First Website
-
Hi Everyone,
I have just published my first website and was wondering if anybody would like to help me with some hints and tips. This is my first time branching into SEO and could really do with some help. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
The site address is www.theremovalistsguide.com.au which targets the furniture removal industry in Australia.
Thanks for your help.
-
Thank you for your feedback Peter
-
Hi Rob,
I'm not sure any SEO tactic can be described as the best approach. It's really more about following through on a number of elements that all focus attention on a particular web page and your site as a whole being better optimised to be found and indexed by search engines for the customers you are targeting.
That said, it is true that building backlinks to your website is still an important ranking factor in SEO, but then before you do that you need to be sure you are targeting the correct keywords for the pages on your site.
Probably a good way to start doing that is to perform analysis on the websites of your competitors and look at what keywords they are targeting and where they are drawing backlinks from. You can do that using Moz's Open Site Explorer tool. By putting in each of your competitors' websites into that you will see where they are receiving links from (so with some location you can grow some too) and what anchor text they are using which is often an indicator of the keywords they are targeting.
But on all of the above, try to keep in mind that you are optimising your website for your target customers and not search engines. A search engine is just acting as a broker in your relationship with your customer. Try to understand the mind of your customer and what they will be searching for and then check to see how competitive some other keywords may be and what search volumes are available for them.
I hope that helps,
Peter -
Thank you for that Peter, i'll make those changes. The more l read up on SEO,the more l hear that followed links are the best approach to ranking higher in the SERP's. Can you give me any advice on the best approach for this?
Thanks again for the response.
-
Thank you for that.
-
Hi Rob
Congratulations on publishing your first website.
First comment is the site looks very clean and its navigation is very clear. Whilst content is very important for a website, the look and feel of the site needs to engage you to browse and read, which I think your site does. That is an important aspect of SEO because the more people browse and read your site the more Google will take notice and it will help to grow the authority of your website.
In terms of other optimisation of the site, you need to do it systematically and incrementally rather than take a scatter gun approach. A planned approach to what you do will help you to grow your understanding of SEO. The Moz tools are excellent for helping you do that, plus I recommend you read Moz's Beginner's Guide to SEO which will give good foundations to your learning.
One thing I would look at changing on your site is how you have structured your Title tags. All of your pages start with your site name: "The Removalists Guide" rather than what the page is about. I would reverse the order so, for example, on the Costs page the title is something like, "How much will it cost to move home? - The Removalists Guide".
Having the main words at the start helps both people and search engines to better understand what the page is about. In deciding on a Title of what the page is about, I would try to get inside the head of the person searching and what they are looking for or the question they are asking. Hence my wording for your costs page of "How much will it cost to move home?" rather than "How much will my move cost?" You need to include the word "Home" as it is important to what your whole website is about.
Similarly, with your home page, make the Title something like, "Helping you choose the right removal company" rather than "Helping you choose the right company" - the right company for what? Whilst I understand your site is about "removalists", and that is fine as your brand name, it's not a word understood necessarily by your potential customers - at least not in my part of the world (UK) it wouldn't be.
So, I hope that gives you a good starter. I am sure you will receive some great tips from others.
All the best to you,
Peter -
Just a couple of minor things I noticed right away that often seem to come up with brand new sites - Your logo and Home link on the top bar.
The logo directs to http://www.theremovalistsguide.com.au/#, and the Home link directs to http://www.theremovalistsguide.com.au/index.html. However, your homepage is simply http://www.theremovalistsguide.com.au
This is basically 3 different versions of your homepage, which you definitely don't want. In Google Analytics, you'll eventually see traffic going through all 3 of these, which you don't want since you're splitting up page authority among all of them.
Start by linking your logo and the home button to http://www.theremovalistsguide.com.au and 301 redirect the /# and /index.html pages there too. The pictures on the left hand side also direct to the /# domain, though I imagine you'll be changing that to a different page soon anyway.
Hope that helped!
-
Rob:
If you haven't done this yet, research the keywords for your business. Make sure you use these keywords in a natural way on the pages of your website. For each page, put your main keyword in the title tag, url and H1 tag. Depending on the website platform you are using, you should be able to do this fairly easy. Make sure that you have keyword specific alt tags on all your images. Get your website listed with all the online local listing directories, especially Google places. Set up Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and Tumblr pages. Work with industry related websites to mention (citations) your business and website.
Keep in mind that all your content on your web pages and social channels need to be engaging and natural. With the launch of hummingbird, it appears that Google is looking more for themed and topic-based web pages, so give the users what you think they are looking for.
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
-
Conundrum with brand new website keywords...
I'm working with on a website for an app called BetterRX. There's a prescription card called BetterRX Card. Our domain is Better RX.com and the card is BetterRXCard.com. "Better RX" as a brand search is dominated by prescription discount cards, with Good RX being the most dominant. Any suggestions on how to go about mixing optimization for brand as well as the app?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sickle3110 -
GWT - Links to website - Are they accurate
Hi I am looking at GWT more and more and I starting not to believe the information within it. For example we had a link on XYZ.com say 6 months ago. This link as been removed no reference to our website, however it still showing on GWT inbound links. I have noticed quite a few sites which have no relevance to our site. Is anyone else finding the information wrong in WMT
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Is CDN Good For International Website?
