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I have a website that just doesn't rank well against what at first glance appears to be a lower quality competitor site. So far - I, and "no one" else can work out why they sit above me in search. I have to concede and respect that they must be doing something right, but what? I just can't get to the bottom of it, and I've been trying for two years!....

Sometimes we can't see the wood for the trees and right now that seems to be me. I genuinely just want to know what I'm missing.

Two sites: bristolpest.co.uk and waspkilluk.co.uk

Key words: bristol pest control or pest control bristol

I need to ask you a huge favor.

Like many of you here, SEO and related digital/business topics are a passion. This Easter weekend, I made a huge decision, to make this industry my life and not my hobby. I am already a successful expert in my current field, but its time to join an industry with an exciting future - Its time to join you.

For those of you who love, live and breathe this industry I would be grateful for any seeds of wisdom you might have to share about your first steps as an independent professional.

Content needs to be good enough to share, and to be shared in the first place you need to be aggregating that content through social channels relevant to your target audience.

Try - Wow, Why and How

Content to "Wow" and stop them in their tracks - A big enough "why" to stay - A big enough "how" to meet their immediate need.

I agree with much of what has already been said here, however quality is not always engaging! Its nice, but it has to be attractive enough that it wows your visitors in the right way, and this is not easy, but definitely worthwhile.

Another problem with content that answers questions to quickly is bounce rate - if the answer arrives to quickly your audience will leave too quickly. finding content that slows down a visitor and holds their interest is important, but its a fine wire to walk.

It's on a responsive WordPress theme

• long page length

• high resource value

• Keywords in URL

• interesting choice of description and title content and format

• Nice file structure, repeating "southeastasiatravelblog.com"

• Embedded maps

Asking why it should be ranking as it is, should sometimes be reversed to ask, why shouldn't it rank well? What are your first thoughts? Sometimes sites with this kind of activity are one new crawl away from a ranking adjustment, but I also think they can offer clues as to how Google etc rank sites - anomalies are sometimes gems to be studied for your own success.

In addition to what has already been mentioned I look at Google trends and once the site is up and running, I use the webmaster tools>search traffic>search queries.

Many businesses will encounter seasonal variations in the product and service required. This will also need to be planned for and considered in content copy. Google trends can help identify these fluctuations and hot/cold spots.

Local ranking factors would likely consider a uniformity of information across your web footprint. However a local listing should have a number with a local area code. I have tried free phone codes etc and none convert anywhere close to that of a recognized local number.

If you are a large or national organisation, then people almost expect lots of different numbers. If you are a local brand, then authenticity would favor the local number, as should local SEO results.

Theory's aside, you need to test the numbers after you ask your customers what they think.

Hi - Hope this helps: The Home Page.

The top of the page looks fine, but would benefit from clearer and better positioned call to action buttons (example site: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/). You need clearer navigation to quickly funnel visitors where they expect, and want to be. This is likely one of the biggest reasons for your bounce rate.

The bottom half of the page looks amateurish and cluttered. To begin with, it simply requires better formatting so text and images line up more naturally. This will look much nicer, but more needs to be done. You need to be thinking - less is more for the home page, but its not necessarily that simple.

I think professional tweaking will help, but a complete re-design should be something you begin planning for immediately.

No one has mentioned authorship here. My local listings have benefited greatly from my Google plus authorship showing up in search.

In my experience Google+ has worked well for me, so I feel validated in recommending it. Yes it might just be a fad that will eventually be extinguished, but you need to take part and be engaged to get the benefits from it.

It is another free channel to reach your audience and being linked to Google should provide higher authority, because they can directly measure engagement. Google plus is also an excellent learning resource, with some terrific content being shared by authorities in every field.

Content on Google+ needs to be visual. Yes your posts can also show snippets of content and link directly to your site, but a visual hook is going to work well, because of the speed at which people scan through the posts. Having title text within the images can also be beneficial.

I have been on Google+ almost from day one, and the access to game changers and authority's in the field of SEO and SEM has been invaluable.

The best resources for Google+ engagement are on Google+. Just type the question into the search bar and the very latest posts and information is there for you to see.

Do you need to be engaging on Google plus in this industry - well yes, because why not?

Hi

After looking at your site it would seem that you would be better off providing preview pages for each drop down location and even the date. This might mean lots of extra work to begin with, but would offer much better targeting and might add another beneficial layer of user experience.

I am fairly new to the application of structured data, so seeing what Oleg has already said is really helpful. Please share your results.

Hi Gordon

Sub-domains in my experience are not the best way to dissect your content or your site with topics as varied as you are suggesting. The best method might be internal directories.

