Why isnt this site ranking?
-
I just took over for a site and noticed they have no presence for any keywords...not even low ranks.
Their backlink profile is not the best, but webmaster tools says they have no manual actions.
Thoughts on the matter?
-
Moz shows many of my other clients with local keywords like that. I see vonderhaar in the map listings but not organic results
-
It doesn't look like moz counts local results, but I still have moz pulling http://www.vonderhaar.com/ at 33rd for "Cincinatti Fireplace Cleaning" with http://www.vonderhaar.com/mantels.php.
-
Moz rank tracker shows both not being in the top 50
-
I'm seeing them on the first page for both "Cincinnati chimney repair" and "Cincinnati chimney cleaning" which appear to be your 2 main keywords. These are both showing in the local pack.
-
The blog was hacked yesterday. All of those blog posts were up for less than an hour and promptly deleted. So I highly doubt they had any impact on the rank.
I 100% agree that this site is ugly and not well formatted. But the client is unwilling to change that or pay for a design. So we have to try to build a house on a bad foundation to begin.
Most pages have header tags
And while I see all of these things as issues, I am more concerned with why the site would rank and then suddenly disappear entirely. Backlinks are obviously a big thing, but it is a small local niche site where I can say that a large portion of the companies also do not have backlinks or even an seo company helping.
The site gets "A" grades on their moz on page reports for keyword targeting so I feel they should at least be somewhere to be found.
-
Here are a few items:
http://www.vonderhaar.com/blog/vlgbx32493/ << today's date
http://www.vonderhaar.com/blog/o8c6b1bf0f/
http://www.vonderhaar.com/blog/010zdvi4r6/
I'm guessing the site had the wrong permissions, and someone was ablt to get into it.Tons of links to beuy oreos and Jordan shoes. Many of these pages have a lot of unnatural links to questionable sites with exact anchor text.
Could be they dont have a manual action yet, but I wouldn't leave it this way. Check the folder that these posts are coming from, and delete it if possible. Set new permissions of 0644 and for coding files 0444 if it will still allow the site to load. Sometimes a 444 is too strict, and will not allow a user to access the site, depending upon your file setup.
Another thing I noticed is that none of the pages that arent spam are optimized well. Take the homepage for example:
Vonderhaar's offers chimney cleaning and fireplace repair for your home. If you're in the Cincinnati area and need masonry work, call us today!
vs a competitor's description:
American Chimney and Masonry offers chimney sweeping and chimney repair services to the greater Cincinnati Ohio area for over 30 years. A+ Rating by the BBB and over 85,000 customers
Bit more organized, a bit more direct.
Compare this site to a competitor. The site you are managing doesnt have any compelling reasons for a user to contact them:
http://www.vonderhaar.com/
http://amchimney.com/ <<< number 1 organically
http://www.karlmattesco.com/chimney_installation.html <<< number 3 organicallyI used to work at a company that stated that the design of the site had nothing to do with how many leads the client got. I dont work there anymore.
Backlinks are also a large contributor to a site's ranking. If you say it has a poor or non-existant backlink profile, could be a large reason of why it doesn't rank.
NO HEADER TAGS:
seo-browser reportThis is how search engines see your site. Lack of header tags isnt good for users, as it doesnt separate your content, nor for SEO because it doesnt make the page summary evident and clear.
Lack of google authorship:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http://www.vonderhaar.com/There are many other reseaons why its not ranking, but that should give you a good place to start. You need to analyze your competitors and give the site more focus.
-
The site is years old. It used to rank alright but has been dropping a lot
-
The blog just launched too. I will have to look into how they got hacked.
-
Looks like you may have been hacked at some point. Go to Google in incognito mode, and type site:vonderhaar.com and start going back a few pages. This page is an example of a blog page that is filled with spam http://www.vonderhaar.com/blog/kprsd40080f/. Looks like it might have just happened, as I see today's date on at least one of the posts.
-
Hey,
i look at your site and also googled your web address and it is coming up, how long ago did you launch the website? Have you done anything to market it?
