How to outrank list and lifestyle websites
-
Hi everyone,
We have a fully optimised client site with Moz optimisation scores of 95% and above. Each month we also create 1-2 backlinks. However, for the keywords we track, our client's site is stuck and no longer moving up at the bottom of page 1 and further down to page 2 and 3.
The keywords ranking on first page are also getting very low click through rates - between 1% and 3%.
The sites that outrank us are a mix of:
- Top X Places to visit...
- X Best Places to see...
- Trip advisor
- Things to do in...
- A guide to the best...
Is there a chance for us to outrank the type of sites above? Will persevering in link building do the trick? I understand this may take a while because we have a fixed time and budget for each of our clients. If we can't outrank these lifestyle and list sites, will beating just direct competitors be enough? However, this won't change the low CTR issue...
Another solution we're looking at is to change our keywords, which may be a bit tough because the current ones we track, even though they are a little broad, are exactly what the client offer and already have low search volumes. Going more specific will surely have lesser search volumes.
Thanks in advance.
-
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
-
How long does Google indexes the website after algorithm update?
I've noticed that the page ranks for some queries were improved unexpectedly, without any actions from my side. Is it possible that this improvement is connected with with Google algorithm update Sep, 4-5?
Algorithm Updates | | AurigaPR0 -
Thousands of duplicate website links at "Who links the most" in Google webmasters. Any risk being duplicate website links pointing to website?
Hi all, As I mentioned some days back here, our duplicate website got indexed a month back. Unfortunately there are links to our original website. I noticed that thousands of links are from our duplicate website at "Links to Your Site". Will this hurts? Now we have blocked the duplicate website getting indexed. What to do to remove these links from "Who links the most"? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Redirecting acquired website: DNS or 301?
Hi all, We have taken down some infringing websites and acquired them, so far we made around 40 websites. We are using DNS to land on our website from the acquired. But I've see that recently that DNS is not a redirect and we must 301 redirect from the old site to the new site. Also there is a potential harm in employing DNS method due to the duplicate content that will harm SERP performance severely. Which is the best way? DNS or 301 redirect? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Why am I not getting on Map Listing Results?
Greetings Mozzers, To my knowledge I'm doing everything that is "required" to start showing up on the map results when searching something local, however, we never seem to be on map results (A, B, C, D...etc). We have a Google+ page, submitted to Google Places (received PIN and entered it), optimized address to identical and in high authority map listing directories (GetListed.org), increased citations throughout the web, optimized keywords for categories on Google Places, schema.org HTML markup for address, meta address tags, consistent reviews being written by unique visitors to review sites (Yelp, Google+, etc). Am I missing a major component? Any advice would be great as I feel like I'm hitting many notes that should translate into a map result. Even for keywords that aren't incredibly difficult where we are ranking #1 above map results every time. Thanks and hope all have a great weekend!
Algorithm Updates | | MonsterWeb280 -
18 years later, Page Rank 6 Drops to 0, All +1s disappear, Scrapers outrank us
18 years ago I put up our first website at http://oz.vc/6 Traffic grew and our forums reached hundreds of thousands of posts, our website had a page rank of 6 and our forums and other content areas ranked 5-6, the others usually 4-6. Panda 2.2 came along and whacked it. No measures recommended by SEO experts and the Matt Cutts videos even made a dent, including some pretty severe measures that were supposed to make a difference. Bing and Yahoo traffic both grew since Panda 2.2 and only Google kept dropping every few updates without recovery. Several few weeks ago Google provides the ultimate whack. It seems every page other than the home page has either a PR of 0 or not generating any PR at all. Every +1 disappeared off of the site. Now three pages have +1 back and the entire guide section (hundreds of articles) are still missing all +1s. I discovered two scrapers, one of which was copying all of our forum posts and ranking a PR 2 for it (while we have a zero. They were taken down but I still can't imagine how this result could happen. I am going to have an RSS feed aggregator taken down that is ranking a 2 and knows we can't prevent them from taking our Wordress feeds and storing them (we use them for areas on the site.) How can Google provide us with a zero page rank and give obvious scrapers page rank? What should have been years worth of awesome rich added content and new features was wasted chasing Google ghosts. I've had two SEO people look at the site and none could point to any major issue that would explain what we've seen, especially the latest page rank death penalty. We haven't sold paid links. We have received no warnings from Google (nor should we have.) The large "thin" area you may see in a directory were removed entirely from Google (and made no difference and a drop in Google doing the "right" thing!) Most think we have been stuck for a very long time in the rare Google glitch. Would be interested in your insights.
Algorithm Updates | | seoagnostic0 -
Linking to authority / competitor website!? Yes or No?
Here is the dilema .... People say, don't be afraid to link to authority website! What if an authority website in particular niche is actually competing with you in the Search, but you do have a review profile there? Is it ok to link to that profile ? Should I include a no follow tag ? Another case : some other authority high ranked website competing in search with mine directly has a profile page for my company, but this authority website has blocked Google bot to crawl the profile page all the reviews there !? Can I still link to that page and will this be appreciated by Google ? Am I passing PR and link juice from my website to those direct comeptitors / authority websites ?
Algorithm Updates | | montauto0 -
Google indexing my website's Search Results pages. Should I block this?
After running the SEOmoz crawl test, i have a spreadsheet of 11,000 urls of which 6381 urls are search results pages from our website that have been indexed. I know I've read that /search should be blocked from the engines, but can't seem to find that information at this point. Does anyone have facts behind why they should be blocked? Or not blocked?
Algorithm Updates | | Jenny10 -
Shouldn’t Google always rank a website for its own unique, exact +10 word content such as a whole sentence?
Hello fellow SEO's, I'm working with a new client who owns a property related website in the UK.
Algorithm Updates | | Qasim_IMG
Recently (May onwards) they have experienced significant drops in nearly all non domain/brand related rankings. From page 1 to +5 or worse. Please see the attached webmaster tools traffic graph.
The 13th of June seemed to have the biggest drop (UK Panda update???) When we copy and paste individual +20 word sentences from within top level content Google does bring up exact results, the content is indexed but the clients site nearly always appears at the bottom of SERP's. Even very new or small, 3-4 page domains that have clearly all copied all of their content are out ranking the original content on the clients site. As I'm sure know, this is very annoying for the client! And this even happens when Google’s cache date (that appears next to the results) for the clients content is clearly older then the other results! The only major activity was the client utilising Google optimiser which redirects traffic to various test pages. These tests finished in June. Details about the clients website: Domain has been around for 4+ years The website doesn't have a huge amount of content, around 40 pages. I would consider 50% original, 20% thin and 30% duplicate (working on fixing this) There haven’t been any signicant sitewide or page changes. Webmaster tools show nothing abnormal or any errors messages (some duplicate meta/title tags that are being fixed) All the pages of the site are indexed by Google Domain/page authority is above average for the niche (around 45 in for the domain in OSE) There are no ads of any kind on the site There are no special scripts or anything fancy that could cause problems I can't seem to figure it out, I know the site can be improved but such a severe drop where even very weak domains are out ranking suggests a penalty of some sort? Can anyone help me out here? hxuSn.jpg0