Website Isn't Ranking & I'm Not Sure Why Based On The Data

[ErrickG]

Hi Moz Community,
I am having an issue that has been killing me for some time and I could really use another opinion. One of my client’s websites hasn't been ranking for some time and I can't put my finger on it. There are no issues showing up in the webmaster tools. If you compare the site with the tops ranking sites for the websites number one keyword, the website is just as good as everyone else. My clients website is the first one on the left in the attachment. We have better quality content but instead of showing up on page 1,2,3 the site is on page 21. I am just at a lost. Anyone have any thoughts outside looking in.

Thanks,
Errick

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[PatrickDelehanty]

Hey again!

Please do - I would actually love to hear about the progress if you feel like keeping me in the loop!

My email is in my profile! Good luck, sir!

[ErrickG]

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for the look and advice. I will try to make the site look less spammy and let you know how it goes.

Thanks.

Errick

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi Errick

You have some pretty heavy exact match anchor text in your backlink profile for "houston business lawyer". Beyond that - the entire site is built around that phrase - "Houston Business ______" - either lawyer or law service. My opinion - crawlers have caught on to your heavy optimization of this on your site, even your domain name, and it probably tripped spam filters.

I would consider going through your site and easing up on such heavy utilization of "(local) Business (lawyer/service)". The site does have quite a bit of a "spammy" feel. There's no real association on the site to Mastriani Law Firm beside the logo. This is a HUGE opportunity you are missing, as people could be searching for the attorney by name.

I also found http://www.texasdebtdefense.com/ which seems to be the same attorney. The site has the same issues - just to let you know. This particular site also has a pretty bad backlink profile - lots of directories and pretty obvious old-school-SEO link building tactics being utilized. Be careful here too, because both these sites, if they are on the same IP address and have the same WhoIs data, could also trip more spam signals.

Please look at the links I posted above, take an honest assessment of the website as it is, and start optimizing your site in a more natural fashion with branding for the law firm; not just exact match keywords repeatedly. Hope this helps! Good luck!

[ErrickG]

HI Patrick,

Thank you for your response, i going through all the information you just provided.

Thanks,
Errick.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi Errick

This is kind of a difficult question to ask without a link, can you provide a URL?

A couple of things to check:

• Robots.txt & meta robots (Moz)
• Manual actions (WMT Help)
• Do a search of your website URL in Google and other search engines - are you seeing anything?
• Are you a local business? Have you optimized for local? Local SEO (Moz)
• Do you have a lot of thin or duplicate content? How to Do a Content Audit (Moz)
• Have you looked into your backlink profile and looked for issues there? Guide for Link Removals & Risk Mitigation (Moz)

I would also look into these resources:

• On-site ranking factors (Moz)
• Internal Link (Moz - for equity passing reasons)
• Competitor Analysis (Moz - resources to check out other angles of your competitor's sites)

Hopefully this helps - share the URL if you can! Good luck!