What is my site missing for improved ranking - Pls Help
-
Hi
I would really appreciate any advice or guidance on what my site needs to move onto the 1st page as I am at a loss on what else is required?
On a search for chartered accountants swansea according to the SEOMOZ campaign ranking report the site www.harrisbassett.co.uk is down in 27 position for this keyphrase in Google.
However when looking over the ranking analysis my site has a stronger authority, more root domains, more domain authority and linking root domains than 4 out of the top 5 listings. Also the onpage analysis of some of the top 10 results is very poor, with no blogs, social features etc
I have been building links based from competitor analysis which should be more than what is shown in the ranking report, but is my site missing any kep ingredients that would propel it up onto the 1st page - as the keyword difficulty is only 25% so I am struggling to work out what key elements/improvements are required for this final push.
-
1. Please redirect all non-www traffic to it's www equivalent.
2. Please redirect the http://www.harrisbassett.co.uk/index.html page to the / page.
-
Ok thanks - what do I need to ask them to do so that the main page is http://www.harrisbassett.co.uk and not the other 3 variations you mention
-
The best solution by far is the .htaccess solution. The canonical tag still leaves you open to others using and linking to the wrong page.
As far as your host, if they are a "real" hosting company, they will have the knowledge to change the htaccess file and probably have done so for hundreds if not many thousands of sites. If they cannot make this change quickly and easily, I would consider changing hosts. Any quality host offers 24/7 telephone or at least ticket support. If I requested this change for any client of mine it would be made in 24 hours at worst, and often much faster.
-
or can it be done with the canonical tag? as my host is a local company and not sure if they would do that or at least not very quickly
If so how would you implement this to solve the 4 pages into 1 scenario I have.
Alternatively I have access to the FTP of the site so if any experts in the forum can help with a .htaccess file that will solve the problem I would be very grateful.
-
My preference would be to ask your host to make that change. Most small sites use managed hosting, and almost every web host is willing to make that change for their customers.
If you make the change yourself and the slightest mistake is made, your website can be taken offline, your SEO compromised or your web security compromised. Additionally, the order of statements within the .htaccess file can alter the results.
-
Ryan
Many thanks - I applied some of your great advice last time which helped so I am hoping this will also do that
With the multiple homepages is it possible you could supply the relevant .htaccess file required so the search engines know it should point to http://www.harrisbassett.co.uk and not any of the other 3 addresses you mention
Thanks once more for your time and excellent help
-
I completely agree with Ryan here.
When I started (@ the furniture market.co.uk) our home page was attempting to rank for loads of key words, I created sub pages.. long story short... Just yesterday in the Rank Tracker report I have guided a brand new sub page "glass-coffee-tables" to number 1 for that search term on Google.co.uk, against Argos, Amazon, John Lewis, M&S.. It can be done. (10 months later & all white hat)
Concentrate on 'On Page' basics before you go off page.
-
The feedback I previously shared in your prior Q&A still applies.
I see your site presently ranked as the 14th result in Google.co.uk for "chartered accountants swansea".
You have a small site with 17 pages. The recommended approach would be to have your home page rank for your brand name "Harris Bassett" and an internal page to be created which specifically targets the keyword you wish to rank for "Chartered Accountants Swansea".
The process would be as follows:
1. Create a page titled "Chartered Accountants Swansea"
2. Use a H1 tag on the page "Chartered Accountant Swansea"
3. The content on the page should be specifically designed to support the page's topic.
4. There should not be other pages on your site discussing this topic or, if they do, then use anchor text to link back to the main page for the topic.
5. Earn links from other sites to the page using anchor text.
Your site has a variety of issues which I believe I shared with you previously when you presented this same issue.
1. Your home page is presently available under at least 4 unique URLs
http://www.harrisbassett.co.uk/index.html
http://www.harrisbassett.co.uk/
http://harrisbassett.co.uk/index.html
You need to fix this problem for your site on your ranking will suffer. Choose one version of your URL you like and 301 redirect the other versions to the desired URL.
