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
-
Best site structure for us?
Hey guys, I have a somewhat silly question that I probably know the answer to - but would still like to hear your POV's. We're a WP theme making company but we also build other stuff. Context: 1. All demos for themes currently go under domain.com/Theme_A/ The demo is lorem ipsum so is marked noindex nofollow. That being said we get rocking analytics data usually (not sure if it's still valuable for G after the noindex). 2. Currently we need landing pages for themes and we're running them under domain.com/Theme_A/optimized-landing-page-title.php dofollow and indexed ofc. My question is...Would we be better off to include all landing pages under a domain.com/wordpress-themes/ category/tax and then go for the optimized-landing-page-title.php page? Does it make any difference either or? Right now we're not REALLY running them on subdomains (though the structure seems like it), they're just folders. We're thinking that more seo juice would flow through the different pages if we have them all under the same category, rather than basically starting from scratch each time under a new folder. Right? Thanks!!!
On-Page Optimization | | andy.bigbangthemes1 -
Aggregator/comparitor site outranking us
Hi I would like to know if anyone has experience with trying to outrank an aggregator/comparitor website. We are being beat by one that also includes our range of products in their comparisons and I was wondering if there was a smart way around this?
On-Page Optimization | | Discovery_SA2 -
Lost SEO contract, new SEO wants us to do the following - can you explain why?
1. Make prokem.co.uk the master domain rather than prokem-corrosion-protection.com 2. Ensure each http URL is 301 redirected to its https counterpart via htaccess rather than in plesk 3. 301 redirect each www.prokem-corrosion-protection.com URL to its co.uk counterpart via htaccess. I can provide a list of pages to redirect as there are a number of duplicate pages that will need removing. It probably makes sense to implement these other changes at the same time: Remove all of the canonical tags currently on the site. Leverage browser caching by following Google’s page speed recommendations - https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/LeverageBrowserCaching Losslessly compress all of the website’s images. Combine and minify the website’s JavaScript
On-Page Optimization | | Simon_VO0 -
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 -
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 -
How to find competition for a particular keyword
Is there any operator to find the level of competition for a particular keyword in Google ? Is intitle:keyword a fair indicator ?
On-Page Optimization | | seoug_20050 -
How do I check how a competitor ranks in the UK vs. US?
In building my strategy I want to check how well my competitors rank in country specific searches, for example in Canada or the UK vs. the US. Can someone help me by pointing me in the right direction? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | jclubb0