Our SEO is garbage. can someone answer a few questions for me?
-
I've seen our SEO drop to more or less the bottom of the barrel, and I don't have any answers yet as to why.
SEOMoz is running it's crawl currently, and I have a few errors about duplicate titles and content, so I know I have some work cut out for me. But, why the sudden drop?
The only change I made at the time was a change to our URL structure, but all links were 301'd to their new location. Does this still hurt SEO that terribly?
Also, our robots.txt file is getting indexed and showing up as the first result at times. Very embarrassing. It's doing better than our other pages. I don't get what's happening here.
-
Were you logged into Google when you did this search, when you saw your sites? If so Google was showing you results based on personal search. Sites that you've clicked on recently will show up on the first page.
-
We used to be in the first page results for "thantakit international dental center", but now nowhere. I've attached a screen cap of our issue with the robots.txt file showing up for the results as well.
-
Mr. Rock,
First, thanks so much for helping me out. This is my first question to seomoz and I'm an SEO newbie. So far I'm amazed at how much people are willing to help and how quickly I'm getting answers.
I'm thinking of dumping our site map and just making our site more crawl-able in general. 5800 URLs does sound a bit steep... I will look into Xenu.
As for the URLs, the url structure is like this:
/dentists/[country]/[city]/[clinic name]
so what you presented is rather normal, it just so happens that the clinic name is so generic, so it looks kind of funny. Do you think there would be a better way to present the clinic landing page? I chose this so that there was a standard hierarchy for drilling down into the clinic landing pages.
Again, that's a ton. It is my #1 priority to tune the site for SEO right now and it looks like SEOmoz and its community t'll be a key tool in doing so.
-
I think I found a few things that you can focus on first.. Do a quick search with a free tool called Xenu and I just and the tool and it finding a ton of broken links, pages that are no longer active. You will wan't to go through and clean those up first. Since it gives a bad visitor experience when the find something that maybe helpful and they click the link and it is dead... You can keep visitors on your site just by making this change.
The crazy thing is Xenu crawled 5886 URL's ???? Do you have that many pages? IF not you maybe having some database issues.
Another thing that may have you in the dump is from the Panda updates with low content to page ratio with this like below, as it looks like from the sitemap I ran you have a ton of these..
http://www.dentaldepartures.com/dentists/mexico/cabo+san+lucas
that then goes to this page for more details:
http://www.dentaldepartures.com/dentists/mexico/cabo+san+lucas/cabo+san+lucas+dental
I hope this helps, just food for thought.
-
Just got finished reading the dialog, you mentioned landing pages that use to rank and they do not now.. Can you direct us to one of those landing pages that had in the past gernerated leads?
THx
-
no prob, phil. I know I have a tendency to be a bit vague.
I have analytics set up and have attached a image of our impression drop over the past few months. We pretty much don't exist on the web these days.
We used to be #1 for many of the clinic landing pages. A search for "Sani Dental Group" would place us #1, now it is on page 15 or something.
Maybe we pissed off google? We're working on updating our content and we need a marketing guy pretty badly so we can get our name out there, but I was hoping there were some things a lowly developer like myself could do in the in meantime.
Edit: added image
-
when you say "we have no links" are you saying throughout the site? or other sites pointing to us? (or both)
I can fix the internal links no problem. I'm already working on a solution for that currently. As for links to our site, that is always the toughest part, right?
-
Links links links. You have no links. Majestic SEO says your best link is this...
http://bangkok2night.com/links/ (slightly NSFW)
-
I know it seems like I'm just answering your questions with even more questions, but I promise I'll eventually be helpful :).
Do you have Google Analytics set up on your site? If so, I'd suggest digging in to find out exactly where you're losing this traffic. Did a specific keyword drop off? A certain type of keyword? A certain landing page? A certain section of your site? etc.