2. Presently your home page title is "Chartered Accountants Swansea | Harris Bassett Swansea". You also have another page on your site, http://www.harrisbassett.co.uk/accountant-swansea.html. The page title is "Harris Bassett | Swansea Accountant". While it is a different phrase, there are strong similarities, especially for such a small site.
The problem is raised because you use the term "chartered" on the latter page, and you do not use any link to refer back to your home page.
3. Your home page is also diluted by focusing multiple terms. The page is further diluted by discussing multiple topics not related to "Chartered Accountants Swansea" such as Taxation, Outsourcing, Financing and Grants.
I know you are looking at your site and comparing it to some other sites with the feeling you should rank better. You are right, you should rank better but that wont happen until you fix the issues with your site. The rankings as they stand seem perfectly valid to me. Yes, you mentioned a few of the 200+ factors which determine a page's rankings where your site performs better, but the above items should be addressed so you can cash in on those metrics.
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
-
[help] I launch my site 2 month ago
Hi all i launch my site 2 month ago here is site link seotoolscloud.com my site is index in google but not article index now even my article also written by self?? any one tell me how can index fast and what is best solution to rank my site??? help help help
Link Building | | 63bxbbzhsj0 -
Rankings Dropped After New Backlinks.
I have a low-traffic website (under 100 unique visitors per day) and I've encountered a strange issue started yesterday morning. I acquired three back-links, one of these back-links is contextual and the other two are site-wide. The site-wide back-links are from PA 40+ blogs. It looks like the back-links are already indexed by Google. Despite these new back-links, my rankings across multiple keywords have dropped several positions. I'm new to SEO, but I would assume new back-links would improve my rankings. None of these back-links are low quality links, they are from real established blogs with high domain and page authority values. Could anyone give me insights into why my rankings may have dropped with new back-links?
Link Building | | poke11 -
How much 'ranking power' would a link from a privacy policy page of a Big Brand have if the site content is totally unrelated?
Let's say that Site A is a large brand with high authority ( Moz shows it at 90 DA). Site A is about “Blue Shoes”. Site B is about “fishing”. If Site A links from their privacy policy page to Site B … would that inbound link carry enough weight in a way that could impact rankings for Site B given that the content is totally unrelated and it's a link from a privacy policy? I’m asking if the work to get clients/partners do this help. I have a hypothetical question for you all! Site A is a large brand with high authority ( Moz shows it at 90 DA). Site A is about “Blue Shoes”. Site B is about “fishing”. If site A links from their privacy policy to Site B … would that inbound link carry enough weight in a way that could impact rankings? I’m asking if the work to get clients/partners do this help.
Link Building | | RosemaryB0 -
Will feeding a blog through a widget onto a wix site help rankings?
I have a client I am writing blog content for, however his site was recently redesigned on wix html5. They offer no native blog. I have used a widget to embed blog from another site, however does this help seo in any way? When people share on social media, etc., it is linking the embedded page, not the clients site, right? So it would not be giving any link juice to site. It also doesn't help for organic search of content if it is embedded, is that right? I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how to overcome this issue. Would creating a "faux" blog on the Wix site work (as in multiple pages that I would then categorize and link to each other to navigate like a blog myself)? Wix looks like it has page length maximums too, so I'm not sure how I would get around that. It is also clunky to share on social media without a "share" button for viewer, but perhaps I am mistaken. Is that a ridiculous solution? What have other people done to deal with this issue and get better rankings with Wix platform? Thanks in advance for any input! I'm feeling a little frustrated with what to do.
Link Building | | Quill_Quotient0 -
Link profile improvment
I need some guidance on how to improve my link profile, on the whole it's a strong profile compared to my competitors. Yet they rank higher then I do, with seems odd to me. My competitor scores are: www.frontrangecounselingcenter.com/marriagecounseling.html Domain Metrics:
Link Building | | Starman3
Domain Authority
38/100
Page Metrics: Last index update: 11/28/12 Page Authority Linking Root Domains Total Links Facebook Shares Facebook Likes Tweets Google +1
40/100 21 187 0 0 0 1 My scores are: http://www.fivestarcounselingservices.com/ Domain Authority
56/100
Page Metrics: Last index update: 11/28/12 Page Authority Linking Root Domains Total Links Facebook Shares Facebook Likes Tweets Google +1
63/100 1,387 4,741 2 0 0
2 Thank you for you suggestions, Robert Whitman LPC, MA, CACIII | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |0 -
5th failed Google reconsideration attempt, can you help? (are scraper/related news sites the issue?)
