Site not progressing at all....
-
We relaunched our site almost a year ago after our old site dropped out of ranking due to what we think was overused anchor text....
We transferred over the content to the new site, but started fresh in terms of links etc. And did not redirect the old site. Since the launch we have focused on producing good content and social, but the site has made no progress at all. The only factor I can think off is that one site linked to us from all of their pages, which we asked them to remove which they did over 3 months ago, but still showing in Webmaster tools....
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
-
Hi Jason,
Thanks for writing in. Without going into a full site audit (which could take hours-days) a few areas I might take a closer look at:
-
As others have mentioned, the site design does have an outdated feel. Beyond user experience it looks like a site that might be vulnerable to Panda updates. Relentlessly improving user experience will likely lead to an increase in rankings.
-
Is the new site a copy of the old? Just wondering if any duplicate content exist out there from the old site. If you, you probably want to make sure to remove all old content from Google's index.
-
I'd give the site a full link audit. You can do this by hand using Google Webmaster Tools and Open Site Explorer. Lately, I've been using Link Detox with good results. Disavow any dodgy links you can't remove.
Overall your link profile looks decent for your vertical, nothing too penalty worthy but some of the directory-style links may be suspect (or at least lower in value) in Google's eyes.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
-
Nope, webmaster is all good.
-
Thanks Jesse, we are in-fact just undertaking a new design, as like you we felt it was a little difficult to understand all the info. We'll address the alt tag issues as part of the redesign.
Do you think that is what is causing the lack of serps?
-
Couple pointers to increase your onsite SEO:
Alt tags - I see very few alt and title tags on your images and when I do see them they don't seem to be attacking specific keywords. Do so but not in a forced manner, keep it organic and relevant. For example your home page is title "Mobility Aids" yet that keyword only exists 5 times on the page and zero times in images titles or alts.
Also with your images you might want to consider naming the actual file something other than padlock2.png or things like this... That is a personal preference and I can't really back it up with data but I swear it'll help.
Your blog is a bit funky. The titles of the most recent articles are simply chapter numbers and tell me nothing about the content. It makes me not want to read them at all. You need to try and attract users with your content, not deter them.
Another article I randomly clicked was something about an Interview you did. This was the entirety of the article:
"Just got back from interviewing a mobility scooter user for tips and advice... Is there a better way to get advice than from someone who owns and uses a scooter. Probably not. Finished video coming soon."
That's it. It was posted in August. See right away as a user I feel like you aren't trying and don't want to return. I bet your bounce rate is rather high and length of visit rather low. These factors matter for sure. Engagement is arguably the most important thing when it comes to your design.
Speaking of design, it is kind of all over the place. I didn't really understand the layout and had trouble navigating. I looked for the blog which was found via a weird button at the very bottom of a very long wordy home page with weird formatting. At the top of the home page is a "usefull articles" button which goes to a page with a few titles that are underlined and say "read more" and then more links pop up and it doesn't even look like you can click the "read more" part because it's not actually a link but instead a clickable div and my run-on sentence here is an attempt to illustrate the confusion I experienced. Whew.
So I guess what I'm saying is you should focus more on improving the design, layout, and usability of your site. Please don't misconstrue my comments as demeaning or poking fun at your site. It isn't terrible at all. I just think addressing the issues I've pointed out might actually go a long way to improving your ranking. The social stats are great but if users land on your site and leave immediately due to poor UX then it's all for not.
Hope this helps. Don't give up!
-
Hi Jason
Well I have run a few checks and I must admit I cannot explain why your site is not ranking in the top 50 SERPs for some of the key phrases you are targeting. Some of the content is a bit thin in places but, I have checked quite a few pages I would have thought you should be in the top 50 for as a minimum and you are not.
So, like you I am scratching my head a little. I presume you have a Google Webmaster Tools account for this site. Is there anything reported in there that would indicate an issue?
Peter
-
The sites has made no progress in ranking.....
Our social consist of Google plus (97), facebook (2600 likes) and twitter 500 plus followers with which often retweet our posts. The content is user focused, and try to answer questions with in depth articles. Our site www.help-my-mobility.org if that helps.
-
Hi Jason
Are you able to give more information? What do you mean specifically by your "site not progressing at all"?
A lot has changed with Google over the last year. If you started with a new site, then that site needs to build up its authority. When you say you have focussed on producing good content and social that is good. But it's important to check if you have optimised that content correctly, is it customer-focused and targeted at the questions and information your target market are asking and looking for. With social are those you are engaging with sharing it through likes, tweets/retweets, +1s etc? Have you checked your site against competitors? How do they compare?
There's a lot of things to look at and check so with what you have said I can only give you ideas about where the issues may lay, but it's likely to be an issue with one or more of the above.
Peter
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
-
Indexed Pages Different when I perform a "site:Google.com" site search - why?
My client has an ecommerce website with approx. 300,000 URLs (a lot of these are parameters blocked by the spiders thru meta robots tag). There are 9,000 "true" URLs being submitted to Google Search Console, Google says they are indexing 8,000 of them. Here's the weird part - When I do a "site:website" function search in Google, it says Google is indexing 2.2 million pages on the URL, but I am unable to view past page 14 of the SERPs. It just stops showing results and I don't even get a "the next results are duplicate results" message." What is happening? Why does Google say they are indexing 2.2 million URLs, but then won't show me more than 140 pages they are indexing? Thank you so much for your help, I tried looking for the answer and I know this is the best place to ask!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | accpar0 -
How much SEO damage would it do having a subdomain site rather directory site?
