Why does my website not rank better for the keyword i am going for?
-
My website is www.canadafloraldelivery.com. I just can't seem to get my webpage ranked well for the keyword " Flowers Edmonton " . Also I can't seem to get my Google local listing on the map for many keywords. Is there something obvious that I am missing? Any help would be very appreciated.
-
You are very welcome, Christopher! I will PM you.
-
Hi there and thank you so much for the detailed response. I have tried to implement the changes that you posted above. I can not get the www.51blocks.com to work as we are in Canada and it does not seem to work for us northerners.
I have reworded the content of the home page to read more fluently. and am in the works of rewording all my title tags as well.
As for the suite #205 I do put it in the dashboard of Google places but it just doesn't seem to show on my +page.
I am encounter a problem with Google not fully recognizing that I have a Facebook page. I am pretty sure it is public and I have a few likes but I just can't seem to get Facebook to give me more credit for the page that we have done.
I have had an Audit of my website done by the BDC (Business Development bank of Canada) And is showed that I should be doing better than I am for Local search terms. Does your company offer in depth Audit? Getting organic traffic in Edmonton Alberta really means a lot for me and my shop.
-
Hi Christopher,
Keri has made sure I stop by, and I see you've already received some good advice on this thread. I'll add what I know and see. I break this down into numbered points.
1. The floral industry has historically been one of the tougher ones, due to heavy spamming. Things are better than they were a couple of years ago, but like locksmith and auto dealer results, floral results can often be odder or tougher to break into than the results of less competitive, less spammy verticals. California florist, Cathy Hillen-Rulloda (http://www.avantegardens.com/) actually ended up becoming a participant on David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors (http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors-2012.shtml) in previous years due to her coverage of issues specifically affecting the floral industry. She might be a good person for you to be aware of, if you aren't already.
2. Yes, your website is over-optimized. Your title tags really need help. The Homepage title contains the word Edmonton twice, and though Google will tolerate this, it is my opinion that it is not an ideal thing to do. Word has it that you can use a keyword up to 2 times without being penalized, but I would not advise using any keyword more than once in the title tag of any page on your website. See this discussion on Linda Buquet's Local Search Forum regarding this statement from a former Google spam team member (http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/local-search-general-discussions/984-local-search-engine-optimization-warning-city-title.html). Title tags should read naturally. Rand's Whiteboard Friday that includes his advice on this topic is a must-view: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-changes-every-seo-should-make-before-the-over-optimization-penalty-hits-whiteboard-friday In addition to your title tags being over-optimized, there is broken code in the title tag of your About Page. So, bottom line, a compete rewrite of your title tags should be step one for you.
3. Keri mentions seeing a different address on your About Page. Perhaps you've removed that since she wrote this? I don't see it. I do see, correctly, that you have placed your complete NAP (name, address, phone number) in your website footer and that you have partial NAP on your contact page. You should put your business name at the beginning of the chunk of text displaying your address and phone number. Further, I would highly recommend that you encode this data in Schema. If you've never used Schema before, you can use this Schema creator tool: http://schema-creator.org/ Choose the 'organizations' tab from the left-hand menu. I would encode both the footer and contact page NAP in Schema, and be 100% sure that you are only publishing one address and one local phone number on your website, if you only have one shop.
4. Now let's do a phone number lookup in maps.google.com. Good. This is pulling up only one listing at the moment. Good to see. However, it looks like '205', which I believe is your suite number' is missing from your Google local listing. Is it in your dashboard? Google has had some odd bugs in recent times regarding suite addresses. The rule is that your suite address must be consistently published everywhere. It's on your site, but not on your + page. Is it entered in the dashboard?
5. The same search for your business name is showing just one listing for Canada Floral Delivery, but I do note some other florists on the same street as yours. Just want to double check with you that Grower Direct and other florists apparently located on 41 Avenue are their own companies and have nothing to do with your business.
6. Now let's look at your + page here: https://plus.google.com/110941434141977888287/about?gl=US&hl=en-US. Your description is problematic. It reads:
“Send Flowers Edmonton. Best Florist in Edmonton. Send flowers for any occasion. Sympathy Flowers. Local Florist in Edmonton Alberta. Flower Delivery to Edmonton, Sherwood Park & St Albert”
You should never put geographic terms in your business description and you've got Edmonton in there multiple times as well as other geo terms. Should definitely be edited.
