SEO directories
-
Recently I did a research of one of mine competitors and to my surprise his major backlinks located on seo directories like:
- http://alistdirectory.com/
- http://www.ggfb.org/
- http://www.bitterskank.com/
- http://www.directorypage.net/
And .... he is showing on first page of Google by particular keyword "Dentist Dubai". Frankly speaking I am confused a little bit, because I believe that this SEO strategy has stopped working a long time ago. Could someone share with me his thought about this?
Furthermore all of those websites are asking about a Reciprocal link, which I did find on his website. How he did it?
Thanks,
Russel
-
Hi Chris,
You've touch the exact problem I have. My website doesn't appear in Google Places at all. I am really confused about it, because I went through all Google Places guideline and make sure that everything filled in properly and account has no violetions.
However my website do not want to appear in Google Places! When I did analysis of my competitors I've got a feeling that those people just appear there without doing anything! Just because Google decided to put them. Our website has the hight DA, MT, PA among all our competitors.
Please give some good tips about how to be listed in Google Places, what I should do for that and what is the best places to submit a link for GP?
Cheers,
Russel
-
Wow that's really exotic place to meet it proves once again you never know where you meet your soul mate.
In dubai it is really hot and because of high humidity you feel it very much! But still it is a great place to visit and there is a lot nice things to see! Especially dubai grow up very fast, almost every year they build something big and beautiful!
Look according to the Google Places (if you will read my comment to Chris), I really have this issue, which bothering me a lot. Can I get a comment from you, what do you think it's need to be done to be listed in GP.
Cheers,
Russel
-
As to link building, since the Dr.s have travelled, I would explore conventions, papers, etc they have been involved in.
As to my wife, I met her in a very exotic place: Men's Suits at Sax Fifth Avenue. She was in Dubai two years ago coming back from Syria or Egypt. Said it was...hot.
My best,
-
While I agree with everything Robert has said, my advice still stands. Start with building local links for ranking in local search. I don't see you in Google places at all, but I see 2 different locations for your competitor. Links for places like Google places are very easy and would be the best place for you to start while you build your skill.
Is there a local dental association? Can you get a link from them. What about the newspapers, local expat organizations, your customers, your suppliers?
-
Dear Robert, Thank you for your advise in terms of On-page optimization. I know there is some work needs to be done an do am working on it. But when I said that I am a little bit lost, I mean linkbuilding strategy. What will be the fist step to start? BTW where did you meet your wife? May be by chance you've been in Dubai ? Cheers, Russel
-
Great Russel,
First, I would improve the English on the site. Being a person who speaks some Spanish along with English and having a wife who is fluent in Arabic - read/write/speak - I know how it is easy to mess up grammar and syntax (or the structure of speaking).
On this site, that would likely help a bit with conversions.On the SEO, you have a page load problem and need to do some work on that. The easiest way to tell you is that you should download YSlow which will show you what is slowing the site down. For a site like yours, I usually test in Version 2.
Your on page SEO needs to improve and a note here (take out all the meta keywords in your WP - they are not necessary). Your alt text has a lot of image 1, etc. and icon is used a lot. This should be where you describe the image (don't load in a bunch of keywords).
You don't have a rel=canonical and you need that for each url so that you can avoid duplicate content issues, etc.
As I look at different pages, they have poor page titles: All services, VIP Services, etc. Inner pages lack H1, H2, etc.
One thing to look closely at is your meta descriptions: These should entice the customer to click on your page in the SERPs. Speak to the customer. There is no need to speak to the search engines as they are not listening....meta description is not part of the algo. But, if you are not getting a good CTR due to poor ones, it does IMHO effect the rankings.
Hope this helps,
-
No, she is French, but English for her is the main language, because in Dubai it is business language and all company websites done in English. Before it had some translations, but after website redesign, they didn't have time to upload them.
-
Before I do, a quick question: Who is your main client: native English speakers who are in Dubai on business or travel or others who speak Arabic, Farsi, etc. but have English as a second language?
-
Hi Robert,
Thank you for your reply and attention to my topic. Honestly I am not trying to build my seo strategy according to what my competitors DO. I was just curious how this simple directories can make a good impact on his ranking.
But from another side I am a little bit lost in how to optimize the Dental Clinic website! May be you can give me a good advise how to start ? And how to get some good links for this website?
Cheers,
Russel
-
Russel
I think you may need to check your premise: He is ranking because he has these back links.
I have learned that looking at someone who is a competitor and assuming they are ranking well just because of a certain set of links is not a good use of my time. I am better served using my time to insure I have quality links, have quality on site SEO, am learning every day, etc.
If he has reciprocal links, it does not matter as they are devalued by Google.
Without the url for your competitor and you it is hard to compare one to the other. OK, it is impossible.
Your question is very similar to the: "How is this site ranking for ______?"!!