-
Well yeah you've got to build some high quality relevant links. Your site is not just going to rank from on page optimization unless it is a very uncompetitive niche. Which Dentists is probably going to take some linkbuilding.
-
the change happened last month as seen in the image. I haven't been doing any link building yet, so I guess that's on my list of things to do.
-
no, we haven't changed our site location.
-
Duh, sorry guys: dental departures
-
My guess is that you got hit by the penguin update. What kind of linkbuilding have you been doing? Also it would be nice to see the site and no what keywords you were targeting.
-
Did you recently change your sites location?
-
If you're willing to share the URL of your site then some of us here might be able to help. It's hard to analyze and offer suggestions without seeing the site since there are so many different things that it could be.
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
-
SEO Effect of inserting No indexed Contents in normal Pages (Nextgen Gallery)
Hello Dear Community, I'm running a photography website and have a question about the indexability of "No indexed Content" inserted on indexable pages. Background : I read everywhere that best practice is to "no index" all useless pages with few content, what I did with Yoast plugin : I no indexed all my nextgen galleries and "ngg_tags" since they create single pages for every photo, tags or slideshow. I did the same for all my porfolio-posts, price lists, testimonials and so on... Nevertheless, I inserted these galleries and portfolios on SEO optimized page for my target keywords. + Nextgen plugin automatically adds these images in the page sitemap. My idea is to have only my Seo optimized page showing in Google and not the others. Problem: I've been checking the results in Google Search Console, filtering by images : I discovered that most of the images featured in these Masonry galleries are not showing in google, and actually almost all the images indexed are the Wordpress from media gallery. I double checked with Screaming Frog, and the software doesn"t see images on these pages. My question is: Is the low indexablilty of these contents are related to the No indexation of the original contents ??? Does somebody has experienced the same issue that these contents doesn't show on Google ? in advance many thanks for your help
Reporting & Analytics | | TristanAventure0 -
How can I track my rankings on Google Images?
I noticed a small amount of traffic coming from a particular very generic keyword. Being pleasantly surprised that we are ranking for this, and after some digging, I found that we are actually ranking in Google images, rather than in the web results. How can I track whether other keywords are ranking in Google images? I use Rank Checker to track keywords in the main web results, but this doesn't have a function for Google Images. Help please - thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | TheJewelleryEd0 -
How can I redirect incoming links from an old version of my site ending in .ctlg and .ivnu?
My original site was published in 2001 using "version 2" software from Ivenue, the hosting company that I signed up with at that time. The site's structure was built in such a way that the primary category pages ended in the extension .ivnu. Product or item pages on the shopping cart side ended in the extension .ctlg. My site's name was and is [Lamplight Feather, Inc.](<a class="webkit-html-attribute-value webkit-html-external-link" href="http://www.tonyhill.net/" target="_blank">http://www.tonyhill.net/</a>). We built our business between 2001 and 2011 and by the last three years (2009 - 2011) of using their version two were averaging a million dollars per year in gross sales. We decided to "upgrade" to Ivenue's "version 3" in 2011 to take advantage of some more modern options and because their newer software created web pages ending in .html which we thought more desirable. We made the switch in late 2011. But it was a disaster. Traffic and sales dropped precipitously. For the past two years (2012-2013) our annual gross sales average dropped to $400,000. (Two other factors were involved beside losing the many incoming links and link juice we had built up over the years: Panda came in that fall and my little niche market (decorative feathers) was flooded with competitors.) However as I try to rebuild our traffic and business little by little, I am stumped as to how to redirect the many incoming links that went to our first site's .ivnu and .ctlg pages. I have constructed redirects for some of our current but changed .html pages like this and put them in the file cabinet and they work: For (example): http://www.tonyhill.net/feathers_c384589.html then But trying the same thing for (example) http://www.tonyhill.net/craftfeathers.ivnu still returns a 404. Is there something I am missing. Ivenue is useless in this matter by the way. Their "technicians" are no help. I plan to be migrating my site once again to a new hosting company and hope to solve this problem before then. Thanks for the attention, Tony Hill This is an example from Google Webmaster of the type of links that show up as 404's that I would like to redirect: | URL: | http://www.tonyhill.net/productCat96521.ctlg | | | Error details | Linked from | | <colgroup><col></colgroup>
Reporting & Analytics | | featherman
| http://www.tonyhill.net/productCat43986.ctlg |
| http://forum.muppetcentral.com/showthread.php?t=21416&page=2 |
| http://www.cosplay.com/showthread.php?p=3832751 |
| http://forum.muppetcentral.com/showthread.php?t=21416&page=2&highlight=fur |
| http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/puppeteers-resources-links.19330/page-2 |
| http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/how-do-you-like-my-puppets.18549/page-2 | | | | |0 -
Analiytics question
Hello guys, We are currently getting in our website around 600 daily visitors.
