My DA keeps going up, by my rankings keep falling.
-
Hi,
I manage a few clients, but the one that is in reference to this question is a local law firm. They blog on a regular basis and we continue to monitor for and delete any negative backlinks. Their domain authority keeps rising, but they continue to lose rankings for tracked keywords. Has anyone else faced a similar situation? Does anyone one know what is causing this or what I can do to combat it?
Thanks,
-
While I do often look at Domain Authority, I see a LOT of cases where DA doesn't tell the whole story. DA is Moz's best replication of PageRank. But, because no one outside of Google knows how they calculate PageRank, it's not always going to be equivalent.
There are a lot more things that could be done for this site, especially in terms of on-page SEO. The home page title tag is "Home | Brand" It's quite important to have some keywords in the title tag. Similarly, take a look at the above the fold content of the home page. I see an image (logo), followed by some navigational buttons and then the most important text on the page says:
Real Experience. Practical Solutions.
When Decisions Matter.Below that are a few buttons that do actually contain some keywords.
My point is that there is very little on your home page that gives Google the context of what you want this site to rank for. I am betting that changing the title tag and writing some above the fold text that concisely explains what the firm offers and also contains a few keywords would make a difference.
Those were just a few things I saw on a quick look. It might be worthwhile to do a thorough site quality audit as a next move. On-site changes can really help move the needle.
-
They have some "category" type pages on their website, such as this one about "family law".
http://www.stockandleader.com/personal-law/family-law
This page only has a yada yada yada paragraphy on it.
These pages would become much stronger in the SERPs for industry category keywords, and a useful starting point for visitors, if all of the blog posts for that legal category were linked to from these pages. These types of pages can serve as gateways to the expertise areas of the firm if they link to all of their related content.
-
Here is the link to the blog: http://www.stockandleader.com/blog.
Actually, we have been advising that they try to write using language that could be understood by people outside of the legal industry - as this is their main target.
I don't think other law firms would ever link to their blog, as lawyers are super competitive and do not want to send users to a different law firm, even if it was 1000 miles away. I used Open Site Explorer to see what links their competitor has, and they have very similar links - local newspapers, magazines, sponsorships, directories. The one core difference that I saw was that their competition was linked as being "local" law firm in completely different states. For example, they are based in PA, but were being linked to as a local law firm in a directory for VT and MN law firms. They are not a national law firm, so this should not be happening.
-
That is quite a bit of blogging. They should have a couple hundred blog posts at that rate. Are these blog posts of high enough quality to attract links from other law firms, law schools, legal sites, etc.? If not, then I would suggest posting less often and with higher qualilty.
-
They have been blogging for years, often 3 - 4 times a month. There have not been many negative backlinks. I just added that information so that you would know that there are not any bad backlinks.
-
Here is some information that might be helpful to those trying to respond....
**They blog on a regular basis... **
How long have they been doing this and what is the rate? If they have been making one post per month for four months, that isn't enough to move the needle. Also, are the posts yada yada yada content or are the good juicy legal stuff that citizens, other law firms or law schools will link to?
we continue to monitor for and delete any negative backlinks.
Where are these coming from? How do you know they are negative and not simple spam?
-
"They blog on a regular basis and we continue to monitor for and delete any negative backlinks" - That would be your issue no doubt. Robgerbot is cleaver but he can't see what links you've disavowed. I've seen a lot of people deleted what they think is bad links but in fact had no problem at all. This means Moz and alike can see them however Google doesn't and thus doesn't discount.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Do product sub-categories compete with top level categories for rankings?
Hi All, This question is for an eccomerce site with a very large sku count (over 3million individual sku's). As the person responsible for SEO on the site, I am often playing catchup to some of our web merchandisers. My question is this: Will creating sub-catagories that have a page title and H1 tag that include the top level category name plus a refinement be competing with each other and the top level category for rankings? The products that I am specifically talking about are Funko Pops! (some of you might collect them). There are different sub-sets of Funko Pops such as Funko Pop!: Rocks, Funko Pop!: Movies, Funko Pop! Television ect. Im worried that if I create many pages with these titles/h1 tags that they will end up competing for the query "funko pops"... something I worked hard to rank above Amazon for. Any thoughts would be appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | Jason-Reid0 -
Google search result dramatically dropped with drop in DA.
It looks like on 11/13 by site traffic dropped by like 75% and it just happens to coincide with the MOZ DA dropping to. Anyone else see this?