If there are good links your competitor is using can you farm some of those yourself? Is your anchor text working for you? Etc.
Hope this helps a bit.
-
www.clinickv.com - Competitor www.versaillesdentalclinic.com - My website
-
Since the particular keyword you referred to is location specific, I suspect that if they are the cause it would be simply due to the fact they those directories are reinforcing his location.
Look for reputable local sites where you can get listings to boost your local search rankings.
-
We cant really base a conclusion of why they are ranked first page just from a list of 4 link sources.. Post the URL and we can dig in deeper to see why he is ranking higher..
About the reciprocal link, they may have added one in the past and as soon as they got accepted they could have removed the link.
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
-
Can piracy sites linking to you hurt your SEO?
Hello, Our website sells software that we have developed, but there are piracy websites that offer a crack/keygen to our software and are linking to our site. From an SEO perspective, are those sites hurtful to us if their spam score is below 30 and their DA is not 1? We'd like to understand if there is any action we need to take from an SEO point or if our site's SEO is not affected by it. Thank you!
Link Building | | marynau0 -
My Question : why site explorer not showing yahoo directory link
why site explorer not showing yahoo directory link i have tried many different sites which listed in yahoo directory but site explorer not showing ?
Link Building | | amreen8470 -
Automatic Directory Submissions
I was talking to someone about automatic directory submissions with someone lately, and would love the thoughts of the community here. Basically, the thought was that automatic directory submissions wouldn't get flagged by Google, because they're directories, not necessarily spam links. Is this still true in a post-penguin world? He hasn't seen any negative effects from it yet, but I'm still cautious. My thoughts would be not to depend on the automatic submissions, but to use them as a supplement. If a handful (maybe 50/mo) of directory links could be submitted automatically, that could free up more time for content development and promotion, which is where I believe the real value lies. It would also help skeptical clients feel better about having a certain number of links. So, what have you seen so far? Is this dangerous, safe, or fairly pointless?
Link Building | | DeliaAssociates0 -
Local SEO: Citation Consistency
My company manages local SEO campaigns for local-service SMBs (e.g. plumbers, dentists). One of the things we do is claim and manage directory listings. To provide trackable results, we apply tracking phone numbers to the directory listings, but those phone numbers don't match the phone number listed on the client's site. So we have a problem from a citation consistency standpoint. On the one hand, we'd like everything to be consistent -- business name, address and phone number -- to achieve citation consistency. On the other hand, we want to prove the value of what we're doing by showing the client data from tracked phone calls. Can we provide best-practice Local SEO and Maps Optimization - and achieve citation consistency - even if we're introducing inconsistency by using tracking numbers?
Link Building | | Aspirant10 -
How important are directory submissions to my off-page SEO?
Hi Guys, One area of my link building that I carry out is looking for online directories and social bookmarking websites to submit my website to. I do this in order to gain some backlinks to my website. What I want to know is are they really worth my time, and if so, which types would you say are the most important? I have obviously been through many directory lists, both on SEOmoz and on other websites, and also performed various searches to find relevant directories to my website. I just feel that posting up a link that lies deep in a directory online that, more often than not, have very low PA and lots of outbound links will offer very little in terms of SEO. If anything, this could really bring down the quality of my links and be detrimental to my website, right? This is a subject that I have been thinking about for a while and especially with the recent algorithm update from Google and the attack on many web directories that are, lets say, 'not playing by the rules', I'm worried that this will have a negative impact for my website. Let me know your thoughts guys and if you have any tips on how to get higher quality links from these kind of submission then I'm all ears! Matt.
Link Building | | MatthewBarby0 -
Poor Links - SEO SpyGlass
Hello, I have been using a free trial of SEO SpyGlass and from what I can see we have a few low value links... Do you think we should get these removed? Is SEO Spyglass worth its money?
Link Building | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Yahoo Directory - Which Category?
I'm submitting a law firm's site to the Yahoo paid directory. The location of the firm is in a suburb of the large city for that region, and that suburb is so small that there is no option for it under Cities. Obviously, the client wants to target the large city, not the suburb they're located in. Wondering if it's OK to submit the site to Yahoo under the category of the large city if the business is not technically located in that city. The address is clearly listed in the footer and on the contact page. Might Yahoo reject the submission for that, or will their editors realize there's no listing for the suburb and allow it?
Link Building | | c2g0 -
Help me understand the gap between DMOZ and the Google Directory?
I have seen other sites showing up in OSE with backlinks from both DMOZ and Google Directory. We are in DMOZ, and our backling is showing for that in OSE, but i don't understand how to get added to the Google directory? When i go to the appropriate category, and click "submit link" it just takes me back to DMOZ! Is there something i'm doing wrong here? This is the page we are on in DMOZ And this is the page i believe we should be on in the google directory As a side note, i would love to hear your opinions if this really even matters? does google really use it's own directory as part of its search algorithm?
Link Building | | adriandg0