Low Domain Authority & Ranking

[Kingalan1]

My Domain Authority has tumbled in the last six months from 28 to 21.

Search traffic has dropped from about 4,500 per month to 3,000 per month with most of the drop being in the more competitive terms. Lead generation is off by about 70%.

This is after spending $12,000 on "optimization" with a MOZ recommended SEO firm and spending another $17,000 implementing their suggestions.

My real estate brokerage firm has completed some press worthy deals in the last month. If I can get these deals mentioned in a reputable newspaper like The New York Times (or other real estate publications like NY Observer, Real Estate Weekly) will this help domain authority?

If my domain authority is this low, how difficult is it to move it higher?

Before reaching out to these publications, should I create a blog post about these transactions on my website?

Any suggestions as to how I can improve domain authority? My URL is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com.

I should add that my SEO firm had about 30 toxic links removed and filed a disavow for about another 80 links. MOZ is only showing about 25 domains linking to our site. I suspect not enough to get us to rank.

Thanks, Alan

[Zippy-Bungle]

Hi Alan,

automation is generally bad. By linking through to other relevant pages using a variety of anchor text you give a google a warmer feeling about your site - avoiding over optimisation penalties.

Cross linking between pages. There's a lot on site link structure and what is optimum. I tend to ignore this and thing of my customers buying behaviour. So in your case  If in real life you'd offer a couple of buildings to a client then link them on the website. If not, then don't.

For me social media is a waste of time. We're a B2B industrial market. See what brings traffic and conversions.

The end goal really is to produce something amazing - a labour of love.  think of it as investing a dollar a day in the website. To start with nithing is going to change much. After a while compound interest is going to start giving you momentum and there will suddenly be a crux point where you realise how much of an advantage you have over your competitors. It'll take a while though.

[Kingalan1]

Hi Bruce:

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

The link building thing is a bit challenging. I can add content, post social media, work with developers on the user interface, but the technical aspect of link building is beyond me.

If I post good content on the site and on social media will this take care of itself? If not, do you think I can outsource this to a service, or is that asking for trouble?

An SEO firm removed many links, now ranking and traffic are really poor. I suspect that the removal of links has caused this.

Best, Alan

[Kingalan1]

Thanks for your most interesting response!!!

From what you are saying the greatest payoff will be in developing new content on an ongoing basis.

A few questions:

-I also have hundreds of product pages in the form of buildings and listings containing  50 and 300 words. Many of them don't have text links to other pages.  You think I am best off just editing/adding a paragraph or so and inserting text links to other pages on the site? From your post I am unclear if you are adding the links in some sort of automated way. In any case, sounds less traumatic than a total re-write.

-Are you using posts on social media (Google+, Facebook, Twitter) to exclusively promote your site or are you engaging in any link building?

From what you are saying (as well as other opinions) I guess I need to stop thinking of gaming the system and more in terms of creating very useful content.

Alan

[Zippy-Bungle]

Hi Alan,

We're in a similar position. A site that had 12,000 views a month a year ago now has 6,000. There's lots of things that we are doing but one of them is rewriting that content.

It is mind numbingly boring writing fresh stuff about one almost identical product after another. So I've taken a few approaches to make it easier.

First; I don't rewrite pages. I'm treating all my pages with 2 - 300 words as introductions. So I go through and add a specific paragraph or a type of link. It's generally a job that can be done in a few hours for my 100 product pages and normally delivers 2 - 5 positions on SERPS. Then I leave it for a few weeks - burnt out with the effort. It also slowly adds more structure and makes pages increasingly valuable

Second; I spend time making new good content. It's fun, its fresh and I normally get an immediate dopamine buzz as I get some more traffic after posting it in a newsletter or on a social media site. Being rigorous in linking back to my product pages helps too,

Third; I do it by the numbers. I've looked at 7 years of search queries to my site (so lots of stuff before 'not provided') and matched that up with moz difficulty and google traffic estimates and current serps positions. So when I do spend time on a page I calibrate the amount of effort specifically to the potential payoff.

Finally - given that your pages are likely to be similar to mine - we both have competitors who have access to the same content and write similar stuff I continually look for an angle to differentiate my page. For you it may be - other companies in the building, famous people who worked there, closest Deli or starbucks. This I think works, still experimenting, because if I was google looking at a keyword space i would compare the top x pages to each other - say on word usage. The ones several SD from the mean in word variation count (all other factors being equal) are likley to be saying more interesting stuff.

