Welcome to the Q&A Forum
Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.
Choose your clients carefully Simon especially the ones that don't pay you a lot of money. They are the ones that expect the most amount of work to be done for them and will be on you everyday demanding proof of work. Manage the client's expectations with results from day one. Good, clean SEO takes time and delivers long lasting results. It's all about the education and transparency with the clients.
All the best.
Hi John,
A quick check of your backlinks IN OSE shows some other questionnable links like submityoursite.org , freeadddirectory.com, addurlshopping.com, txtlinks.com
Did you submit them for non inclusion as well. Perhaps Google is referring to those links not the relevant ones.
Cheers,
SEO5..
Analytics screenshots/GWT access would be helpful for more investigation. I checked SEMRUSH and it does not seem like the site is ranked for any keyword.
There are no standard conversion rates as there are a lot of variables associated with each landing page . (Call to action, conversion elements , industry etc)
Here's an interesting insight from Marketing Experiments:
Are you sure it is organic traffic and not referral traffic. Take a look at Google Webmaster Tools to see which keywords are driving traffic to the site and getting the most impressions. Compare that with analytics stats to see where the visitors are coming from (geo). Once you have the keyword and the geo location info, you can do some manual queries to see if you are actually ranking for those keywords.
Thanks Erwan, appreciate the insights
Some more posts for you below as reference:
Are sitewide links bad for SEO
Whiteboard Friday - Sitewide, Reciprocal and Directory Links (Interesting Comments)
If your home page has content that is related to the inner page then there is a possibility. With all the Google updates, super relevant in depth content pages related to keywords have the best chance for ranking.
You should also look at the sites ranking on the first page and analyze all the on page and off page factors that are getting them to rank. Compare these factors with your own site and work on them to make it better.
The site below has social media properties and other sites coming up before it's own listing even for the exact search of the site name. Any ideas why this is happening?
Any input is appreciated.
Hi Peter,
The strategy you adopt really depends on a lot of factors like the level of competition in that country , the kind of sites that are ranking for that genre (geo targeted domain or not) and your overall strategy for the client. You will find the link below useful:
Cheers,
SEO5..
Helpful article on this topic listed below:
Try emailing the forum administrator for help. They may assist in pinpointing the source of the traffic and the exact link on the forum causing it.
We recommend Rackspace. Have had a great experience with them for many of our clients. Their customer service is fantastic. Their cloud hosting solution also has the ability to handle huge spikes in traffic.
Hi Dana,
In our opinion that would technically be treated like a paid link and is in violation of Google guidelines. Link below:
Link Schemes (especially the part that says "Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites")
Better to be safe than sorry:). Our suggestion in this case would be to set up call with the blogger (a more personal discussion) as opposed to an email and then get your views across to him. I'm sure he will appreciate your proactive approach in doing this before you get into any issues with Google. Also the fact that you do have a reputation to protect with your clients and in the industry, so why put that in jeopardy.
Cheers,
SEO5..
Thanks Jane, very insightful. Much appreciated.
Thanks Matijn. Agree with the spammy footer.
This site was moved to a new host by the client a month back and is still not indexed in Google UK if you search for the site directly.
www.loftconversionswestsussex.com
Webmaster tools shows that 55 pages have been crawled and no errors have been detected. The client also tried the "Fetch as Google Bot" tactic in GWT as well as running a PPC campaign and the site is still not appearing in Google. Any thoughts please?
Cheers,
SEO5..
Hopefully the content is good enough that the initial push using this network will expose it to a larger audience and result in more shares. That's the premise behind using this tactic.
1. Where is that keyword ranking ; Top 5 or top 10. If it is ranking 9 or 10 then that partly explains why your impressions count is high yet the clicks are low and in that case changing the keyword phrase to a more call to action oriented one would not do much for improve the CTR. (although it may help a bit) . If the keyword is ranking high and is quite lucrative , i would not do a lot of testing on it. I would suggest creating another page on the site with the longer title that you want to test, optimize that page and see how it performs with the CTR.
2. I would recommend checking the optimization elements of the page using the Moz On Page Grader.
Cheers,
SEO5..
