Trouble Ranking 1st

[spadedesign]

We are having trouble ranking. We seem to do well for lower competitive words but we are really want to rank for "web design" in our local area. Which is Tyler, Texas. Can anyone advise on what we need to differently?

We use Moz Local, have a reviews and are using Yoast SEO. The only thing I can think of is on page optimization. Any advice?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Matthew!

My pleasure, and I'm so glad you found my answer helpful. It sounds like you have a game plan for some work ahead. Yes, it's possible that by not being #1, you may be missing some traffic, but it might not be as much as you think, given that you are in the top 3. In your shoes, I'd be counseling myself to focus a little less on rankings and a little more on broadening my company's visibility for secondary terms in the local-organic results. The size of your city (population about 100,000) convinces me that you could really cover the waterfront of things people in Tyler need with the right content strategy and harness some highly targeted/highly converting traffic.

Rand, in particular, has done some amazing Whiteboard Fridays over the past year or so about content, keywords, etc. I hope you'll take full advantage of this section of the Moz Blog:

https://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard-friday

Good luck!

[spadedesign]

I guess that is one way to link build?

[spadedesign]

Thank you both for the thorough answers.

1) You need to perform a thorough competitive analysis of the 2 companies outranking you. Are they older? What's their authority like? Their link profile? How many Google-based reviews have they earned compared to you? How strong is their content? What is their geographic position on the map, relative to the 'centroid' of Tyler and relative to you? Etc., etc.

They are both older than our company. We are very new, our main competitor has been in business since the beginning of the internet...they claim 30 years. The other has about 3 years on us. However in a year we have gotten into the top 3.

2) You mention you are using Moz Local, so this should mean that your core citations are either in great shape or are on their way to being so. Have you fully filled out your Moz Local listing with images, photos, social links, etc? Images, in particular, impact conversions.

I'd like to think so. We have a 94% right now in Moz Local. We just changed our main phone number for our headquarters and we have two other locations on Google Business that are in cities close by. 30-70 miles away. We only have additional Google Businesses set up for them, all other citations are our headquarters location.

3) How is your review game beyond Google? Narrow and thin or diverse and broad?

We have 20 or more reviews on Google (4.9, one 4 star). Our top competitor has 3 reviews, a 5.0 (I just checked, they now have 5. That is 0 to 5 in the last 4 weeks) and they outrank us (DA of 51, ours is 14). Our second competitor has less than ten reviews. We have 15 on Facebook, all 5 stars (I think). Competitors have nothing. But other than that, we have one review on BBB and one or two on Yelp. Competitors have nothing there. Overall, I'd say we win but it isn't playing out that way.

We will start focusing on content and links. This was something we focused on in the beginning but have lost focus on. As for our conversion rates, we do pretty well with leads. We also close most of those leads...so I'm pretty happy with that. That said, once we get an inquiry we usually get a client. I just feel we are missing out on traffic/leads by not being number 1. It's also hard for us to say we will get clients ranking when we can't rank ourselves. It is hard for us to settle for top 3.

I do thank you both for the very informative posts. We still have a lot to learn so I welcome any additional insight.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Matthew,

I agree with Igor that this is a competitive keyword, but I'm assuming that you are talking about local pack rankings, rather than organic (Igor cites competing with Wikipedia and others, which would not be a wise use of time/resources). I think what you are asking about is how to compete with the businesses coming up in the local pack for the search 'web design tyler tx' or for people in Tyler searching for 'web design' alone?

So, first of all, I would start with a small adjustment of your thinking. If you can rank in the top 3 in a free (non-paid) local pack, you are more or less equal with the folks ranking 1 and 2. In my own search for 'web design tyler tx', you are coming up 3rd in the pack and in the local finder view (reached via the more places link at the bottom of the pack).

I'm not sure where you see your own business ranking when you do this search from your office and from locations around your city (it may be quite different from what I see), but going on the premise that you've achieved a #3 ranking (well done!), here's what you'd have to do to try to move up:

1. You need to perform a thorough competitive analysis of the 2 companies outranking you. Are they older? What's their authority like? Their link profile? How many Google-based reviews have they earned compared to you? How strong is their content? What is their geographic position on the map, relative to the 'centroid' of Tyler and relative to you? Etc., etc.

2. You mention you are using Moz Local, so this should mean that your core citations are either in great shape or are on their way to being so. Have you fully filled out your Moz Local listing with images, photos, social links, etc? Images, in particular, impact conversions.

3. How is your review game beyond Google? Narrow and thin or diverse and broad?

4. If, at the end of your competitive analysis, you find that your metrics are quite similar to the two companies outranking you, then my best advice would be to:

• Focus on content development that bests your competitors' efforts

• Earn some really solid mentions from the main publications in your city, preferably with links, but w/o them can be valuable simply as authority citations

• Analyze new linkbuilding opportunities

• And, finally, consider whether what you really need is higher rankings or a better conversion rate. There may not be that much difference between the number of clickthroughs you are getting from the local pack vs your 2 competitors. Let's say you are getting 3 leads a week through the #3 ranking you've earned and the guys at #1 are getting 4 leads. What really matters is whether your website and your sales people are converting 3/3 leads, or 0/3 per week. That's where the money is. If it turns out that what you really need is better conversions, then you must analyze the website for this specific goal, and also, analyze how your sales people are handling calls that come to you through the local pack and other avenues. It can make a big different to your bottom line if you get to where you are converting even 2/3 leads per week instead of 1 or 0/3.

Hope this helps!

[Igor.Go]

Competition on "web design" is waaaay to high. It displays 7 ads in SERP in Tyler TX, which is A LOT. With top websites in organic search being Wikipedia, Behance and even Google. Beating these will require way more effort then you should waste on it.

It's not really the keyword you want to focus on too unless your website is a competitor to Wikipedia. This keyword is too broad and converts terribly if at all.
If you do web design, focus on k
keywords that your potential clients use, they probably search for things like "make a website" and etc, forget about trying to rank for Web Design, do some keyword research, find out what your clients search for and target those keywords.