Stumped about why competition is beating us
-
Hi All,
Sorry if this question is too specific but I have exhausted all other options. I am optimising a site (www.sandafayre.com) for the key words 'stamps' and 'stamp auctions'. I get grade A for on-page, and off page shows we have way more links than the 2 sites who are beating us on Google UK. One of the sites who is beating me has the keywords in the URL, but the other site doesn't. Would anyone have any ideas as to what might be going on here? Thanks in advance for your help.
Nikki -
One other thing to consider is that you have a lot of that text in graphics. I would especially get your links on the bottom (sitemap, stamp atlas, help, etc) out of the images and onto the page so it can be read. Check out Google Webmaster tools and view your page as Googlebot. That can really give you a good idea on the best way to optimize your site.
-
You could also make better use of your title tag. You're gaining little SEO in the repetition of stamp 3x in tag.
I would also advise a design of the homepage, because, even if you do manage to attain good position your bounce rate will be remain high. The page is not what it could be and is costing you £££s
-
Thanks Daniel, I agree 100% about the UX. We are in the process of redesigning the site but I think it's going to take a while before it comes on board.
-
Also as a general rule, category links should be at the top for easy navigation.
Hope that helps.
-
Your page content is well-optimized, but the user experience (UX) could use a tweaking. There are flashing banners and categories, which make the website look spammy. Google's latest Panda Update has put an emphasis on UX, making time-on-page and bounce rate more important. Improving those attributes and having a graphic artist de-clutter your page layout would help.
The keywords in the URL isn't a big factor on its own. But since most people are lazy when in comes to anchor text, they only put the website name, which includes the keyword and gives that site a rankings boost.
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
-
Blogs created by a company for us and another company
Hi, we are not a big company and as well as creating our own blogs, a company for a while now has provided us each month with blog posts. But hey also provide other companies in the UK with the same content. Each month we create 2 or 3 of our own generated blog posts relating to the services we provide. Also we receive on average 10 blog posts (pulled in to the site through a word press add in and an rss feed from the company) to the site. The content is about specific topics which people will be searching for and they are really well optimized pages. Our own blog posts are looked at more often 80% to 20% but we do have a great link from a national site with a DA of 97 linking to one of their blog posts. But I wondered if google penalizes us because there will be other companies across the UK with the exact same content as us? Or whether these blog posts will help us because it is great content, even though other companies will probably have the same posts on their site? Nobody in our area uses this content as we have an agreement with the company which provides it. Many Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | danieldunn100 -
Seeking guidance setting up hreflang en-gb for international english website and en-us for North American site
Our website is configured like so: MyCompany.com Websites /en-gb - International English /fr-fr /zh-hans /m/en-us - North American site - completely different structure The first three bullets share a Drupal instance where the North American site uses a different PHP framework and has it's own unique look and structure. Currently none of the websites have hreflang tags which means that sometimes when searching in the US the en-gb results creep in. I want to turn on hreflang tags for the international english website (en-gb) but my fear is that Google may not return the en-gb results to English speaking users if they are not in the UK. We want these results to appear for anyone who is not in the US who speaks English. Just a note, Canada is not included in this since they'll be added to the North American site soon and will have their own hreflang tags.