Hello - Which solution is better For International Website: 1) using a CDN, or 2) using some VPS's in each location?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vahid-af0 -
Website (.BE) showing up in .NL SERPS
Fellow mozzers, we need your help We have a situation where a customer has two websites for each country: flowtracksurf.be → Belgium flowtracksurf.nl → Netherlands They used to have very good keyword rankings in the SERPS in BE & NL. Flowtracksurf.nl had good rankings in Google.nl and Flowtracksurf.be in Google.be.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jacobe
Recently there has been a change: Flowtracksurf.nl is not showing up in Google.nl anymore. It also seems that all the rankings from flowtracksurf.nl have been switched to flowtracksurf.be. .BE is doing very well, .NL is suffering. Data shows us that .NL : In the first two weeks of december 2014, we see a massive drop in traffic (GA) In that same week(s) we see a drop in search queries (Webmaster Tools) We see the exact opposite in .BE (growing strong in those weeks) When we look at the cache of flowtracksurf.nl we see only reference to flowtracksurf.be. Is that a hint of what was going on? On the same date that we see a massive drop in traffic on .NL, we see a peak in 'indexation' of .BE We see that the MOZ pages crawled dropped in that same week for NL We're also seeing that all the traffic from Google.nl is now going to flowtracksurf.be. Some keywords we were scoring #1-2 for are: surfvakanties, surfvakantie, surfcamp mimizan, surfcamp, frankrijk, surfcamp spanje, surfen frankrijk We just can't figure out the hard evidence in the data.
Can you help us on that?0 -
Construction website
Hi, I have a construction website that is aimed at tradesmen. There are 2 goals of the site: 1. To allow potential customers to sign up for a trade account. 2. To allow existing customers to access to products and login to their account to make an order. The site is full of categories and products which should be indexed so we rank for these trade products. The homepage redesign is where i am having an issue: Currently the site is set up like a standard retail site but without prices, which are viewable only when logged in. The homepage is designed such that there is several call to actions about promotions, services and to apply for a trade account, that apply to both existing and potential customers. At the moment there is a poor conversion to get potential customers to apply for a trade account. This is because there is too much distraction away from this goal and they are allowed to engage other areas of the site freely. The main purpose of the homepage should be to encourage potential customers to sign up. The secondary purpose to for existing customers to access the accounts and products. I believe potential customers should not be exposed to the categories and products as it is a distraction from the primary goal. Potential customers, i.e. Tradesmen, would already have a certain understanding of the types of products we provide, so I don't feel it is necessary to allow them to crawl the rest of the site unless they have an account. What are your thoughts on that? Here is my lack of understanding: On the homepage, if I restrict access to categories and products to existing account holders only, where a login is required to proceed, would that mean Google cannot access these pages to index them? Or is this only controlled by NoFollows & Robots.txt? Obviously not indexing is undesirable. I do understand potential customers will need some information about our range of products but the idea is to coerce them to sign up for an account so they can see this information. The more information that is provided to a potential customer, the higher the probability a person can make a decision against applying for an account. Restricting access creates a motivator to reveal information and we capture their data to converse with them personally. This increases the probability of us being able to retain their interest by providing a customised service based on their needs. All of this I feel makes perfect sense to me, the only query/obstacle I have is the indexing of the site. If Google cannot index pages that are restricted by account access, then I would like suggestions to solve/compromise/optimise the above. Just to address the desired behaviour of index pages. If in search a our product page appears, the person clicking the link would either be redirected or exposed to a login or sign up screen to view. Thank you so much for your help. Antonio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AVSFencingSupplies0 -
It's a good idea to have a directory on your website?
Currently I have a directory on a sub domain but Google apparently sees it as part of my main domain so all outgoing links may be affecting my rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Valarlf0 -
New Website Launch - Traffic Way Down
We launched a new website in June. Traffic plummeted after the launch, we crept back up for a couple of months, but now we are flat, nowhere near our pre-launch traffic or previous year's traffic. For the past 6 months our analytics have been worrying us - Overall traffic and new visitor traffic is down over 10%, bounce rate is up almost 35% since site launched, keywords aren't ranking where they used to, and of course, web sales are down. Is this supposed to happen when a new site is launched, and how long does a new this transition last? We have done all the technical audits, adding relevant content, we're at a loss. Any suggestions where to look next to improve traffic to pre-launch numbers?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WaySEO0 -
What are the SEO ramifications to forwarding your website to Facebook?
I have a client who wants to forward their website traffic to a campaign on Facebook for two week. I think it's a horrible idea on so many levels, but need a solid reason why. My gut says that their Google rankings will suffer, but I can't find any research/articles that state such. Help?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Axis410