On-Page Optimization | | Motom70 -
Home Page Keywords not Ranking and Assigned to Inside Pages
Hi, thank you for taking the time to read this. We have a few websites with the same problem. I will use http://www.prepared-meals.com as an example: The home page was ranking on page one for keyword "Prepared Meals". The site is about 6 months old. We use the Moz page optimizer on all pages of our websites to score an A rating. Recently we found the home page is no longer showing up in search results and the keyword "prepared meals" now points to an inside page that is not relevant: http://www.prepared-meals.com/Senior-Meals/Moms-Meals-Reviews.html this page shows up for Prepared Meals around page 15 in Google results. We have read keywords in the URL might be the issue, even though the page optimizer in MOZ says to do that. We are wondering if this is the issue or there is some other problem we are not aware of. Again, thank you for you for your time. -Craig
On-Page Optimization | | CraigSWD0 -
How to rank well on 2 keywords - 2 separate pages or 1 combined page
Hi, I have a website about allergy. We ar developing new content, and through keyword research I have discovered that "dog allergy" and "cat allergy" are both very common searches. However, the cause, and symtoms are very alike for these 2 types of allergy so it would make sense to combine the two allergies on one page. So my question is: What do I choose to increase my chances to ranke the best I can for both "cat allergy", and "dog allergy"? Should I develop 2 separate pages for cat & dog allergy or should I do a combined page? (We would of course review the texts so no duplicate content/text would be used if we chose to have 2 pages) I would be so greatful for your advice!! Kind regards, Jeanette
On-Page Optimization | | Mylan-GDM0 -
Why aren't our articles ranking in Google?
We have a website promoting Pakistani lawyers online. The website also has an articles section where we post articles reviewing different legal cases and laws. All of our articles are written by actual lawyers are high quality and unique. Website itself doesn't have large page/site authority but its not a baby website either. I can't figure out why our articles don't rank on Google. Here are few of the articles:
On-Page Optimization | | Heydarian
http://www.pakistanilawyers.com/articles/pakistan-child-custody-laws-explained-479/
http://www.pakistanilawyers.com/articles/pakistan-divorce-law-476/
http://www.pakistanilawyers.com/articles/pakistani-law-insolvency-guide-460/ I don't know whether its simply because there are not enough links pointing to our website or if there is a problem in the website itself that i can't find. Thanks for the help0 -
Does a phone number in the title tag hurt your rankings in SERP?
Hi Mozzers, One of my client is a carpet cleaner and I was wondering if adding a phone number into the title tags would hurt our rankings . I am asking because the client has mentioned it and that we do have some space to add a phone number into the tag. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Sudden Site Rankings Drop
Good day guys, We have been following strict SEO strategies for the past 6 months, all sites have been improving incredibly well, all except one. The site in question is http://bit.ly/IH4pkM . The site is regarding automotive spray booth equipment. We were ranking on the first page for the keyword "spray booth" (which is the most important one), at place #4 for weeks on end. However since half-way last week, the site has been dropped to half-way the second page (#17). There are barely any crawler errors listed for our campaign on SEOMoz. There were several pages of which the meta description was missing, but that has been fixed earlier this week. When it comes to link building, I looked at what the top competitors were doing, and was looking for unique link building opportunities myself. We have received 0 webmaster tools warnings as well. I do not believe we are penalized due to the "penguin" update. After all, if you search for for the company's name in Google, it is still listed on there (# 2). Nor have we been part of dodgy link networks at all. So my question is, what do you guys believe made us drop the rankings? Is there some on-page issues I am overlooking? Any recommendations to restore out previous rankings? Kind Regards, Roderic
On-Page Optimization | | Michael-Goode0 -
Ranking Issues Recently Popping Up
We have a site that based on your research tools, holds its own in almost all aspects in regards to # of links, # of different linking domains, quality of links, mozrank, moztrust and all that stuff. Compared to our top competitors, we do very well based on your tools via our campaign monitor. The issue is we seem to be dropping like crazy every month in our rankings and traffic despite this fact, and we can't get our head around the cause. I do have a couple of ideas, and I wanted to run them by you guys to get your opinion. Domain: bonitaj.com My Thoughts On Possible Issues... 1. Text Content & Panda Update I know one of the big things with the panda update was quality of content. I know one thing we have for sure is a lack of "text-based" content. Sure, we have home page, main cats, sub-cats and product pages, but they are mostly just windows into the product pages, and don't have a whole lot of good copy. THIS IS MOST EVIDENT ON OUR PRODUCT PAGES, where each product page is loaded with content, but only 3-4 very short paragraphs of text. Do you think this is hurting us? THE ONLY ISSUE IS THAT our competitors also don't have a whole lot of text-based content on their pages. 2. Too Many Category Pages & Same Products Featured Somewhat on them I think another problem may be that on each category page, we do have a lot of the same products featured. I don't think its crazy duplicate content or anything, but I do think that back in the old days we got a little crazy with creating "niched out" category pages that pretty much feature the same products as some of the more important and base category pages. Do you think this is hurting us? I've pitched a solution to this that involves trying to tone down the amount of sub-cats we feature that were originally geared towards attracting long-tail traffic. In the end that really isn't working anymore anyway, so maybe we're spreading our site thin by going to deep with some of these niche category pages? 3. Lack of a sitemap? We used to use an xml sitemap, and really don't anymore. We have nothing on file with google webmaster tools. I've recently read in one of your blog posts that a simple thing like adding a good sitemap could help our 600+ page site or so get crawled a bit deeper allowing more pages to rank? IN THE END, MY QUESTION IS SIMPLY, IF THERE IS ONE OR TWO THINGS I CAN DO TO GET OVER THIS HUMP, WHAT WOULD YOU SUGGEST?
On-Page Optimization | | AarcMediaGroup0