Site not progressing at all....
-
We relaunched our site almost a year ago after our old site dropped out of ranking due to what we think was overused anchor text....
We transferred over the content to the new site, but started fresh in terms of links etc. And did not redirect the old site. Since the launch we have focused on producing good content and social, but the site has made no progress at all. The only factor I can think off is that one site linked to us from all of their pages, which we asked them to remove which they did over 3 months ago, but still showing in Webmaster tools....
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
-
Hi Jason,
Thanks for writing in. Without going into a full site audit (which could take hours-days) a few areas I might take a closer look at:
-
As others have mentioned, the site design does have an outdated feel. Beyond user experience it looks like a site that might be vulnerable to Panda updates. Relentlessly improving user experience will likely lead to an increase in rankings.
-
Is the new site a copy of the old? Just wondering if any duplicate content exist out there from the old site. If you, you probably want to make sure to remove all old content from Google's index.
-
I'd give the site a full link audit. You can do this by hand using Google Webmaster Tools and Open Site Explorer. Lately, I've been using Link Detox with good results. Disavow any dodgy links you can't remove.
Overall your link profile looks decent for your vertical, nothing too penalty worthy but some of the directory-style links may be suspect (or at least lower in value) in Google's eyes.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
-
Nope, webmaster is all good.
-
Thanks Jesse, we are in-fact just undertaking a new design, as like you we felt it was a little difficult to understand all the info. We'll address the alt tag issues as part of the redesign.
Do you think that is what is causing the lack of serps?
-
Couple pointers to increase your onsite SEO:
Alt tags - I see very few alt and title tags on your images and when I do see them they don't seem to be attacking specific keywords. Do so but not in a forced manner, keep it organic and relevant. For example your home page is title "Mobility Aids" yet that keyword only exists 5 times on the page and zero times in images titles or alts.
Also with your images you might want to consider naming the actual file something other than padlock2.png or things like this... That is a personal preference and I can't really back it up with data but I swear it'll help.
Your blog is a bit funky. The titles of the most recent articles are simply chapter numbers and tell me nothing about the content. It makes me not want to read them at all. You need to try and attract users with your content, not deter them.
Another article I randomly clicked was something about an Interview you did. This was the entirety of the article:
"Just got back from interviewing a mobility scooter user for tips and advice... Is there a better way to get advice than from someone who owns and uses a scooter. Probably not. Finished video coming soon."
That's it. It was posted in August. See right away as a user I feel like you aren't trying and don't want to return. I bet your bounce rate is rather high and length of visit rather low. These factors matter for sure. Engagement is arguably the most important thing when it comes to your design.
Speaking of design, it is kind of all over the place. I didn't really understand the layout and had trouble navigating. I looked for the blog which was found via a weird button at the very bottom of a very long wordy home page with weird formatting. At the top of the home page is a "usefull articles" button which goes to a page with a few titles that are underlined and say "read more" and then more links pop up and it doesn't even look like you can click the "read more" part because it's not actually a link but instead a clickable div and my run-on sentence here is an attempt to illustrate the confusion I experienced. Whew.
So I guess what I'm saying is you should focus more on improving the design, layout, and usability of your site. Please don't misconstrue my comments as demeaning or poking fun at your site. It isn't terrible at all. I just think addressing the issues I've pointed out might actually go a long way to improving your ranking. The social stats are great but if users land on your site and leave immediately due to poor UX then it's all for not.
Hope this helps. Don't give up!
-
Hi Jason
Well I have run a few checks and I must admit I cannot explain why your site is not ranking in the top 50 SERPs for some of the key phrases you are targeting. Some of the content is a bit thin in places but, I have checked quite a few pages I would have thought you should be in the top 50 for as a minimum and you are not.
So, like you I am scratching my head a little. I presume you have a Google Webmaster Tools account for this site. Is there anything reported in there that would indicate an issue?
Peter
-
The sites has made no progress in ranking.....
Our social consist of Google plus (97), facebook (2600 likes) and twitter 500 plus followers with which often retweet our posts. The content is user focused, and try to answer questions with in depth articles. Our site www.help-my-mobility.org if that helps.
-
Hi Jason
Are you able to give more information? What do you mean specifically by your "site not progressing at all"?
A lot has changed with Google over the last year. If you started with a new site, then that site needs to build up its authority. When you say you have focussed on producing good content and social that is good. But it's important to check if you have optimised that content correctly, is it customer-focused and targeted at the questions and information your target market are asking and looking for. With social are those you are engaging with sharing it through likes, tweets/retweets, +1s etc? Have you checked your site against competitors? How do they compare?
There's a lot of things to look at and check so with what you have said I can only give you ideas about where the issues may lay, but it's likely to be an issue with one or more of the above.
Peter
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
-
New site failing to rank - could this be why?