For Example: www.flower.com/roses/red.html and not  - roses.flower.com/red-roses.html

I tried using sub domains when I first started out, for my own business and duplicate content issues together with so much additional updating when major changes were required made it  a hassle that was not rewarded in ranking benefits.

I recently spent a month eliminating my sub-domains from search and found much more time available to focus on my main site. My rankings in local search flew to the top within a couple of weeks and organic rankings also benefited.

It looks like the same thing, yet it has a different on-page report for each version - why is this. Please share your ideas with me on this.

The original url is http://bath.waspkilluk.co.uk/index.html.

Many Thanks  - Simon.

I use G+ as a valuable resource tool. It is very visual which is why so many creatives love it. It is one of my first points of reference for finding up to date information on the SEO and SEM industry and it is also very easy to connect with what people like, who they they might be interested in etc. Its like Facebook for for people with a brain.

But - no, as far as I know it has tendered no customers, but has allowed me to access information that enabled me to improve my online activities and revenues.

So It scores A++ for me.

Thankyou Michael.

My content is quite strong within my niche, so I ranked well, but last month my rankings plummeted. On closer examination and scrutiny I discovered my anchor text needed updating.  Has anyone else seen this happening in the last four weeks?

Per and Deb - thank you so much for taking the time to give me some advice and reassurance on this question. With regards to the "missing gap", I took the code for the tag direct from Matt Cutts page on this, and did think at the time, "why is he missing a space?".

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/canonical-link-tag/

In this article his canonical code is written:

Any ideas why he didn't use the gap, a typo maybe?

I have added canonical tags to all my pages, yet I just don't know if I have used them correctly - do you have any ideas on this. My url is http://www.waspkilluk.co.uk

So true. This Onion article does indeed make you wonder about what you stop and listen to.

What you experienced is called "FLOW". Check out a book called "Good Business" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. When you achieve flow, your productivity soars.

Hi Alan

Thankyou for taking the time to offer advice to me. I have read your pages and it does raise some interesting points. One that although basic, is one I haven't yet paid much attention to is the issue of "The choice of www or non-www".

This is interesting in respect of how I set my canonical tags up. I noticed that I rank differently for www.waspkilluk.co.uk than for www.waspkilluk.co.uk/index. So it seems I need to add a canonical tag there. I guess index is my home page - but then isn't the root domain also my default homepage?

In fact - do you think you should set up canonical tags without the www. or won't this work?

Sorry for creating questions from questions.

Warm Regards

Simon

Hi James

I have had a thorough study of this issue today and your ideas have proved fruitful. I checked out the article by Matt Cutts http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/canonical-link-tag/ and then read the article by Rand Fishkin. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps.

it will take a few weeks to implement across the thousand or so pages I have, but it will be interesting to see how or if, it finally affects the root domains ranking.

Many thanks

Simon

Google is not fond of duplication, I have been very kindly told. So how much would you suggest is too much?

That makes a lot of sense, but the big question now then is simply this - how can you overcome the issues of duplication when you are targeting specific areas for a given product or even sub-category?

e.g. pest control - flea control - flea control bristol

This makes the issue of targeting local areas with out being penalized, a tricky task.

Of course I could be over-complicating things.

Do you have any ideas on work-arounds for this kind of challenge?

As a novice I created my main site, (waspkilluk.co.uk) and it was geo-targeted for my local City (Bristol). As I got better I created sub-domains(nailsea.waspkilluk.co.uk) for the smaller towns. Now I am suffering because I need to create a sub-domain for BristoI, allowing the main site to be free from geo-targeting and thus rank more cleanly for specific topics e.g flea control, wasp control etc, etc.

My question is simply this - How do I avoid or limit damaging my existing rankings when I swap the site content over to the sub-domain and remove the key word Bristol from the root domains pages.

Not a short question, but any thoughts would be lovely to hear.

Thankyou Chris and Sha for your feed back - I now have it clear in my head. You have been of great help. Thank you also for the link Sha.

Warm Regards

Simon

Thank you Sha for answering.

I am new to this - but I thought "www.waspkilluk.co.uk" was my root domain.

So have I got this a little mixed up - is "waspkilluk.co.uk" my root domain and "www.waspkilluk.co.uk" classed as a sub-domain?

Sorry if this sounds a little basic - be gentle.

I have just noticed that my sub-domains are ranking higher in Mozrank and Moztrust than the root domain - that seems nuts. Am I doing something wrong?

My background is in education, so I set up my site to be a resource and not just a sales brochure. People who visit my site stay on my site because the content is good. My SEO is only just getting started, but I passionately believe that great content, with great context is the way to go.

Great content must be worth the authentic natural links?