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-aYou 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
-
Does Plus Sign "+" in url affect SEO and Ranking?
there are customized pages on the client's site, they contain brand pages related to Samsung, iPhone, ZTE, LG, Motorola, and HTC Mobile phones.
On-Page Optimization | | dietsuave
For Example:
https://www.unlockninja.com/unlock-apple+phone
https://www.unlockninja.com/unlock-zte+phone
https://www.unlockninja.com/unlock-samsung+phone
Should I recommend them to change the URL structure. ?0 -
Ranking more than one page.
Our travel website has a number of different places listed. The layout of each place is the same as the next. On place ranks on page 1 for its keywords where as others do not. Is there a tool of some description that may identify why this is.
On-Page Optimization | | twiguins0 -
Ranking at 2 and 3 for a Desired Keyword - But Missing #1
I have a keyword I usually rank #1 for "Maui Beach Wedding" that I am now ranking 2 and 3 for with two separate pages below: My home page: https://simplemauiwedding.net and the below internal page I am linking from my home page that I really want that term to rank for. https://simplemauiwedding.net/beach-wedding-packages What is the best way to pass the authority from one to another for this particular keyword. I want this URL https://simplemauiwedding.net/beach-wedding-packages to rank for the term, not my home page which has a link pointing to this page from my home page which I was hoping would point the authority to it for the term. What are some other ways to signal which page I prefer Google to pick up for the keyword I want to rank for? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | photoseo10 -
So I know my website needs work, how do I go about fixing it now and improve my ranks?
I thought at first it was going to be as simple as adding a few keywords here or there. But apparently not. I see where I messed up in the errors, warnings, and notices. How do I go about fixing them?
On-Page Optimization | | taychatha0 -
How is this page ranking?
Hi. A client of mine is being outranked by a competitor whose landing page does not include the keyword within their page content AT ALL. Nor does their URL. Nor do any image alts. And their page title features the keyword in the middle of it, not at the start. Their link profile is not great with directories and the like. They are not socially active.. I am confused! I thought content on a page absolutely had to include the keyword to get ranked for it. Here's the page: www.springsoft.ie, keyword is "water softeners" Any thoughts I would appreciate. Many thanks.Christoffa
On-Page Optimization | | Christoffa0 -
Entire subfolder not ranking.
I'm currently running an ecommerce site on which an entire subfolder namely the: /category/ extension is not ranking for any keywords.The category pages are being indexed within Google. Pages with very similar content are however being ranked for keywords on extensions such as /pages/, I created a new page to test this and within a week it was ranking for the keywords where /category/ pages have not for months. I was wondering if anyone had come across this issue before and had any solutions or suggestions? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | JMoran0 -
Exstinguishing Page Rank?
Hi Guys, Here is a thought. Google gives more weight to links in content, less to navigation etc.. Therefore if they say give 50% of a pages rank to a link within content and 50% to the the other elements. What happens to the total pagerank from a page if you have not utilized in page content links? (is it lost) If this is the case, and you have a site that does not use content links on every page, are you loosing value (and hard earned) pagerank. Google did mention sometime back about pagerank being exstinguished with the nofollow tag. I would be interested to hear what others think? Cheers Scott
On-Page Optimization | | Jurnii0 -
Is ranking hurt by slow moving product
I sell B2B industrial products. I have 300 products on the site. Some products are seldom purchased and the brand name is not significant for these products If the title page is the right wording and length, and there is a valid product widget -1-1-1 but nobody has bought one in 5 years due to it being a niche product, but they could and it's a profitable sale. Question: Is** overall site rankin**g **being hurt **by valid content ( Description, Part # and Price and it can be checked out in the cart), but is is never/seldom searched for.?
On-Page Optimization | | Wales0