I just took over a site with 100k visits per month, where do I start?
-
A friend has been running a blog about mold (moldblogger.com), of all things, and I'm trying to get it up to spec. There are hundreds of articles of dubious quality, potentially thousands of links to who knows where (comments haven't been monitored closely).
Traffic is mostly Google organic, with less than 15% of visitors returning. Bounce rate is 80%+. As this is an ad supported website, the goal is to increase page views (more ad views). He has noticed that the more articles they post per month, the more overall views. Even though the new articles barely get traffic, it seems Google likes to see "new" content on the site, and bumps up the results for the top pages when there is a lot of activity.
Given a limited budget, where do I start? What's going to be the best return on time invested?
-
Love Patrick's response. Refer to it often. Thank you!
-
This is a really good answer Patrick! Thanks for making it so structured!
-
Patrick is correct above.
With a limited budget and time you might also consider going to GA and studying customer behaviour. Find out what pages customers like, and the stickiness & find out when and at what page the customers leaves the website. There is a retail site in India called Jabong - comparable problem. They have millions of hits a month except there BR was in excess of 90% when it started. Slowly work through it page by page, improving each page where customers drop off, until the conversion rate goes up.
Also by finding out what your customer is up to, by reviewing the pages that they like and do not like - you can identify trends. It may also assist in creating content. I often find customers are drawn to 1 or articles consistently - perhaps expand on those articles. GWT's will also in identifing the pages / keyword process to focus on.
It is a great problem to have lots of traffic - now need to tweak away until you make them a satisfied customer. Platforms like unbound and optimizely may also be of assistance. The good news is and it is gold - you are collecting lots of data - and with data you can make informed decisions on what to focus on in the value chain.
Let me know if need any more clarity on any point.
-
Hi there
I would start with:
- Running an audit
- Run a technical site audit
- Check traffic against Google's algorithms
- Running a backlink audit
- Running a content audit
- Check ranking history over time
- Run a competitor analysis
From there, you should be able to prioritize your work pretty easily and see where the easiest wins are. You'll also begin to see the landscape from the content standpoint and be able to help out in developing an editorial calendar as well.
You should also check out Moz's blog for some great categorized content that can help immensely. I would also make sure you get a routine going from a weekly, monthly, quarterly, 6 month, and yearly standpoint so you have a system in place.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Other sites linking to our site through sitewide footers
Hello, We have other sites linking to our site through images in sitewide footers, resulting in a link from every page of each site. Those sites are not owned by us and they decided to link to us on their own. They usually link to us as their "sponsor" or "partner", sponsor as in sponsor of some event and partner as in we sometimes work together on joint initiatives. I've searched Moz forum and other articles, but haven't been able to find an answer to this question. We'd like to make sure Google doesn't consider it to be spammy and we don't get any sort of penalty. Should we ask them not to link to us through those images in a sitewide footer or ask them to simply add "nofollow"? We don't want to remove those links if they are not considered to be harmful and removing them will hurt our DA/PA.
Link Building | | marynau0 -
Www and non www site
We have 2 sites one with and one without www - http://forrestwilliamssolicitors.com/ The www site has no content and just re directs to the non www site. I have added some links to the site but stupidly have split them between the 2 sites so I am assuming that the links to the www site are a waste? There aren't many to be fair so I may be able to just simply go back to the link and change it but do I need to? Also could someone explain in simple terms what the difference between the 2 sites is and why we need both! Many thanks
Link Building | | stevewilliams0 -
My site keep loosing its serp? Need advice
Hello, my site keep losing the serp with the keyword "love messages" for the site www.secretlovemessages.com From May first week, the rank dropped from 3rd to 5th, then 5th to 9th and so on. Now the rank is 25th !!!! Mainly after penguin 2.0 update. Can any SEO expert give me a audit and advice on why thats happening to my site and how i can recover the serp again?
Link Building | | rimon_dxnx0 -
Back linking to t foreign sites
One of our major competitors seems to be linking to an Asian speaking website that has a blog/product review formant. I was wondering how they are achieving this. Are there any non English /Asian sites worth submitting to and what is the best way to go about this if English is the only language you speak! And of course is it worth while doing this from an SEO perspective.
Link Building | | Hardley10 -
Wordpress Blog or page within site or guest post on other site?
Where is the best place, from an SEO perspective to have my articles published? 1: My WordPress blog 2: As A guest post on another site. 3: Within the normal pages of my site. Here is my site: www.fvl.co.uk Any help and or advice would be gratefully recieved. Andy
Link Building | | First-VehicleLeasing0 -
Yahoo site explorer.
With yahoo site explorer no longer available, how do we view backlinks of a site in Yahoo. How many backlinks a site has in yahoo search engine ? .
Link Building | | seoug_20050 -
Are links from flash sites worth anything?
I'm building some links right now and spotted an opportunity with a voiceover artists that we used for a marketing video. He posted our testimonial on his site and I plan to ask him to provide a link back. Thing is -- his site is entirely composed of flash content. Does this matter at all? Will this link still count? Thanks!
Link Building | | kylesuss0 -
Is it a bad idea to build unique sites to build credibility for your main site?
It is hard to sum up the question in one line, but basically my company has bought several descriptive domains that we would like to build out into microsites that link back to our main site. For example...say we are a florist. Our main site talks about all the different kinds of flowers we have and the work we do. So the idea is to buy weddingflowersdallas.com (example only...) and have a mini site that has the same look and feel as our main site, but has unique content that talks solely about our wedding flower business and has a few links back to our main site. 1. Is this a no no from a google perspective? 2. Is this a good strategy in general? Thanks, David
Link Building | | ciinc1