[Kingalan1]

YES, IT IS A LOT OF MONEY. $12,000 for reports, maybe $4,000 for wireframes and designs and another $11,000 for coding modifications.

I used to own a website that was struggling to maintain rank but generating enough leads to earn a good living. Now I can go feed the pigeons in Central Park. After this immense effort, following every suggestions, buying report after report, ranking is down, traffic is down, lead generation is non existent.

I would be generous if I described this so called SEO company  as charlatans, imposters and clowns. When the real drop occurred after their Voodoo last spring, and I had the temerity to complain, they could only respond that I had not spent enough money and that there had been a recent Penguin update (the drop in traffic was a gradual slope occurring since they started their "magic" and did not correspond with the May 20th algorithym update. But I guess I have no recourse against these criminals. They got the maximum advertising budget out of me, collapsed my business and can now move onto their next victim.

Now, back to my original question, how I build links to worthy content? The number of sites linking to us is so low that if that number can be increased somewhat perhaps it will have a tangible effect.

Thanks, Alan

[BruceA]

Hi Alan

I think you need to think about two different contexts here.

1: Google crawls fresh and unique content often.  Static not fresh content is not crawled that often, Google gets to know how often to crawl your site based on how often fresh content appears.  You can only make this happen by adding new unique keyword rich information.

2: Domain authoritiy and Page Rank are not the start of a good site but an outcome metric.  There are no quick fixes to build a quality site.

Pick your most important pages and start there.  Once Google crawls more often and finds good content and you see a rise in impressions, you are on your way on a long journey...

Think also about your site from another users perspective, does it look appealing, is the content relevant to me, is the information well presented etc.

Building links: There is a great blog here on Moz about building quality relevent links.  Follow it and plan time to do this

Hope that helps

Bruce

[Kingalan1]

Hi Bruce:

Also, I have found that pages that I have re-written, that provide quite useful information do not attract links (such as http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/how-long-does-leasing-process-take).

How can I go about attracting links for such pages?

Is it far to say that since the site has so few links, that attracting a few quality links should have a noticeable effect on Domain Rank?

Thanks, Alan

[Kingalan1]

Hi Bruce:

Thanks for the response. Our bounce rate has held steady in the 68-72% range in the last year. So has the click thru rate, ranging between 2.59 and 2.31 per visit.

Our site consists of the following types of pages

-330 Listing pages. 200 are set to no-index, follow. Only about 50 have more than 300 words. 
-150 Building pages. About 140 have about 250-300 words. 
-35 Blog pages. Only four entries written this year. 
-Another 60-75 static pages (neighborhood, types of space, about us, services).

How much of this do we need to rewrite to get an improvement in Domain Authority? Obviously re-writing hundreds of pages is a huge task.

Also, once these pages are promoted do we need to promote them to get links? Or will those links develop naturally if the content is of high quality?

Am I correct in assuming that a site with a Domain Authority of 21 is not going to have the potential to rank well? Being that the Domain Authority is pretty bad, how difficult would it be to get it back to say 30-33?

Thanks, Alan

[BruceA]

Hi Alan

Sounds like a bit of a headache.  First things first...don't assume all drops etc are negative.  Often big drops in search via good SEO are a sign that you might be serviing better content and this must be also compared to other metrics like bounce rates etc.

Domain rank drops can also mean that sites which are also high ranking have been removed, because their links where not related to your content and therefore in the longer term, could be damaging.  Remember links should be from sites which are somehow related to your site.  Google is striving for better service delivery to all searchers and therefore does not want links from a site selling widgets to be linking to sites selling cakes, unless the widget is something to do with cakes.

Press coverage, tends to have no-follow links and therefore check out the value of a link before spending time trying to get the link.

Domain Authority comes from quality linked content and therefore high ranking links in your industry sector should be sought.  Links are like roots, tiny capillary fibres that grow to big anchor roots in time.

Improve your content and make it fresh.  This will do wonders for natural links and google serving up your site.  Track keywords and distil the essence of your site pages to ensure that not one hit is wasted.  I could be wrong but Google also monitors BOUNCE RATE.

Hope that helps somewhat

Bruce