Hi Bob,
Link analysis for a competitor's site is a very solid tactic for finding linking opportunities in our opinion. You can find a lot of relevant links by utilizing this strategy and use it for your site's benefit. Although DA is important, analyze lower DA links and question their relevance for your site. If the relevancy is high, then i would suggest going ahead and adding your site to it as well.
Couple of resources below to assist you with your query:
31 Link Building Tactics Discovered from Competitive Analysis
Cheers,
SEO5..
I would agree with Michael's assessment. Better to be safe than sorry. Reduce the keyword stuffing proactively and think more about the visitor than the search engine and provide them with useful content.
Couple of links addressing this topic below:
We're testing this network Outbrain to promote quality content. Will do a case study on how it works out once we have tested the network.
Hi Byran,
If the site does not have any local presence, that would be a huge disadvantage against better optimized sites that do have a local presence. The level of competition in that industry would also make a difference. I'd like to point out a post by Rand below as reference to this discussion. The post is a bit old (2010) however a lot of the concepts addressed still seem to be revelant today.
Ranking in Multiple Geographies
Cheers,
SEO5
Thanks Brady, the backlink profile looks clean.
Thanks Travis,
It does seem like the .ca is playing a big part in their rankings. I agree, would be very surprised if the site keeps ranking in the long haul.
Thanks Takeshi, appreciate your input.
In light of all the Google updates in 2013, have you updated/changed your title tag best practices?
Is the format of (Keyword | Brand) still working well for your optimization efforts or have you started incorporating an approach similar to this format . (Keyword in a Sentence | Brand)
Thanks in advance for your opinions.
Hello Mozzers,
Thought we'd get the group's opinion on this: This site (power lead generation) is ranking for the keyword "lead generation" on Google.ca at the 5th position organically . It's performing even better than some of the better optimized sites with more content related to this keyword. Any input would be appreciated.
Cheers,
SEO5..
To add to Oleg's response, i would suggest you to do a backlink analysis for your competitors (each keyword) and compile a list of common directories that you see you competition being a part of.
you might find the below link useful
Hi Samuel,
Depending on the client and the budget, the way forward in our opinion is an integrated marketing strategy. As EGOL has mentioned, it is quite tough to survive with just one tactic because eventually that niche will be identified by the other players and they will beat you if they have deeper pockets. You cannot just rely on SEO to provide your client a return. The strategy now has to be a mix of SEO, PPC, social media, email marketing and other mediums that are relevant to the client's niche.
Cheers,
SEO5..
Good response Patrick. I would agree with him. You can target multiple niches on one site however take due care with your on site efforts / taxonomy structure and get ready to add loads of good relevant content.
Is the data in the other infographics available publicly from other sources or was it researched independently by the companies that produced the infographic. IMHO If it is available, then you can use it as long as you quote the sources.
Hi Kevin,
Google's tool only give exact match search volumes whereas Bing includes broad phrase and exact match results. This might be the cause for the discrepancy in volumes. Google's data being displayed in the keyword tool might not be that current.
Cheers,
SEO5..
A lot of you might already be aware of the recent Google change at encrypting all search activity except for clicks on ads. Rand did a whiteboard session on this recently.
How is everyone planning to adjust their research data to accommodate for this change?
Hi Dennis,
What was your cost per link acquisition when you used them? Did the links generate any traffic?
Cheers,
Has anyone used Zemanta for their clients. Would appreciate feedback on their service. What got our attention was the sales guy using Rand's testimonial below in their email signature.
_"I'm not just a fan, I'm a believer — Zemanta is a remarkable way to build great links." _
Rand Fishkin — CEO of Moz
Good info Vadim.
Very useful info in the post below as well:
Wordstream has published a guide on this topic and can be downloaded from the link below:
Check out the White Spark citation finder tool. You will find lots of relevant citations for that website that you can list it in. That should help with the local rankings.
You may want to exercise the option of reporting your site to Google so they can take a closer look at the search results associated with your site.
Google has stopped updating the page rank data in the toolbars so i would not worry too much about the PR info. Have your rankings suffered? Has your traffic dropped?