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
-
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 -
Selling in a US and UK market so what language should my site be in? UK English or US English
We are a UK based company who sell a have a holiday product mainly to the UK and the US markets. We are just reworking the website and hit the wall on whether we should be writing in British English or US English or do we just do both? Any help would be much appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | Mutatio_Digital0 -
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 -
Google's mobile-friendly update. How significant is the impact for us?
Hi guys. Recently I got an email from Webmaster-tools saying our site is poorly optimised for mobile devices, and that it’s going to heavily affect rankings from April 21st. I’m worried to say the least. We literary cannot afford a hit on traffic at the moment 😞 We rank well for niche terms like ‘customised diary’ and ‘personalised diary’. So question... Because we rank well for these very specific searches will we still take a hit on rankings after the update? Won’t our high relevancy for those search terms be enough to keep us high in the results? Also, do you know if this change is specific to the users device? E.g) Someone on a mobile device will get mobile-friendly results, whilst users on a laptop will get different results altogether? I'm just trying to get a sense of how much this update will effect us. Any isights, suggestion, or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Our site. Thanks in advance. This community is invaluable to us 🙂 Isaac - TOAD Diaries.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
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 -
No progress in 4 months in a non-competitive area !
Hi SEOs 🙂 We are a SEO and Web Agency based in Cholet, France. We have this client (Alpage Choaille : <cite class="_sd">www.alpage-choaille.fr/</cite>) for now 3 months, we have done all of the on-page optimization so far but can't get ANY progress on all of the 15 keywords tracked. This is not a competitive area, and we are looking at "local" rankings ( chalet beaufortain, gite beaufortain, gite en savoie, gite de charme, chalet de charme). We haven't done much OFFSITE, and we can't see any links on Open Site Explorer or Moz as this site is not part of their database. Many thanks in advance for your help. Best Regards, Benjamin
On-Page Optimization | | EnjinFrance0 -
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