7. Competitive analysis is different for every business. I recommend that you run your site through this tool: http://www.51blocks.com/online-marketing-tools/free-local-analysis/ This will show you how you stack up against your competitors on a local level. This will assess the quantity and consistency of your citations which is a giant ranking factor.
8. Hmm...here's a good clue. I just checked your address against the proximity/centroid cluster of your competitors and it appears you are pretty far away from the cluster. The bulk of your competitors are located north of the river in the area Google Maps is designating as 'Downtown'. You are apparently some miles away from this, so this can definitely affect your ranking abilities.
So, these are some thoughts. What I've written here cannot take the place of an in-depth formal audit. You have many opportunities for improvements, Christopher, only some of which can be covered by a first-glance impression like mine.
-
After quickly glancing at your site my only suggestion would be to be careful how much you stuff your keywords into your content. Don't get me wrong, it's important to integrate your keywords in the content of your website but here is an example of a bit too much and can easily cause Google to flag your site as spammy.
"Flowers Edmonton, For Flower delivery Edmonton AB. Our Edmonton flower shop will ensure that your delivery are fresh and beautiful every time. Our Edmonton flower shop is a part of the FTD flower network and we have made great relationships with florists all across the country. Send flowers in Edmonton or Canada wide with our same day delivery guarantee. 100% guarantee on all our products and gifts. Edmonton flowers done right.
Click here to see a page all about our Flower Shop in Edmonton!"I would work with a copywriter that has experience with SEO best practices to improve the content on your site, I think this would really help with your on-page optimization.
With regards to your local SEO, again make sure that you are careful with using too many keywords. Here is the current description on your local listing:
"“Send Flowers Edmonton. Best Florist in Edmonton. Send flowers for any occasion. Sympathy Flowers. Local Florist in Edmonton Alberta. Flower Delivery to Edmonton, Sherwood Park & St Albert"
This is suppose to be a description of your business or a message from the owner and it's just filled with keywords. Google is very good at identifying and penalizing these practices.
Improve your content, build quality links = improve your SEO.
Good luck
Mike
-
I've asked our local expert to step in, but my first couple of comments are this:
Home page is way overstuffed for Edmonton. The text isn't very natural, and there are a bunch of keywords at the bottom.
Second comment is I can't tell what is your address. The footer has one address, but the about page has a different address (even the internet address), and then when I search your phone number on Google, I see yet a different suite number and address. Consistent, accurate citations are real important in local search.
-
Hi Chris,
Brad makes an excellent point re regular organic rankings. RE local listings, assuming you've verified and done all the standard on page work to your Local page, it's time to start building citations. These are Name Address & Telephone references. The more places Google sees you're address the more likely you are to rank in local listings.
Here is an awesome resource for finding places to get citations...
http://searchengineland.com/top-50-citation-sources-for-uk-us-local-businesses-104938
Hope that helps.
Iain - Reload
-
Hi Chris,
Your on site optimisation seems pretty good. However, when I ran your site through OSE and looked at the number of domains linking to your site, well you'll see the issue:
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.canadafloraldelivery.com%2F
You need to work on building more links. 47 overall linking domains isn't that many, I'd try and build that number up.
Thanks
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
-
Google not giving ranking to the intended page of my website.
Hello friends, This is my very first question, I hope I will explain my issue correctly. I have created two pages related to SSC CGL keyword on my website: https://www.ibtindia.com/ssc-cgl-notification-exam-date 2) https://www.ibtindia.com/ssc-cgl-apply-online I want to target the keyword SSC CGL Apply Online on the 2nd URL but Google is only considering the 1st page for all the "apply" related keywords as well. Can anyone suggest to me how to get the second page in rankings for its intended keywords? I will be very thankful for this help. I tried adding image but its showing dummy. Please you can check it op GOOGLE SERP Second page
Search Behavior | | namitathakur0 -
In a pickle. SEO for Personal Brand, Book or Keywords?
