from showing up.
The site is not blocked by Robots.txt (which includes a valid reference to the sitemap)
There is no duplicate content issue, the .htaccess is redirecting all non-www traffic to www version
Every page has a unique title and H1 tag.
The URL's are search-engine friendly (not dynamic either)
XML sitemap is live and submitted to Google WM Tools. Google shows that it is indexing about 70% of the submitted URL's.The site has essentially no domain authority (0.02) according to Moz - I'm assuming this is due to lack of links and short life on the web.
Until today, 98% of the pages had identical meta descriptions.Again, I realize six months is not an eternity - but the site will not even show up for "business name + city,state" searches in Google. In fact, the only way I've seen it in organic results is to search for the exact URL.
I would greatly appreciate any help.
-
The site is still not showing for any relevant search terms (which is wildly frustrating) - however I have noticed some movement in Webmaster Tools in terms of pages crawled per day.
-
Hi Keri, I am looking into that for sure. I also enabled gzip compression which has had a positive impact on overall loading times as well.
In Google Webmaster tools, the graph for loading time has gone down considerably and the crawl activity has gone up. I'm hoping this is a positive sign.
-
I would still look at your image size while you waited -- getting the load time down can only help things.
-
Thanks for the suggestions. Other than building links, it seems there's little left to do except wait.
-
-
Go ahead and link to the post -- seems quite appropriate and on-topic.
-
Joomla is very duplicate content challenged. I wrote a blog post about it a while ago, but I won't link to it so I don't look like a spammer. Here are the highlights:
1. The natural installation of Joomla comes with silly things like "print" and "pdf" icons. Both of these will lead to duplicate content issues.
2. Joomla's categories will lead to duplicate content
3. Different URL structures will lead to duplicate content issues
Still, not being indexed for the branded terms is a tough thing to be a part of. What is the niche you are in? Could you possibly be black listed? Is the domain new or did he buy it "used"?
-
Adam, thanks for the input. We are now working on a couple of link campaigns and are slowly starting up pick up some here and there. We are definitely suffering from a lack of links.
Not ranking for company name and location after six months still seems strange to me despite lack of back-links.
And I agree with you and Keri regarding the links in the footer - we will look into eliminating that.
-
The site looks visually nice, except for the list of keywords at the bottom that Adam mentioned. I agree that some good backlinks are needed.
For user experience (and a bit for ranking, but primarily user experience at this point) I suggest looking at the file size of the images on your page. My first impression was that the site was slow to load, and I noticed you have several large image files that could be reduced either by saving a png as a jpg, or compressing the jpg (investiate smush.it from Yahoo).
-
Jason,
I believe the greatest reason you are not ranking (even for company name + city) is lack of backlinks. I would definitely recommend working to build quality backlinks.
These resources will help you get started:
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-from-a-to-z
Also, I would consider removing the list of keywords at the bottom of the page - that could be viewed as keyword stuffing.
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
-
URL with query string being indexed over it's parent page?
I noticed earlier this week that this page - https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/bomb-threats-and-suspicious-packages?channel=care was being indexed instead of this page - https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/bomb-threats-and-suspicious-packages for its various keywords We have rel=canonical tags correctly set up and all internal links to these pages with query strings are nofollow, so why is this page being indexed? Any help would be appreciated 🙂
Technical SEO | | iHasco0 -
Will multiple internal links with the same anchor text hurt a site's ranking?
Hello, I just watched this video from the Google Webmasters channel at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ybpXU0ckKQ My question: If a site is built up on subdomains, will linking the different subdomains with exact anchor text hurt the site's ranking? Thanks
Technical SEO | | arnoldwender0 -
Need advice for new site's structure
Hi everyone, I need to update the structure of my site www.chedonna.it Basicly I've two main problems: 1. I've 61.000 index tag (more with no post)2. The category of my site are noindex I thought to fix my problem making the category index and the tag noindex, but I'm not sure if this is the best solution because I've a great number of tag idexed by Google for a long time. Mybe it is correct just to make the category index and linking it from the post and leave the tag index. Could you please let me know what's your opinion? Regards.
Technical SEO | | salvyy0 -
What's the rules on overly dynamic URLs ?
Developer says "Overly-Dynamic URL. Developer says that this is the hardest and complex part. It will be possible to change all of the search criterias to use ( / )
Technical SEO | | stewbuch1872
But in this case each of the pages will be indexed and every time listing gets added, content will get changed. Which for example Google will start blocking what is the best way to address this and will google block as suggested ? thanks0 -
Link to Articles for news sites in Google SERPs
I'm trying to figure out why when I search for "international news" or "world news", for example, some sites in the SERPs have links to news articles, while others don't. For "international news", result of Fox News and New York Times have links to articles, while CNN (the top result), only have sitelinks. I would appreciate any theories on why this happens. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | seoFan210 -
Found a Typo in URL, what's the best practice to fix it?
Wordpress 3.4, Yoast, Multisite The URL is supposed to be "www.myexample.com/great-site" but I just found that it's "www.myexample.com/gre-atsite" It is a relatively new site but we already pointed several internal links to "www.myexample.com/gre-atsite" What's the best practice to correct this? Which option is more desirable? 1.Creating a new page I found that Yoast has "301 redirect" option in the Advanced tap Can I just create a new page(exact same page) and put noindex, nofollow and redirect it to http://www.myexample.com/great-site OR 2. htacess redirect rule simply change the URL to http://www.myexample.com/great-site and update it, and add Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | joony2008
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^http://www.myexample.com/gre-atsite$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.myexample.com/great-site$1 [R=301,L]0 -
If I redirect my WordPress blog to my main site, will it help my main site's SEO?
I have separate sites for my blog and main website. I'd like to link them in a way that enables the blog to boost my main site's SEO. Is there an easy way to do this? Thanks in advance for any advice...
Technical SEO | | matt-145670 -
Duplicate content and URL's
Hi Guys, Hope you are all well. Just a quick question which you will find nice and easy 🙂 I am just about to work through duplicate content pages and URL changes. Firstly, With the duplicate content issue i am finding the seo friendly URL i would normally direct to in some cases has less links, authority and root domain to it than some of the unseo friendly URL's. will this harm me if i still 301 redirect them to the seo friendly URL. Also, With the url changed it is going to be a huge job to change all the url so they are friendly and the CMS system is poor. Is there a better way of doing this? It has been suggested that we create a new webpage with a friendly URL and redirect all the pages to that. Will this lose all the weight as it will be a brand new page? Thank you for your help guys your legends!! Cheers Wayne
Technical SEO | | wazza19850