Keyword Variants - Low conversion rates - Is a site redesign required?
-
Hi Guys,
I'm Chris & i'm a noob to SEO.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and for offering your support! It is greatly appreciated!
I work for a small family run company called custom designed cables and we manufacture bespoke cable and bespoke retractable cables.
I posted a couple of days ago about how to move forward with our site.
Our website has been targeting specific keywords and their variants across the relevant pages to somewhat reasonable effect.
Since signing up to SEOMOZ, i have been trying to narrow down the keywords that we target per page and also tried to improve the content on the pages with the help of the on page optimisation tool.
I have a few questions that i would like somebody to help me with please if it isn't to much trouble.
Firstly, for our keywords, there are a lot of variants. For example, we braid cables.
Here are some of the variants of this keyword: cable braid, cable braiding, cable screen, cable screening, cable shielding etc etc.
The way i have gone in the past has been to try and target all of those keywords on the relevant page. Now, writing content has been the issue as whilst trying to write good informative information, squeezing in all of the keywords has been a problem and more than likely affected the readability of the page.
From what i have learnt since i signed up, this is not a good practice and therefore i have tried to narrow it down somewhat yet i don't really want to lose potential customers finding us by only targeting one or two of the keywords. This is a similar situation for most of our keywords on the majority of our pages.
What is the best way to approach this? If i was to write a page per keyword, i don't believe that it would look very good as we could end up with over 100 pages with say 5 or 6 of them talking about the same subject which then leads onto the problem of writing good content. It would be difficult to write good content for pretty much the same thing across such a wide number of pages. If this is the solution though then i would more than happily tackle it.
What would be the best way to move forward?
The next issue that I have is that since i have been modifying the pages with the help of SEOMOZ, the number of enquries that we have received have fell off the charts.
We used to average around 50 enquiries a month from the website and since i have modified the site, i'd say we've had probably 20 since the end of February.
The funny thing is though, we have also averaged around 200 hits more per month since the changes. So the hits have increased yet the enquiries have died.
I was wondering if anybody was willing to take a look at our site: http://www.customdesignedcable.co.uk to give me some general feedback as to why this may be happening and what your overall opinions of the site may be with regards to the layout, look and general feel etc because i am beginning to wonder whether or not the design is what could be causing us to convert so little of our new found visitors.
If anyone could also provide me with actionable feedback with regards to our keyword targeting for our pages that would also really really help!
I am currently considering re-designing the site in it's entirety and i am interested in your opinions on whether or not this would be a good way to go.
Any help that you can give me would be greatly appreciated guys!
Thanks again!
Chris (Just another website/seo noob desperately attempting to avoid the sack)
-
Chris- Hoping I can help you avoid the sack!!!
I will divide my feedback into four areas:
- Website layout
- CMS
- Analytics
- Creating unique content focused on your keywords
Website layout is average....the fact that you have used so much of your home page real estate for navigation doesnt make sense. you have multiple options for home, about us, custom cable and links.....the red is overhwleming....the choices are overwhelming. Way too busy.....
Take a step back and think about why is someone coming to the page? what are the top three things they might want to accomplish? then get rid of everything else and focus on those three things....you cna remove all of your other headings and subheadings that are not call to action items, down to the footer or condensed into one heading.....
- If your goal is to get them to order cable now then there should be a box "Order cable now" or "check out our prices now"...
- If your goal is to get their email information to follow up market to them, then there should be a call to action box that says"save money with our cable now" or "Sign up for special weekly deals" and then you would have an email box they could fill in and submit.
- If your goal is to get them to see why your cable is unique....then post that information with a call to action.
CMS. Im not sure what CMS you are using, but hopefully you are being indexed correctly and the sitemap is being generated that is solid and provides guidance to the search engines. We recommend wordpress because we have seen that when we convert the same exact content from another site to wordpress, we not only upgrade the user experience but it gets better SEO value instantly because of the architecture and ease of use with plugins. Whatever you are using, make sure you have a solid foundation.
Analytics. You need to install google analytics on your pages so you can track the activity on your site. You need to find out where people are going on the site, how long they are spending on each page and where they are abansdoining. Just install the code on every page in the footer and then set up some basic reporting to get you vital information related to what you are talking about above. You dont know what you dont know....get the data and you then will have some clarity on what is happening.
Creating unique content with keywords. Let me offer you a few suggestions....
- Pick one primary or money keyword on each page. And then pick 2-3 sub keywords that are important and relevant. Just focus on those....don't pick 10 keywords a page....
- When writing content make sure you include the main keyword in the title, in the first sentence and the last sentence.
- Make sure you mention the other sub keywords at least 2-3 times in the main article/content.
- Make sure you use bold, italics and underlines at least once in the content.
Don't stuff the keywords in the content......use the keywords only if it makes sense in the context of what you are writing about.....
Lastly, it sounds like you might not be maximizing your seo value for alt tags and meta tags.....make sure your meta descriptions and picture alt tags are seo optimized with your keywords for that page. Again, with wordpress this is a simple process of filling in the required fields for one of the wordpress plugins.
Good luck. Hope this helps. Please show me the three thumbs up!
Mark
-
I wouldn't 'cut them out' per say, but put them lower on the priority list. Make sure to use the most searched keyword furthest to the left in the title tag.
As far as everything else goes - try setting up some goals in Google Analytics to see which keywords are converting into sales. If you find one converts better than the other - swap it out for the furthest to the left in the title tag. Doesn't matter how much traffic it brings you if it doesn't convert.
As with most people, I can see that you're pretty concerned with your on-site optimization. On-site is a very small percentage of the reason why your website will rank. Links from external websites do most of the work.
