Why Does This Site Rank Well?
-
I noticed recently that the website of a local church (http://www.lifepointfc.com/) has climbed toward the top of the SERPS, and I cannot figure out why. The on-site SEO seems mediocre, at best, and their domain authority is 15 while their homepage authority is just 19. Does anyone see how they are working their SEO magic?
-
I just now found this conversation and I want to commend Travis for digging in.
Some other things to consider:
-
Age of the domain and also of the local campaign. If Lifepoint got an earlier 'start' on the web than Sylvania, this could have something to do with it.
-
It does not look like an industry centroid is at play here, because both churches seem fairly equally distant to what I see as the cluster for 'churches in tyler tx'
-
Could Sylvania have any negative issues like duplicate listings that could hold them back?
You might like to check out:
-
-
It's always a good idea to use more than one tool. I like PageSpeed as well, but I think Pingdom does a good job when you need to pinpoint the actual issues.
I would like to do some tests with this - nothing invasive. PM me through my Moz profile if you're interested.
-
Thanks for your response. Life Point does blog more than Sylvania and they have a more prominent social media presence, so their performance may be CTR related. As for speed, Google PageSpeed Insights scores Sylvania Church substantially higher on speed than Life Point.
-
This is pretty interesting because this isn't terribly competitive. It's easier to see the rudiments at work. The finer points seem to be more important.
A recent IMEC experiment noted that you could push a site up through CTR. There's one possibility. Maybe the congregation is more active online and uses a particular set of queries to find the site. Maybe the fact that Life Pointe posts more often gives them more possibilities of being found and thus clicked.
I haven't looked into it, but you may want to see if Life Pointe posts frequently on social channels. That may fractionally drive organic CTR.
I didn't see Life Pointe in any of the organic results for 'baptist church tyler tx'. I found Sylvania showing in the map pack. When I'm at home, my location defaults to Southlake. When I'm in the office, my default location is in Grapevine. I change my search location to Tyler, it was the same every time. However, they are page one organic for 'church tyler tx'.
I'm assuming your search was free of personalization. So that would be pretty interesting to look into as well.
At any rate, if you look at the technical side of things - the Sylvania Church site uses a lot of external JavaScript requests. While the Life Pointe site isn't exactly a gem, it's faster. So you might want to look into that, since page speed is definitely a ranking factor.
I used tools.pingdom.com and set the test location to Dallas, so one could say the test is 'agnostic'.
-
Oddly, Sylvania Church has a better Moz Local score than Life Pointe, but Life Pointe still outranks it at times. It's a strange thing...
-
I thought that until I noticed that Sylvania Church often ranks behind Life Pointe, yet also appears to have local SEO in order and a functional blog with posts approximately every few weeks. Sylvania Church has a higher domain rank and the homepage has a higher page rank than Life Pointe, but Life Pointe still outperforms Sylvania on most searches...
-
They actually have an okay offsite local presence. When it is categorized, it's categorized as a Baptist Church. Check them out in Moz Local.
They appear to have frequently posted new content on their blog starting in February 2014. Also, the keyword isn't terribly competitive.
-
Based on the keywords you gave me, I think it's actually pretty simple. I think it's because they have Google Maps integrated into some of there pages, and contact info properly integrated in the footer of every page. Overall, I would give the site a D- or lower but for those location terms, just having the map and contact info can sometimes be enough.
Either way, you should read this article if you want some really hearty local SEO teachings: http://moz.com/blog/everybody-needs-local-seo
-
Thanks for your response. Two of the most potent keyword phrases are "churches in tyler tx" and "baptist churches in tyler tx."
-
I really don't see why. There doesn't seem to be much content, it always has only decent pagespeed scores and uses a lot of blocking js which hurts user experience. Every time I loaded a new page the screen went white for a second. But i think the question has to be "climbed to the top of the SERPs for what?"
Hard to find an answer without keywords to relate it to.
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
-
What to do if ranking the wrong KW?
I wrote a blog article targeting a long-tail KW - "[primary KW] pricing revealed". the article is performing so well that is actually ranking 2nd nationally for my primary KW. I would rather have my conversion page rank for my primary KW obviously. I'm considering cutting and pasting the content from my blog page onto my conversion page with a 301 redirect from the blog to the conversion page. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks, Ryan
On-Page Optimization | | RyanMeighan0 -
My DA keeps going up, by my rankings keep falling.
Hi, I manage a few clients, but the one that is in reference to this question is a local law firm. They blog on a regular basis and we continue to monitor for and delete any negative backlinks. Their domain authority keeps rising, but they continue to lose rankings for tracked keywords. Has anyone else faced a similar situation? Does anyone one know what is causing this or what I can do to combat it? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | GavinAdv0 -
How to use canonical with mobile site to main site
I am pretty sure that the mobile version of the main site needs to be the same canonical link from what I understand. I am trying to find good docuementation that supports this. Even better if its from Google or Matt Cutts. I have a main domain like http://www.mydomain.com the mobile version of this is http://www.mydomain.com/m/ Should my canonical be rel="canonical" href="http://www.mydomain.com"/> for both these pages?
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich0 -
Keyword distribution in the whole site
I've been taught during a SEO course that the whole site has to contain the chosen keywords with a fixed proportion of optimized pages, that should be like this: 50% of pages optimized on the most relevant keyword (just one keyword) 25% of pages optimized on secondary kewords (depending on the size of the site, could be a few pages for each secondary keywords) 25% of pages on long tail keywords. the teachers was a very respected SEO professional, but I've never seen this strategy anywhere in other articles or SEO guides. what do you think about it?
On-Page Optimization | | DavideM
It's true that it brings visibility for the top keyword?
does it lead to cannibalization?
what others strategy do you use?0 -
Canonical Tag for Ecommerce Site
I implemented a canonical tag on each product page for my clients ecommerce site and my rankings tanked. Has this happened to anyone else? If so, when can I expect rank to return?
On-Page Optimization | | DynoSaur0 -
Why does http://www.southernhearth.com rank so well for patio furniture and outdoor furniture?
I was looking at the competitiveness of ranking for the keywords "patio furniture" & "outdoor furniture" and was shocked to see www.southernhearth.com ranking so well. While I am just getting into the research, I was unable to see anything that would justify it's rank. What are your thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Mattbyo0 -
Can Other Websites You Own Affect Your Rankings?
Let's say you own three websites. One is low quality and Google frowns upon it, another is moderate and a third has stellar unique content. Would Google penalize the third website because you own the first website? On a related note - If you were banned from Google AdWords, would registering a site in your name potentially harm your rankings?
On-Page Optimization | | DerekP0