I have a new client site that is not appearing anywhere in the top 100 for its main keywords. ASSUMING that this is not an issue with optimization or link quality, I am wondering whether it might be the following... The client's company has a parent company whose website has decent authority. This website links to the new (client) website. In addition, the 2 press releases we have done include links to both companies, since one was an outgrowth of the other. This is all 100% natural, so my inclination is that this is not causing the issue. But does anyone have any experience to suggest otherwise? That having website A linking to website B, and 50+ press release websites linking to both, could be causing the algorithm to throttle website Bs ability to rank? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zakkyg0 -
Domain Change Before or After Site Revamp?
In the last year traffic to our site has dropped in half and ranking has dropped significantly. Very little no content has been added in that time. We would now like to improve ranking by adding new content. 2 domains effectively exist for the site. The existing domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. But www.metro-manhattan.com redirects to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Our company is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.. We registered www.metro-manhattan.com and created the redirect to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com in 2012. www.nyc-officespace-leader.com was registered in 2006. Many links to the site show www.metro-manhattan.com and I believe this may be a source of confusion for Google. Would it be best to make the domain consistent at this time by redirecting it once and for all and to do so before adding new content? If this is done correctly can we avoid taking a hit on ranking? Note: -www.nyc-officespace-leader.com is the old domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
-www.metro-manhattan is the new domain but has existed since 2012 and has been redirecting to the old domain since then
-The company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space (similar in branding to the new domain) Am I correct in assuming that having the 2 domains may be causing issues with Google involving domain authority? Change the domain before adding content or add content before?0 -
Progressive JPEGs. Wondering if I should consider it OR not?
Hi all, I am pretty new to the concept of progressive jpegs so don't know much about it. I believe for a webpage with small images (under 10Kbs) I probably shouldnt worry about progressive jpegs but i do have some images for the size 250+ KBs. Should I go ahead and turn it into progressive from baseline?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika10 -
Site Architecture: How flat is too flat?
There's a lot of debate out there as far as too many internal links or too many levels of a website. I've seen the videos from Rand and I've read a lot of the posts here on Moz, but I just want to know where everyone stands on this. Anyone have experience with architecture while working on a large E-commerce site? We're talking Millions of pages and over 1,000 links off the homepage alone. Anyways, I don't want to get too specific. I mostly just want to hear about experiences of the community. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GalcoIndustrial0 -
How come this site does so well?
Hi Guys, It's bugging the crap out of me why this site does so well http://www.stagedinburgh.com/ when I look at it's link profile its so weak and terrible plus many links comes from the sites they own. Somehow the site out ranks many sites for search terms like edinburgh stag party, edinburgh stag do, edinburgh stag weekends. Am I missing something? They seem to only have links from 13 domains and they aint great. What am I missing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty0 -
What this site is doing? Does it look like cloaking to you?
Hi here, I was studying our competitors SEO strategies, and I have noticed that one of our major competitors has setup something pretty weird from a SEO stand point for which I would like to know your thoughts about because I can't find a clear explanation for it. Here is the deal: the site is musicnotes.com, and their product pages are located inside the /sheetmusic/ directory, so if you want to see all their product pages indexed on Google, you can just type in Google: site:musicnotes.com inurl:/sheetmusic/ Then you will get about 290,000 indexed pages. No, here is the tricky part: try to click on one of those links, then you will get a 302 redirect to a page that includes a meta "noindex, nofollow" directive. Isn't that pretty weird? Why would they want to "nonidex, nofollow" a page from a 302 redirect? And how in the heck the redirecting page is still in the index?!! And how Google can allow that?! All this sounds weird to me and remind me spammy techniques of the 90s called "cloaking"... what do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Has my site been penalized?
Our site was listed on the first page for the phrase Active SEO on Google.co.uk. We suddenly find ourselves on page 4 overnight and we're not sure what's going on. We have not undertaken an Black hat techniques however the site is fairly new. Anyone have any ideas as to what is going on?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MassivePrime0 -
Questions about turning my wordpress site into an ecommerce site. Experience needed.
I have a wordpress site that is about a product that is now getting some great traffic. Right now It has affiliate stuff on it. I want to sell my own product so I will be turning this wordpress site into an ecommerce site. I want to redesign it so I am not looking for simple plugins to just add a cart. The part I am really confused about is what to do with my posts and categories? How does that work when turning this site into an ecommerce site? Lets say the site is "hats for adults" My post pages are things like "funny hats for adults", "hats for adult men" etc etc. Would I turn these posts pages into like category pages that have a category of products. Or should I create real categories and have my developer turn those into the ecommerce category pages and then redirect my posts to those categories? Maybe I don't even know what I am talking about. Is this even making sense? This is a small site (5posts and 1 category) and most of the traffic will come from the homepage keywords anyways.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PEnterprises0