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 answer for question "why xyz site is ranking for abc keyword" and not our website
Hi All, This is a layman question but would like to get a concrete answer for. I would like to know how to answer the questions like "Why our competitor is ranking for keyword ABC but not us"? What metrics or data can I showcase that gives logical answer. Please help in this regard. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Avin1230 -
Why is my m-dot site outranking my main site in SERPs?
My client has a WP site and a Duda mobile site that we inherited. For some reason their m-dot site is ranking on P1 of Google for their top KWs instead of the main site which is much more robust. The main site might rank beyond page 5 when the generic home page for their m-dot site appears on P1. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Etna0 -
Does Mobile optimised site improve ranking and how to index it faster?
Hi i have several question with regards to mobile optimised site: Does having a mobile optimised site improve ranking in SERP? How can we push/index mobile optimised sites to users searching on mobile sites faster? e.g. returning m.abc.com or abc.com/m to users seraching on mobile earlier.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FWSBIO0 -
Site Transfer and Downtime
If I want to transfer my website from yahoo to another web host without having any down time how would I do that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Deep Page is Ranking for Main Keyword, But I Want the Home Page to Rank
A deep page is ranking for a competitive and essential keyword, I'd like the home page to rank. The main reasons are probably: This specific page is optimized for just that keyword. Contains keyword in URL I've optimized the home page for this keyword as much as possible without sacrificing the integrity of the home page and the other keywords I need to maintain. My main question is: If I use a 301 redirect on this deep page to the home page, am I risking my current ranking, or will my home page replace it on the SERPs? Thanks so much in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClarityVentures0 -
Purchased new site with good SERP ranks, do I operate and build links or redirect the TLD?
I recently purchased a blog within my product category - it has many first page rankings for difficult keywords within my niche. I am wondering if it makes more sense for for me to continue to operate this blog and build links to my site and blog (blog is in wordpress) or to export the XML feed and upload the content to my blog (new site also in wordpress), at which point I would do a 301 at the Top-Level domain. Any thoughts, ideas, or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NickEubanks0 -
What strategies to best use to boost rankings across long-tail articles on site?
Heya! I'm currently engaged in what appears to be a slightly unusual SEO task. I run a large, reasonably well-respected (but not global-standard, yet) site that I'm currently monetising through individual articles targetted at addressing specific search engine queries that I know have decent traffic. It's the EHow / Demand Media model, except with a focus on a single specific (video games) niche, and much, much better quality articles (sufficiently good that they attract a fair amount of praise - all the writers on the site are published authors and the quality's damn high). Most of our articles end up ranking with essentially no backup, but they don't rank high - usually 2nd or 3rd page of Google. I'm trying to determine what the most effective strategy would be for us to boost our article rankings with the least possible expense / effort (we don't have a huge budget). Our long-tail articles are mostly being trumped by articles with either a couple of external links to them or by other articles with no links but from a site with significantly higher Domain Authority (70+ to our 48).I'm working to improve our on-page optimisation, but it's already pretty good (an "A" report from the SEOMoz tools on most or all pages). So, I'm wondering what the best use of our time would be to increase traffic globally across the site. Strategies I'm considering: Focussing on building links to the homepage and to any other pages on the site, by asking for links from community members, doing linkbait articles, directory submissions, guest blogging, and so on. Long-term aim: increase our domain-wide MozRank and MozTrust. Build links to our long-tail articles specifically, most popular first. Get direct links from relevant blogs, press releases, social bookmarking, etc. Long-term aim: get to #1 on Google one page at a time. Something Else? I'm wondering what the big SEO brains here would suggest? Happy to provide additional details if it would help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cairmen1 -
Migrating a site
Hello, I have what a I think it's a noob question.. I have a medium size website and need to put it into maintenance for the next 2 months, and afterwards activate a completly new site. My client asked me to do this, cause the same people whoe run the constant flow of information on the site, are the ones who are going to develop the new site, so he wants to just close it out So... what are the steps for doing this with minimum impact on any SEO advances made this past months?.. How do I tell the search engines, Hey, just under maintenance for a while....then... i'm back in the game but this is my new structure. and the old one should go here
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0