Recovering traffic of a directory
-
Hi,
I run a legitimate online directory. We verify all the listings, do not include do follow links to the clients sites. Allow for and monitor user reviews as well as publish unique content in our niche.
Over the last few years we have been hammered with Penguin and Panda penalties and have tried to remedy the issues with little success.
Is there anyone out there who has specific experience with SEO for directories? Anyone that has assisted a directory in recovering from these penalties?
Please contact me
-
That's a tough one. Though it sounds like the issues you've been careful about would mostly be targeting Panda, Penguin has to do more with links. How does your backlink profile look? Maybe run it through Moz's new spam score feature to find any unwanted links.
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
-
Can High Traffic and Bounce Rate Hurt Local Rankings?
I just began working on a campaign for a dental office who happened to rank really well for some general search terms around post-op care. They received a ton of traffic for a small local site-- 26k organic visits YTD-- but since they focus on providing services locally, their conversion rate for organic search is pretty abysmal. On top of that, a couple of their high-traffic pages are contributing to a 90%+ average bounce rate on the site. Clearly the goal of the website doesn't involve attracting a national audience, but tons of traffic couldn't possibly be a bad thing... right? On the flip side of the coin, their local visibility is terrible. Their DA is comparable to their competitors, but in local SERPs they're nowhere to be found. Could one of these factors be affecting the other? Could their high visibility, but lack of conversions, from a bunch of organic traffic be hurting their visibility locally? I'd be interested hearing from other SEOs who may have faced similar situations in the past.
Local Website Optimization | | formandfunctionagency0 -
Boost Website Traffic
Tom Beavan Websites is my business where I create and design affordable websites for small businesses in Wordpress. I am looking to improve my traffic to my website as dramatically as possible. At present, my website is a one-page website with limited content - https://www.tombeavan.co.uk. My website ranks #1 for local keywords like: Web design Wiltshire Web design Trowbridge Wordpress developer UK So in terms of keyword position, I am doing well for local business but I only get 200-300 visitors per month. I would like to dramatically improve this to improve the number of enquiries I get. I do tend to get a few enquiries but think if I improve the website traffic, the quantity of website enquiries will increase too? I have a long list of tasks I would like to do for SEO: Add a lot more content to the website Add more backlinks Guest blogging Lots more What would you recommend a good starting place or a place which will increase traffic effectively? Thanks for your advice in advance 🙂
Local Website Optimization | | tombeavan0 -
Are local business directories worth the effort? Eg. White pages, Yell.com, Local.com?
Hi Guys, Im new to Moz and very keen to do SEO right without upsetting Mr. Google too much. Are local business directories worth the effort? Its a laborious job, but happy to do it, if its effective and won't be considered spammy by Google? Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | Fetseun0 -
Using IP Detection to Filter Directory Listings without Killing Your SEO?
