General SEO Help

[Timrhendry]

Hi Everyone,

**Website: **www.helppestcontrol.com

I've been working on a wordpress based website for the past few months now. This is a new website that we designed for an existing company that decided to rebrand.

The previous website had little to no traffic.. so we've basically started for scratch. I've followed SEO guides and have completed many of the basics. We started using MOZ just under a month ago and have made a ton of changes based upon those suggestions. With all of this being said, we have seen some slight improvements in traffic, but nothing truly noticeable. In fact, 90% of our traffic is coming from a Facebook PPC campaign.

I think the main struggle is that the company has such a wide operating based (a ton of very small towns and cities). We created an optimize page for each one (same content, just switched out the keywords).. in hopes of driving traffic. Is this the correct approach? Or should be optimize for general terms such as "Bed Bug Removal" versus "Bed Bug Removal Barrie"?

I was hoping that the community could take a look at the website (maybe run it through a few tests) and give me some more suggestions.  I would really appreciate any feedback.

Thank you!

[DaveCoveDigital]

I have always included targeted keywords such as 'bed bugs barrie' and it has worked well.

[Timrhendry]

Thank you for the suggestions. We're definitely going to make some changes.

One last question, when we write targeted landing pages with original content (for example, say it's about the city of Barire), should that landing page be optimized for generic keywords such as 'bed bugs' 'spider spraying'... or should we still include targeted keywords such as 'bed bugs barrie' 'spider spraying barrie'?

Thank you again!

[WhoWuddaThunk]

I also agree with Dave.  My company works with dozens of local businesses, and creating targeted landing pages is part of the strategy for most of them.  The difference between original content and keyword swapped content is often the difference between first page rankings, and 3rd+ page rankings.  Take the time to write in depth content for each of these pages.  You will want it long enough to rank for your main terms, and any variations that may exist.

[DaveCoveDigital]

Hi Tim,

I'd suggest more of a variation in content than just swapping out keywords for location pages. And definitely pad out the main pages and posts with more content as they're a little on the short side.

Cheers,

Dave

[Andy-Halliday]

Hi

Welcome to the community,

First of all it looks like you have very few links pointing to your website so this isn't going to help rankings. I would look at doing some outreach especially on some of your blog articles as this information could be very useful.

Look at other local sites that you think the content would be useful for the web site users and contact the site owner and see if they would like to use part / all of the article. If you are going to let them use all identical content - watch this whiteboard Friday on the best practices to follow: http://moz.com/blog/syndicating-content-whiteboard-friday

The next area I would look at, is the length of the product you offer. Can you not increase the words on here, maybe by putting some tips to look out for if you suspect you have bugs etc. There was a recent whiteboard friday which suggest you need to have around 1,500 words per page.

I am sorry to say, but your 'where we serve' pages look to spammy and look like they we're written purely for SEO purposes - so if I am thinking that then so will Google. All the content is identical on each page, apart from you change the town / place name.

Could you not simply have one page explaining all the services you offer and a list of the towns. (You will have to excuse me here as I don't know US places that well), but could you not group them into larger areas and reduce the number of pages and write unique content for each page, so more places on one page but geographically towns together, maybe by state etc. Also could you include Google maps on these pages - make them more interactive - this is a must watch video http://moz.com/blog/panda-optimization-whiteboard-friday 

So basically I would:

• Work on getting more links
• Write longer blog articles
• Organise your areas where we work sections

Hope this is all useful for you.