Reporting & Analytics | | WayneRooney
We getting around the 50 quotes a day.
Can i know trough Analytics from where all the visitors that click the quote button coming from ? Thank you0 -
What are the top free tools to use in SEO (apart from SeoMoz of course)
Hi guys, Can you point me the best free tools you're using for SEO (link building, etc.) - apart from SeoMoz - I'm kind of newbie in that area and in a discovering process. Thanks !
Reporting & Analytics | | zedisdead0 -
'Search Queries Report' in Webmaster Tools Question
Hi, How much do you use the search queries report in webmaster tools to research current rankings/movements? It does look like a great tool but the data doesn't seem to be spot on. For example a keyword over a week might have flux in position so lets say 6.0 then 9.2 for 3 days then back to 6.0. But I check the serp's for this keyword everyday and didn't see any movement?!?! Is this a good tool for you?
Reporting & Analytics | | activitysuper0 -
How can I see the history reports?
Hi, I want to see the history reports for my ranking. For example I can how my website traffic changed in past few months using Google Analytics but I am not able to monitor the performance of my keywords on seomoz. Is there any way to do it?
Reporting & Analytics | | ashish2110 -
Help with local SEO strategy for service industries
Here is the scenario I often wonder about: My client's tree removal service is ranking in #1 in local search for
Reporting & Analytics | | MozMan2
"tree removal town state." His Google Places account is set for a 30 mile radius. He has lots of directory listings and positive reviews. Some inbound links as well. The same client is ranking #1 in organic listing for "tree removal county state" ...I chose to target the county for organic listings because the client was dominating local search for the town. My reasoning: I thought, Google local search would bring all of the local specific searches for "tree removal town state" and organic listings would bring the broader searches for "tree removal county state." That is exactly what's happening and stats show there are some visitors coming to the site searching with the county name. Not a ton of traffic but a lot of keyword variations using the county name. The bulk of the traffic comes from the his Google Places listing for the town the business is located in which is great. Dilemma: My client is not ranking in local search results for neighboring towns just a few miles away and certainly not ranking in organic listings for neighboring towns either because we are targeting the county. He has a long list of town names he services in the footer area and this does seem to help for organic search in neighboring towns with little competition. Broad Question: How can I optimize pages for the same services in neighboring towns without duplicating content. For example, the home page title tag and H1 reads:
Tree Removal, Tree Trimming, Stump Removal, County State It would be very easy to create identical pages with title tags and page headings for the different towns but that would undoubtedly create duplicate content and would look weird to someone browsing the site. Specific Questions: Should I put the town name where the business is located in the title tag even though the site already ranks #1 for that town in local search, without having the town in the title tag? Why not use this importunity for an area that we are not ranking for? Do I nix the county and state and try to insert another town or two in the title and H1? Ideally I would like to have this site rank well in local search for all of the neighboring towns. This may be too broad of a post, (it is my first one) but perhaps there are a few of you out there that can outline strategies that work for service industries like, lawn care, tree removal, landscaping, etc. Thanks for reading.0