I have a client who maintains a directory of surgeons across the United States (approx. 2,000 members at present), and wishes to use IP detection to dynamically filter their surgeon directory to a sub-set that is relevant to the geography of the visitor. At the same time, however, we want the pages in the surgeon directory to rank nationally for terms like "[insert specialty] surgeons". Any tips/best practices for implementing an IP detection solution without shooting yourself in the foot from an SEO perspective? Is it even possible? Thanks! Jeremy
Local Website Optimization | | Jeremy_Lopatin0 -
Diagnosing a likely Penguin Penalty that's never been recovered from
The context: my market Here, for reference, is what I’d like to see with my website (New York Jazz Events), and I think I deserve to see: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1gf2ajw80iciqii/Screenshot 2015-11-27 12.09.08.png?dl=0 Intrigued by that screenshot? Please read further! I have only a few competitors in my market (jazz bands offered in the city of New York for corporate events and weddings), those being Gigmasters, Gigsalad, and Thumbtack. (Each of those three, by the way, are much more general sites than mine (they offer everything from musicians to jugglers), and should be behind me if one is ranking based on quality and relevance.) Of the next nearest type of competitor, single, individual jazz (which also should be behind me if one is ranking based on quality and relevance), there are a dozen or so. The context: my plans No matter what, at the least I’m going to be doing a complete modernization and redesign of my site soon. Please refer to the following screenshot of my Google organic traffic throughout the life of my site while reading the account that follows: https://www.evernote.com/l/AAOQpSw8Hn9DGpCQAt5onH9WMBiwGTDcCk8 What I’d like to find out: exactly what caused the Penguin penalty (if there was one); exactly what would remove it and restore my site to its previous standing. You can see that when my site launched, it only took four months (12/10-4/11) for it to consistently, and seemingly effortlessly, ranking 5th or 6th in Google for the most important keyword combinations related to my industry (such as “jazz band new york,” “jazz trio new york,” “jazz wedding new york”). That's for a new site with no backlinks. From this I inferred that there is little to no direct competition in this market (i.e., jazz bands in New York marketed specifically for weddings and corporate events). Then, around November of 2013, I paid for some bogus links (51 to be exact) to these keyword combinations in order to improve the ranking of my site, which worked briefly (see Google Analytics screenshot, January 13) until Penguin launched the following Spring, at which time my site was essentially removed from the search results altogether due to an apparent algorithmic (not manual) penalty which I presumed were due to these links (although I could be wrong, it could be penalized due to something else that I don’t understand). After removing most of the bad links (down to 3 from 51, see https://www.dropbox.com/s/kolb665rth47q11/bad links 2013-10-24 explorer.numbers?dl=0) and disavowing all the offending URLs, and after Penguin updated to 3.0, Google still failed to recognize my site, with one odd exception: in Fall of 2014 it began to place the keyword combination "jazz bands new york" ("bands" plural, not singular) back on page one, and tied it to a completely undeveloped Google Plus page with zero reviews on it, that it displayed simultaiously (the “knowledge graph?” or “maps listing”?). (Google works in some strange and not very intelligible ways. For example, in a searcher removed the “s” from “bands” and the site remained banished from the results altogether. The same is true for every other keyword variation.) Encouraged by this unexpected development, last Winter (2014-15) and Spring (2015), I developed my Google Plus Local Business page with lots of useful videos and photos, increased the review count from 0 to 13 (all real and all five star, by the way), linked my YouTube page to it, and, on Google’s advice and against my better judgment, closed down my other Google Plus Local Business pages related to other business services I market on the web (I’m a graphic designer and videographer in addition to being a bandleader). (Unhelpfully, Google keeps them in the search results but just marks them as “closed.” Thanks so much, Google. I probably could have left them up.) I also made a massive effort to clean-up my local directory listings so far as possible, removing listings for my competing businesses (again, against my better judgment), making the format of my business address and contact information consistent so far as possible (I'm a service business and so hide my full address when possible, but this is not always possible depending on the policies of the particular citation website, hence some inconsistencies), and added this information to the footer of all the pages on my site. After making these improvements, rather than improving my rankings, my site was entirely removed from the first several pages of Google’s search results, including for the keyword combination "jazz bands new york.” On occasions when my site could be located (several pages down), it was no longer associated with my Google Plus Local Business page, unless one searched specifically for my site’s name, New York Jazz Events (which nobody does, because 99.9% of people searching on Google don't know my business name). Some questions this raised in my mind: Why did Google make a link between my site and my Google Plus Local Business page back when the page was undeveloped? Why did Google then break that link (stop the association my website with their business page (or knowledge graph, or maps listing, whichever it is now), apart from the exception noted above) once the Google Plus Local Business page was developed? And indeed, why wouldn't developing that page, along with cleaning up my citations, logically result in more search term combinations bringing my results back to the first page, along with the link to the Google Plus Local Business page, rather than the opposite? Then, unexpectedly, this last November my website rank for "jazz bands new york" in Google briefly returned from "buried" all the way to #1! And the 1st page of the search results was dominated by my site in three places, all #1: the top spot for paid ads (as usual), the very top of the natural search results (first time ever), and the top and only local listing, on the right! I was even ahead of two giant national corporate competitors, which would seem to be impossible to me as they probably have thousands of backlinks. I basically “owned” page one of Google to an extent I’ve never seen for anyone before. It was actually a bit bizarre. You can see this here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1gf2ajw80iciqii/Screenshot 2015-11-27 12.09.08.png?dl=0 Now, what is also bizarre, was that, as before, I was still buried for every other keyword combination that's relevant to my site, including extremely similar combinations (for example, substituting "band" for "bands," or "NYC" for "New York," etc.). These keyword combinations essentially return the exact same results, only with my site missing from organic and local. As I mentioned, these astonishing results were temporary, and now my site is again buried for all keyword combinations including the once and sometimes astonishingly-performing “jazz bands new york.” Something else interesting and relevant to this conundrum: I’ve done searches for all my three major keyword search terms in Bing, and guess what? In the top three results for two out of the three of my search terms in organic results, with my Bing local listing right up there, and my other website (NYCJazz.com) not far behind! Now, it's strange to me that these incredibly great (and, as far as I'm concerned, high quality) Bing rankings lead to no inquiries, that nearly all of my customers find me from my paid advertising in Google, but that's another bafflement for another day… what is relevant to this discussion, is that my Bing results makes the essential invisibility of my website and my local business listing in Google's natural results all the more baffling. One could speculate that Google is a more sophisticated search engine and is returning more relevant results, except that that's not true… my site is in fact the most relevant for those terms (or at least, to be generous, in the top few in terms of relevance). And in the past, before Penguin, it used to be in the top few results in Google, just like in Bing. It's hard for me to swallow that I'm just lacking in proper SEO, when it used to rank great, when I've subsequently been working hard to further improve the SEO for years, and it's a top site everywhere else. Something has to be up with Google… I wish I knew what it was and what I could do… What I have done already: I’ve worked hard over the last five years cleaning up bad backlinks and making citations consistent. I think I understand well my most important keywords already, and have my pages optimized for them. I understand on-page optimization and think my site’s in pretty good shape in that regard (and I will further improve the on page optimization when I redesign it very soon.) It could use more good backlinks, but that’s a problem for the future as far as I’m concerned, and not related to the penalty in any case. I understand AdWords well and my ad is at the top of the search results consistently for all relevant keywords, so I don’t need any help there… Anyone who may have any insight to this… thanks very much in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | ChuckBraman0 -
Removed huge spammy location footer, looking to rebuild traffic the right way
Hello, On this site, I removed a huge spammy location footer with hundreds of cities, states, and dog training types. The traffic and rankings have gone down a lot, and I'd like a discussion on how to rebuild things the right way. There's some local adjustments to be made to the home page content, but other than that: My plans: 1. Analyze top 10 Google analytics keyword queries and work them into the content as best as possible, though I am debating whether the client should make new pages and how many. 2. I'm going to suggest he add a lot of content to the home page, perhaps a story about a dog training that he did in Wisconsin. I'll think about what else. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | BobGW0 -
For a generic domain say www.purplecola.com where the company is based in India (IP address there too), how should they best optimize for US search traffic?
Let's just say that they want to target the US market. Should they add a US based IP address? Would love to hear insight from people who have managed this, experienced this or have expertise. Obviously, a US based physical address would help. Thanks!! Chris
Local Website Optimization | | Sundance_Kidd0 -
Reducing traffic from a particular country
We are having a quality/ relevance issue with some of our traffic. One of the problems is that we are ranking well in certain foreign countries, which is driving irrelevant traffic to our site (as we only really cater for UK residents). Is there any way to suppress our overseas Google rankings whilst retaining good performance in the UK? Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | whis0