On-Page Optimization | | bearpaw0 -
Site wide content like "why choose us" just above the footer on every single page
Hi Guys, I know that is not good having any kind of duplicate content on your site, but SEO is above all "competition", so I have to see what my competitor are doing to find the best way to outrank them. So this is my question: is it good or not having site wide content like "why choose us" just above the footer on every single page? At the moment, I can see many - too many - of my client competitors having the "Why choose us" as site wide content above the footer. The funny thing they don't use a couple of sentences, they have placed many words and 10/20 internal links, in other words, they have enough stuff to put down a stand alone page. What do you think: this is just a bad SEO practice or it may work, as I can see so many sites ranking well with this kind of piece of junk on each page. I am not going to recommend this to my client, but as am trying to detail every decision I make showing what the competitors are currently doing, my concern is that my client finds it and therefore will ask to have the same shiny piece of garbage above the footer. Thanks, Pierpaolo
On-Page Optimization | | madcow780 -
Stumped: Site No Longer Showing Up for Important Keywords
URL is: www.radianceofpalmbeach.comGreetings All:I have been working on our company's website for months, and I am finally at wit's end. The site was very out-of-date and had unfortunately been built upon some bad links before my arrival. My partner and I have redone the site with SEO best practices in mind: we created new content for the pages, and have been working diligently on correctly organizing the site. Despite everything we have done, our site has plummeted since September in terms of organic search. Here are some of my suspects: Panda/Penguin: a lot of the content of the old site had been copied. We did our best to make our content helpful and original, but I'm not sure we did enough. Also, many backlinks were suspect. I disavowed all that I didn't like Dec. 8. I have seen minor improvement, but not much. Name Change: Around late October, coinciding with one of the algorithm changes, the doctor insisted we change our name from New Radiance Med Spa to New Radiance Cosmetic Center. We noticed overnight tumbling, but it literally happened at the same time many were complaining about Penguin. Pages too far removed from root directory?: We tried to silo the site by category to make it specific, but I'm not sure if we went too far from the root directory. For example, our botox page is: http://www.radianceofpalmbeach.com/services/injectables/neuromodulators/botox-cosmetic/ -- Should it just be ./botox ? Everything is only one link away, so we didn't foresee a problem. No alternate forms of navigation: Our navigation is solely drop-down. Content Issues: Since the site launch, my boss has changed the organization of the site around. I don't think this should be a problem, but I honestly don't know. Technical Issues: We use a Wordpress site, and the designer has been pretty good about making the site clean and without errors, but perhaps there is something I am overlooking? ??: Despite these issues, I feel like our site should be considered better than many of our competitors who nonetheless perform much better than we do on important keyword searches. Type in "liposuction palm beach" or "botox palm beach" and we don't even come on page 1, whereas we used to dominate. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as, like I said, we are stumped. I feel like I have looked up every possible problem, and with the above list, we feel frozen as to which direction to turn.Thanks in advance,Michael
On-Page Optimization | | mikedelseo0 -
Why is my contact us page ranking higher than my home page?
Hello, It doesn't matter what keyword I put into Google (when I'm not signed in and have cleaned down my browsing history) the contact us page ranks higher than the home page. I'm not sure why this is, the home page has a higher page authority, more links and more social media shares, the website is an established one. When I have checked Google Analytics my home page gets more people landing on it than the contact us page. It looks like people are ignoring the contact us page and scrolling down until they find the home page. I'd appreciate any help or advice you might have. Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | mblsolutions2 -
A Page For Every Conceivable City In The US - Seeking Community Feedback
Hi Guys! If you ask Local SEO questions here in the Moz Q&A Forum, you and I have probably had the chance to chat at some point or other. This time, I'd like to ask you question! I'd like to request feedback from the community regarding a practice I've been running into for as long as I can remember. Here's what I'm talking about: Let's say the company is a national florist company, a cell phone service company, a website design company. They have national headquarters but either very few or zero physical locations beyond this. In other words, they are virtual rather than local, apart from their national headquarters. Their approach to online marketing revolves around creating a landing page for every conceivable city or zip code in the U.S. I would guess that the thought behind this strategy is that their product is available in each of these cities, and this is their method of getting the word out. Because I work almost exclusively with local rather than virtual companies, the scenario I've described falls somewhat outside of my work experience. It does, however, relate to what I do for a living because I frequently encounter these types of pages (some with near duplicate or very thin content) ranking in the organic results for local searches, alongside the local pack results. My questions are: What do you think of this practice? Does the quality of these types of landing pages factor into your assessment? In other words, if the pages aren't thin or duplicate, do they have value? Is this a practice you would recommend to a national, virtual company? If not, what would you recommend? I really appreciate you taking the time to read my question and consider replying!
On-Page Optimization | | MiriamEllis2 -
Stumped on why Google is not showing main site pages anymore
Recently had sites homepage listing taken off first page for brand name search even though search term is not competitive. Does anyone have any ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | Luia0 -
Homepage vs. Product page competition
I think my homepage and basic product listing page may be competing.. We have a very old domain with lots of links w/ generic anchor text ( click here, etc. ) That page is http://mybrand.com which Google ranks for our "widgets" search term. We have a page http://ourbrand.com/widgets that lists the 5 or 6 basic widgets we sell. This page is indexed also, but doesn't have nearly as many links since it is new compared to the age of the domain. After reading this.. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization I I'm not really sure I can remove all "widgets" links from our homepage, since that's a core part of our site's menu / hierarchy. So maybe my best effort would be to reorganize the page so that the homepage focuses on Our Brand Name Widgets .. and let the product page focus on the widgets keyword. Is having those two pages serve to represent those two separate but similar keywords feasible? Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | minutiae0