-
Hi Todd,
With regards to SEOMOZ's on page optimisation tools.
Would you suggest that i only include the keywords in the body just the one time or would you suggest that i should go with the minimum of 4 mentions?
Thanks Todd!
Chris.
-
Hi Todd,
Thank you for the response!
So following on from what you have suggested, would i be better off selecting the three keywords with highest traffic and optimising to them specific keywords?
Thus cutting out quite a lot of the variants?
Would you suggest that i run with that then for the time being and see how we rank/how many conversions we get whilst leaving the site design the same?
I've just loaded up the link, i will read it now!
Thanks again Todd!!
Chris.
-
Hey Christopher,
You're right in not writing content for all of those keyword variants. Check out this post from Google:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html
Key takeaway from that post is this:
Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations? Some may disagree, but the only form of on-site SEO optimization I do is in the title tag, H1 tag and 1 time in the copy. I use a different keyword in the title tag, H1 and in copy as well. So for you:
Title: cable braid
H1: cable braiding
in copy: cable braids
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
-
Seo For Forum Sites
I have forum site.I've opened it 2 months ago.But there is a problem.Therefore my content is unique , my site's keyword ranking constantly changing..Sometimes my site's ranking drops from first 500.After came to 70s. I didn't make any off page seo to my site.What is the problem ?
Technical SEO | | tutarmi0 -
Why does my site rank so badly
its my turn to ask the interminable question why does my site rank so badly? site is: marriagerecords.org.uk. it was #1 for 'marriage records' on google for about 6 months. then it was 5th to 10th for about 2 months. now it is nowhere for this phrase and anything else, none of the pages I have written rank for anything. I have spent hours upon hours researching original content and I have got some great backlinks from sites like wrexham.gov.uk and somerset.gov.uk (some dont show in opensiteexplorer yet). im guessing im over-optimizing something but i'd love some concrete fixes if anyone could suggest any. thanks, tom
Technical SEO | | lethal0r0 -
Young site trying hard, but banging head against the wall -- Site Review
Hi All New to PRO but we're seriously committed to getting this working. And firstly thank you to anyone who offers any useful thoughts and insights. We've launched a new site, unfortunately late to the market for the season and are really struggling to get search engine recognition. Site: http://www.ignitehats.co.uk/ We're continuously adding new content, slowly gathering more links and working hard to promote socially. But even on our clearest search terms like "Ignite hats" we're down on page 4. Both GWT and the Seomoz tools highlight no big problems (a few titles that are too long) but otherwise nothing. Maybe wrongly we requested that the Google spam team review our site incase it was being penalised, but got a template response saying the site was not in their spam system (phew, there wasn't a reason it should be we believe). We're wondering if this is just that our site is just too young? It's been live for 6 weeks. But worry maybe this is not the case. We've had success with another site we run much sooner than this. Any help or pointers would be really appreciated. Similar stories and what others have done, at least to give us some confidence to carry on would be great. Thanks for reading.
Technical SEO | | JHill0 -
Site forwarding - seo friendly or not?
Recently i decided to change my domain name - and although i have written several useful and working .htacess files with 301 redirects, this one became more complicated by the fact that I went through TWO domain name changes, before settling on the second one. Having seen some issues with the browser not being able to interpret correctly the .htaccess file, i temporarily suspended the .htaccess file, and opted instead for site forwarding. I don't know the mechanics behind site forwarding, or whether it is seo friendly or just a method for ip addressing, a sort of pseudo domain name server record change.
Technical SEO | | highersourcesites
I let it lie for a few weeks, until the dust settled, and yesterday put back the basic .htaccess file, with a 301 redirect, which directs the original domain name to be forwarded to the new one ( also it has a conditional in place to solve canonical issues). It works fine. But right now i am not seeing the link juice, the domain age, the domain page rank that it has. It has gone to zero, when it used to be three, sometimes four. I also made the change of address using webmaster tools. How long ( forever?) will it take to see my old page rank come back, even if it loses 10% from the change? And does site forwarding help or hinder seo ranking?0 -
We're working on a site that is a beer company. Because it is required to have an age verification page, how should we best redirect the bots (useragents) to the actual homepage (thus skipping ahead of the age verification without allowing all browsers)?
This question is about useragents and alcohol sites that have an age verification screen upon landing on the site.
Technical SEO | | OveritMedia0 -
When launching a site redesign, what is the best way to roll it out?
We are currently working on a site re-design and are getting close to launch. When launching the newly designed site, what is the best way to roll it out? 301 Redirects with an under construction page? Just upload the entire site at once? or al little of both? Thank You
Technical SEO | | ControlByWeb0 -
Site problem
I moved a site earlier on in the year to a better server www.keyrs.co.uk, my main keywords being equity release - equity release calculator and equity release schemes. Since this happened the ranking have gone down and the schemes and calculator terms and have hit positions 7-8 when they were 2-3. basically my question is open to all, i am looking to see what the problem is with these pages as it is driving me nuts. All tools on SEO moz show the pages are doing well, however i must be missing something. Mike
Technical SEO | | TomBarker820 -
Problem with my site
the site is casino.pt we created the site 7-8 month ago, we started to push it by good and natural links (http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/www.casino.pt/a!links!!filter!all!!source!external!!target!page), links in sites with content rich and most of them related to gambling and sport topics. During the first 3-5 months, the rankings were better and better, after the 6 months, the site lose all its rankings. Aditional details http://www.casino.pt/robots.txt http://www.google.pt/#hl=pt-PT&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=805&q=site:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.casino.pt&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&fp=2651649a33cd228 no critical errors in google webmaster tools any idea how can I fix it? thanks
Technical SEO | | Yaron530