Hi all! With a coleague we were arguing about what is better: Having a subdomain or a directory.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gaston Riera
Let me explain some more, this is about the cases: Having a multi-language site: Where en.domain.com or es.domain.com rather than domain.com/en/ or domain.com/es/ Having a Mobile and desktop version: m.domain.com or domain.com rather than domain.com/m or just domain.com. Having multiple location websites, you might figure. The dicussion started with me saying: Its better to have a directory site.
And my coleague said: Its better to have a subdomain site. Some of the reasons that he said is that big companies (such as wordpress) are doing that. And that's better for the business.
My reasons are fully based on this post from Rand Fishkin: Subdomains vs. Subfolders, Rel Canonical vs. 301, and How to Structure Links for SEO - Whiteboard Friday So, what does the community have to say about this?
Who should win this argue? GR.0 -
Seo for international sites
Hello, I have a question for the group, our main US site- http://www.datacard.com is utilized to move content to other regional sites like http://www.datacard.co.uk/ and http://www.datacard.fr/ and http://www.datacard.com.br/. Anyhow, we essentially have some regional content on those sites, but for ease of maintaining and updating the content we have a company translate this for us and then undergo an in country review for local people in our company to review the content. That being said the meta descriptions, titles, code, everything gets translated to that language. I know there are issue for SEO for these purposes as we get much better rankings with http://www.datacard.com. The regional sites are newer so this could be part of it. We don't have an agency helping us with SEo and i get a lot of questions on what can be done internally for this for regional sites with our current structure. Any tips you have? It would be greatly appreciated! Laura
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lauramrobinson320 -
Is it Wortwhile to have a HTML site map for a Large Site
We are a large, enterprise site with many pages (some on our CMS and some old pages that exist outside our CMS). Every month we submit various an XML site map. Some pages on our site can no longer be found via following links from one page to another (orphan pages). Some of those pages are important and some not. Is it worth our while to create a HTML site map? Does any one have any recent stats or blog posts to share, showing how a HTML site map may have benefited a large site. Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CeeC-Blogger0 -
Disavowing Links for Subcategory of Site
Has anyone tried using Google's Disavow tool with only a specific subcategory of their site? We're an ecommerce company and our site took a small hit with this recent Penguin update. We're certain previous linkbuilding efforts are the cause. But we'd like to try the Disavow tool with 1 subcategory to start, see if our rankings for that category improve (we used to be top 3, now ~12 or 13), and if so then roll it out through the rest of the site. Looking for input from others on if they have any experience with this or if it'd be better to just go for the whole thing at once. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
Our quilting site was hit by Panda/Penguin...should we start a second "traffic" site?
I built a website for my wife who is a quilter called LearnHowToMakeQuilts.com. However, it has been hit by Panda or Penguin (I’m not quite sure) and am scared to tell her to go ahead and keep building the site up. She really wants to post on her blog on Learnhowtomakequilts.com, but I’m afraid it will be in vain for Google’s search engine. Yahoo and Bing still rank well. I don’t want her to produce good content that will never rank well if the whole site is penalized in some way. I’ve overly optimized in linking strongly to the keywords “how to make a quilt” for our main keyword, mainly to the home page and I think that is one of the main reasons we are incurring some kind of penalty. First main question: From looking at the attached Google Analytics image, does anyone know if it was Panda or Penguin that we were “hit” by? And, what can be done about it? (We originally wanted to build a nice content website, but were lured in by a get rich quick personality to rather make a “squeeze page” for the Home page and force all your people through that page to get to the really good content. Thus, our avenge time on site per person is terrible and Pages per Visit is low at: 1.2. We really want to try to improve it some day. She has a local business website, Customcarequilts.com that did not get hit. Second question: Should we start a second site rather than invest the time in trying to repair the damage from my bad link building and article marketing? We do need to keep the site up and running because it has her online quilting course for beginner quilters to learn how to quilt their first quilt. We host the videos through Amazon S3 and were selling at least one course every other day. But now that the Google drop has hit, we are lucky to sell one quilting course per month. So, if we start a second site we can use that to build as a big content site that we can use to introduce people to learnhowtomakequilts.com that has Martha’s quilting course. So, should we go ahead and start a new fresh site rather than to repair the damage done by my bad over optimizing? (We’ve already picked out a great website name that would work really well with her personal facebook page.) Or, here’s a second option, which is to use her local business website: customcarequilts.com. She created it in 2003 and has had it ever since. It is only PR 1. Would this be an option? Anyway I’m looking for guidance on whether we should pursue repairing the damage and whether we should start a second fresh site or use an existing site to create new content (for getting new quilters to eventually purchase her course). Brad & Martha Novacek rnUXcWd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BradNovi0 -
Because Goolge chose this link to my site?
I'm better ranked in Google for that link (http://www.vipgoldrj.com/paginas/ensaios.html) and not in (http://www.vipgoldrj.com/), you know you explain why? In all keywords, except that (luxury escorts in Rio de Janeiro) Sorry my english, I'm from Brazil and I'm using Google translator.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebMaster0210 -
Redirection to mobile site
Calling all SEO ninjas! I'm currently developing single web pages for various clients which function as abbreviated versions of their main websites. They are all related & under a single domain. When a user visits these pages on a mobile device, CSS is used to display mobile friendly versions of these pages. My clients are thrilled with these mobile versions and now want to also redirect mobile visitors from their main site (which is not mobile optimised) to these pages. My questions are: Are there any negative implications if we did this? ie. redirecting to a different domain What is the best method for redirection? eg. JavaScript Can this be achieved by adding a single line of code to their main site Can this be done in an SEO friendly way so that the redirection acts like a backlink? Many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | martyc0