(sorry for the long question - I thought it would be useful to give the background!) I am really struggling a Google's reconsideration request for my site, and although we thought we had removed almost all the 'bad' backlinks I am still getting no-where... We are really wanting to focus on building our brand, and establishing our site as an authority but this penalty is really holding us back. The latest response from Google: There are still many inorganic links pointing to your site. At this point, we believe we’ve evaluated these links appropriately, and no further action from us is required. In order for your site to have a successful reconsideration request, we will need to see a substantial, good-faith effort to remove the links, and this effort should result in a significant decrease in the number of bad links that we see. We do not recommend that you submit another reconsideration request until you have been able to make a good amount of progress. Once you’ve been able to get the links removed, please reply to this email with the details of your clean-up effort. My Website: http://bit.ly/KXg8y1 History: This is a new domain - approx 6 months old Old domain received a Google links warning We decided to start a new website, launch a new brand and start from the beginning We 301 re-directed the old domain so we didnt lose customers We then got a Google links warning for the new site We assumed this was related to links from the old site and so removed the 301 redirect on the 20th August Our old sites links still show in Google webmaster tools Reconsideration History 1st re-consideration request: Explained the 301 redirect had been removed, assured we would now be focussing on high quality content/brand building and after 2 weeks received a standard message to say that still had inorganic links 2nd Request: Went through the new sites links (using open site explorer, AHREFs, SEO Majestic and GWM) and removed those we identified as low quality (mostly directories built by an SEO company we had started working with). We complied a spreadsheet with all the links in it (including 301 redirect links) and explained which had been removed, webmaster contact details etc. We also uploaded our template email and screenshots showing contact with webmasters. 3rd, 4th and 5th Request: We went through the new site links and were able to remove a few more links which were thin or could be seen as inorganic, and the end result is that apart from 6 links we have removed all those we have identified as inorganic. Links The old site had some pretty poor links We have done no paid linking, no blog networks, no spammy web 2.0 sites on this site. We've added good quality content to our blog, focussed on social media, published an infographic, and are committed to long-term brand building The links mostly come from guest blog posting. An SEO company (who told us they were 100% content based) built some directory links - but 99% of these have been removed There are some links from Scraper/related news sites (ones that have related blog posts or scrape images etc) Press releases which were picked up and re-published (some of these include anchor text) My Question/s: Do you think Google is still seeing the links from the previous 301 redirect in Google webmasters and including these still? Are these scraper/related post sites causing the issue? (organic links - but some dubious sites) Are sites re-publishing our press releases causing the issue? (organic links - but includes some anchor text I really appreciate your time on this one, I have tried really hard to identify and remove links, but am now struggling! Many Thanks
Link Building | | twhite0 -
Ad banner from news site
Hi Everyone, I have a company calling me about adding a banner for our business on a news site for a monthly fee. The fee includes the banner and a profile page. The domain authority for the news site is high (84) but the profile page that it links to actually goes to a 3rd party site (DA=65). It is from this page that I could link back to our site. Aside from the marketing value of the 250x300 ad on a page that gets a ton of traffic, would it be better to link back to our site from the profile page on the 3rd party site or directly from the banner on the news site? I hope I've given you enough info. Best,
Link Building | | AC_Pro
Robert0 -
Will removing old (3 years+), low quality inbound links potentially improve my rankings?
I have a client site with thousands of old very low quality links purchased from directories etc over several years - I am certain these are doing nothing for the current rankings and I advised them to stop buying these links 18 months ago when I first started working with them, but do you think pro-actively getting old poor quality backlinks removed will potentially improve the site's rankings?
Link Building | | simoncmason0