Newbie... tips for where to start?
-
Hi! I have been attempting to make my business website good for quite some time (5+ years). I was doing my own SEO and do have 1st page ranks... but toward the bottom. I pay a lot for Google Adwords and would like better organic ranking. I hired an SEO and haven't seen much improvement. I think I need to take it back over. I am very overwhelmed. Can anyone point me to where to start? I don't have a large budget, so hiring an expensive SEO is out of the question. Plus, I am scared to use someone that may do more harm than good in attempt to use sleezy techniques to get good short-term rankings.
I'd like to add that I have read Google's webmaster guide and have done every.single.thing recommended. I have a facebook page, blog, google+ page, twitter, pinterest, instagram, and linkedin account. I use sprout social to post to all of these at once. I have competitors that don't pay attention to SEO and have never hired one that outrank me. I have keyword focused pages, and I have looked at keywords as a percentage of over all text. I have all my headers setup according to moz. Its been 6 months and I have actually lost a little rank.. not gained.
-
Thank you for your response!
I have done a lot of directory focused links (yp, yelp, citysearch, ect). (I know, not the best). I have also done a lot of local directory websites. I do feel like I need a good strategy to get good quality links.
My SEO has done press releases, but I'm not sure where or with what content.
According to Open Site Explorer, I have PageAuthority of 40, MozRank of 4.58, MozTrust of 5.75, 98% equity-passing links. The metrics are better than my competitors, but yet, they still outrank me.
My husband is the "face" of the business. His blog is new, but he's a great story teller. We have been getting great reach on facebook with his stories. How do I get them posted elsewhere? If we start posting on forums, will that help?
My niche is deep sea fishing charters. My target audience consists of tourists looking to book a fishing trip. My husbands blog is about stories of interesting trips or people he has encountered along the way.
-
Are you building links to authority sites in your niche? Spreading any content outside of your blog and your Sprout Social auto posting?
Need more info into what you are currently doing off page and what niche your in before I can craft any ideas.
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
-
How to get images to rank higher, with some new tips?
Hello, Can anybody give any other advice for image optimization except keyword use in file name and alt tag, which would effect the item to be ranking higher on google images, I have searched google on this, but did not find any reallyuseful tips other than those mentioned above... Should I mention my main keywords that I try to rank in as many image files and different pages as possible, but without stuffing and relevant to the content? Thanks a lot
Image & Video Optimization | | bidilover0 -
SEO And Images: 2014 Tips
What is a good "image" strategy? All I really know is to make sure to use images that you create yourself and/or images that are approved for free commercial use and add alt tags. Right now, just making sure all our pages have images and updating some of the lower quality ones would surely help us, but I'm hoping someone can add a little detail into how best to use images for seo, conversions and how to avoid slowing our site way down by adding more (we do have the smushit plugin which helps some). Thanks, Ruben Our site is www.kempruge.com
Image & Video Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Tips for improving google places page
link here When I started working on this page he had multiple incorrect listings. I removed the incorrect ones and created this page. It has been confirmed via postcard and up for several months now. I have the profile filled out to 100% completion. Yet it does not show up very high in local map results. A ton of the business that do show up higher have profiles that are incomplete. Many of them show their address when they do not serve customers at their location. So it is a bit aggravating. Any suggestions to make this profile rank higher? I have been creating more citations through whitespark and working on the actual site itself.
Image & Video Optimization | | Atomicx0 -
A lot of local SEO questions from a newbie...
I've been doing basic SEO for customers for quite awhile now in terms of on-page stuff, but am starting to move into the arena of local SEO services and had a few questions that I hoped you guys could help with. 1. What services besides Google+ Local do you list customers websites in, such as Yahoo or Bing Local? 2. When creating accounts at the services listed question #1, do you have to verify the phone number that's listed with the business owner or is there any extra type of verification needed? How do you deal with getting all that verified for the company? 3. Do you create all these listings at Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. from the same account? 4. Does anyone know of a list of the top 50 places to get local citations such as Yelp or YellowPages? 5. When creating citations do you normally have to verify the phone number or address that you list and how do you deal with that with business owners? 6. Do you use the same accounts to create all the local citations or are different ones required for each listing? 7. What companies would you recommend that handle all the above for you, such as a setting up accounts at Google, Yahoo, and Bing - and then also creating around 50 citations for you? Of course all the login information would also need to be provided for everything they create. Thanks for taking the time to read this post, I look forward to hearing back from all of you!
Image & Video Optimization | | ChaseCameron0 -
Any tips for optimising for Local Search/Google Places
I have a client that used to come up on Google Places consistently for some very competitive keywords - when they ranked quite low for them through their normal website - places would see them above all the organic results in normally number 2 position - whereas they would rank between 16 - 26 normally We have optimised the site and have 'A' grade keywords for the ones we are interested in google placing for and just recently we are out of it all together, even though we have improved their optimisation for that word with SEO Someone said that their phone number on the website had to match perfectly with google places and so does their address. Is this true? Is there anything else that will help them keep their position in places ? ie. setting up a Google + page etc., Any advise would be appreciated thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | intermingle0 -
Videos not displaying within YouTube search results (query starting with '@' symbol)
We recently uploaded a video to YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah0CgZ22NNU) only to realize that it wasn't being displayed within YouTube's internal search results when searched for by the brand name. Our partner's brand name is @WashULaw. If you were to search for @WashULaw on YouTube, you'll notice it returns a 'No Search Results' page (http://screencast.com/t/ZP3SGM5sr). However, when you search for keywords without the @ symbol (i.e. washulaw, wash u law, etc) within YouTube, our video is discovered. However, if you enter the @ symbol within their search bar and choose one of the auto-suggest keywords, you'll notice the query returns video matches (http://screencast.com/t/wkghMhRY). Looking at the view counts of these videos, they appear to be over 100K each. Our video has been indexed by YouTube (http://screencast.com/t/6xV3kW2DHQ6R) and Google (http://screencast.com/t/r4jloA0BpPf). We've even added @WashuLaw as a tag. My question, does anyone have an idea as to why our video isn't displaying when someone searches for our brand @WashULaw with the @ symbol within YouTube's search? ZP3SGM5sr
Image & Video Optimization | | 2uinc0 -
Tips for local link building?
Hello Mozzers, Working on a site that has locations around the country and is targeting words like "city name+long tail keyword". They're fairly well optimized on-site, so we're working on recommending localized content but could use some advice for link building. Beyond Google places, what have you guys seen that works?
Image & Video Optimization | | RiseSEO0