I'm getting ready to take on a new client for SEO, but she is having a hard time understanding I'd like to rank her for "Her" and her new book, rather than keywords for her ambiguous keywords which show very little to no search volume from Keyword Planner data. Her website and domain name are only 4 months old Her book launches sometime in December (most likely January 2016) Her services (she's a consultant) provide little keyword volume She is persuaded she needs to rank for her service keywords I feel strongly we need to get her name, her method/approach and her book optimized She is seemingly difficult to work with, but once I build trust in SEO for her, so will be a great, long client Her consulting services are based on Change and Transition for wealthy individuals going through career change, divorce, pay increase, pay decrease, depression, children, etc... targeting Executives, C-Level Execs In this situation, what would you all do? How would this website or person even be optimized? Blog articles? Press releases? Guest blogging? Video blogs? Podcasts? It's a tricky one and hoping the Moz community can lend some ideas as this type of SEO would be new for me, yet I'm up for the challenge! Thank you in advance and look forward to your replies! - Patrick
Search Behavior | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
How to capture leads from website?
Hi, We have a contact and a registration form on our website to capture leads/enquiries. However, I have come across many websites who give away many resources for free i.e. without asking for any user details. In this case, how do they track or capture the data of people coming to their website and interacting with the content? There are other methods we well like CTAs, pop-up on exit intent etc., but these are different to what I have asked above. Regards
Search Behavior | | IM_Learner0 -
Wouldn't it be great to add a visitor intent field in a keyword study ?
Hello everybody, With hummingbird update i think i understand that two pages like exclusive dating website chic dating services which could have been targeted on 2 different pages can now be targeted in a single one.
Search Behavior | | Sindicic_Alexis
In the end google is asking "Well... isn't an "exclusive" dating website the.. same as a "chic" one ? isn't it the same visitor intent which is triggered ? ". I'm building a new keyword study for one of my websites and i'm trying to be more in the "intent" point of view than in the "keyword" one. I've added a new column to my study which includes transactional / navigational and informational dropdown. I think this information is great but i feel that something is missing... I wonder if we could include a column which describes the real visitor intent in the form of a "user story"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story for example : As a visitor i want to land on a page that proves that the company is only working with "exclusive" people.
-> We could optimise this page for all the "exclusive" "chic" "fancy" "elegant" "elite" keywords. Just a thought, i'd be really interested in knowing your point of view. Thanks a lot for your answers 🙂0 -
Higher rankings, low traffic
Hello There, My question is the following: How come my rankings are much higher than when I started with the optimization process (1 year ago) but my organic traffic is lower compared to the previous year (it didn't increase at all)? NB - I haven’t received any penalization and the keywords I am targeting are definitively searched and are the most important for my company. Thanks a lot 🙂
Search Behavior | | Midleton0 -
When auditing a website, when do you decide to delete pages?
Given that the Panda algorithm includes engagement and user experience, when would you consider deleting a page that has poor engagement and conversion metrics? For example, consider a page that ranks well organically and receives (relatively) decent traffic from search. However, this page has poor engagement metrics compared to other pages on the site, does not convert visitors as well as other pages on the site, and doesn't have any external links. Would you consider deleting this page? Which metrics do you use when auditing a site and considering a web page from removal (bounce rate, average time on site, pages per visit, linking root domains, visits, revenue per visit, etc.)? Are some metrics weighed more than others? What kind of thresholds do you use? Finally, is there a situation when you would choose NOT to delete pages, even considering the above?
Search Behavior | | SAMarketing0 -
Keywords separated location names in footer
We have a US based website, most of the traffic come from search engines mainly Google. We have comma separated location names of all popular places / U.S states where our products are popular (about 80 comma separated location names on footer of the website). Means, these 80 (comma separated) keywords appear on all 900 pages of the website. Does these footer (comma separated) location names will prove to be comma separated keywords OR keywords stuffing on each page of website ? The reason we need these location names is because each product page is having traffic from keywords having location names in them. For example: "product1" in chicago "product1" new york "product2" IL "product3" california "product3" georgia and a lot more Location based keywords are bringing in about 20% of the traffic. Please suggest any good solution to this problem. Thanks !!!
Search Behavior | | ZQBT0 -
Spam like visits to website
I am having a problem where I'm getting an enormous amount of unique visitors that bounce from a small area in Oregon even though we never market there. It appears to be some type of ping. It messes up our tracking and inflates the bounce rate. Is there a way to block this? I'm OK with any type of block because our reach is statewide in Florida. ANy feedback?
Search Behavior | | marksierra0