Inherited a site by well known company - Input and opinions please!
-
Hi all,
Just handed the keys to this site "newly" designed and put together by a large well known company during a small business experiment they were running. They took a dated old non-responsive site with questionable architecture and even more questionable SEO practices and made it responsive and well... what you see now. I skimmed it and started to review and audit but decided I was a little too close to be neutral so thought some third party opinions would be helpful as a start.
I guess I'm just hoping for some fresh eyes to take a look and give me your overall impression re: structure, coding, SEO etc and then some idea of how you might tackle all of what I was handed if it were a perfect world scenario where there was actually a good, strong budget and a lot of time to spend. WWYD in other words!
Thanks so much for any comments in advance!
-
Hey Pixel,
I wanted to mention that, for some reason, every time I've tried to access your site in Firefox, I get a Server Not Found error, though I can access it fine in Chrome. Something you might want to look into.
The site is lacking some very basic Local SEO best practices, including but not limited to:
-
No complete NAP in footer
-
No complete NAP on contact page
-
Title tags are not optimized with reference to San Jose
-
Homepage text also makes no reference to San Jose or any geography at all
So, while whomever built the site has made some good efforts at visual appeal, this business is hardly coming across as local at all, due to a lack of basic best practices.
In addition to working on the optimization of the site, I would suggest running the business through our free Check Listing tool (moz.com/local/search) to start assessing the state of citations.
Looks like there is good room for growth in this area:
And earning reviews will be super important. I'm seeing zero on Google or Yelp.
Here's a good post from Casey Meraz on auditing local businesses: https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/ultimate-local-seo-audit
There is great opportunity for this business to improve - lots to do! Good luck to you!
-
-
Thanks very much Patrick...Those are all things right on the money for what I was thinking in terms of how to go about the process of getting a handle on this. The design/typography is pretty bland so I now it needs some reworking on that front, too.
I haven't run it through any technical audits yet because I'm a bit afraid of what's going to turn up but yes, that's on my to do list this week. With that said, let's say this comes back with issues beyond the SEO, what should take priority here...Optimization and a ton of local SEO or code/compliance/structure fixes?
Right now this client needs calls and the way the site was put together, he's basically starting from ground zero in terms of results. I'm guessing there were no redirects or any attempt at saving a bit of the small results he had before and so it's like a whole new entry. Sigh.
Anyway, thank you again for the quick skim and advice. It really helps to have fresh eyes on it. If anyone has anything else, please throw it out there and don't be shy. I didn't design this site so I have no skin in the game other than I have to deal with it now. Also, if you anyone has any favorite tools, Id love to hear the suggestions.
Best to you all!
-
Hi there
I went through and did a quick skim. Here's what I found:
- Titles need to be optimized
- Meta descriptions needs to be optimized
- Remove meta keywords
- Images don't have alt tags
- No schema on the website (lots of opportunities here)
- URLs could be updated
- No canonical tags
- www. and non www. URLs both work
- https returns warnings
I would also run through a technical audit to make sure your bases are covered, as well as this site migration guide to make sure proper steps were taken.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Keyword rich domain names -> Point to sales funnel sites or to landing pages on primary domain?
Hey everyone,
Local SEO | | Transpera
We have a tonne of old domains we have done nothing with. All of them are keyword-rich domains.
Things like "[City]SEOPro" or "[City]DigitalMarketing" where [city] is a city that we are already targeting services in. So all of these domains will be targeted for local cities as keywords. We have been having an internal debate about whether or not we should just host sales funnel pages on these domains, that are rich in keywords and content......... ... Or ... ... Should we point these domains to landing pages on our existing domain that are basically the same as what we would do with the sales funnel pages, but are on our primary site? (keyword rich, with good and plentiful content) Then, as a follow-up question... Should these be set as just 301 redirects on these domains to our actual primary domain so the browser sees the landing page domain instead of the actual keyword-rich domain? ( [city]seopro.com ) Thanks guys. I know for some, the response will be an obvious one. However; we have probably way over thought this and have arguments for almost every scenario. We think we have an answer but wanted to send this out to the community first. I won't post what we are thinking yet, so that the answers can remain unbiased for now and we can have a conversation without it being swayed any one way. We understand that 301 redirects would be seen as a doorway page.
We are also only discussing in the context of organic search only.
If we ran the domains as their own sites, they would be about 3 pages of content only. Pretty static, but good content. Think of a PAS style sales funnel. Problem -> Acknowledgement -> Solution.0 -
One company, two audiences. Ok to make two sites?
I have researched and researched on this question, and I'm still not satisfied. Most of the answers on the Moz forum and otherwise are all from 2013, as well. So, I thought I'd bring it up again. I have two distinct audiences for a real estate business I'm working with (very different needs and interests): Farm Buyers Residential Buyers My client is wanting to expand their presence in the farm market. Their main competitor is ranking for, more or less, an exact domain name match. They want to spin up a site focused only on farm buyers. Here are the pros/cons in my mind of creating a separate site: Pros: Reaching/targeting a specific audience (better user experience), having domain name with keywords (I won't keyword stuff...promise), a site completely devoted to content regarding farms, a blog completely devoted to farms (we have a content strategy in place) Cons: NAP issues (same address), splitting up domain authority, a bit of brand confusion (though the same logo/brand will be on both sites) In my mind, the pros outweigh the cons. Any ideas on how to address the cons? I could just not include address and phone, but that seems ridiculous...catering to the bots and not the user. Thanks, everyone!
Local SEO | | Gabe_BlueGuru
Gabe2 -
From traction to non existent! What happened to my Photography site and what can I do to fix it?
Aloha guys, To start as I always do with the (awesome) Moz community I wanted to say thanks for the insight! This has to be one of the best online communities and help resource with great positive and concise help that really makes a difference, so many thanks everyone! PS I also do my best to relay what I learn here to fellow business owners and point them to SEO boosting avenues to help support the community as much as possible. Anyways... **My Photo website ** **Current top wedding website (I do enjoy her work!!!) ** Attached below is a link to some stats/graphs! The Problem! After the recent Google update last month I've had a drop in my site visibility from 5.8% and some change to now .7% of search volume.. Painful for my photo & video business here on Kauai to say the least. A few images are attached, is there also any correlations you guys can see or think may help to get my site up to the first page? I know we deliver some of the very best work here on the island and deliver great service too, its a bummer that we cant do more for folks visiting here that dont even know we exist! The question! Do you guys have any ideas on what can be done to get my page to gaining organic traction and doing great again? My goal is to have our business rank for Kauai Wedding Videographer, Kauai Wedding Photographer, and Kauai Family Photographer! My moz dashboard is still saying we're on the way for that but that my search visibility is way way down. Any clarity or ideas are greatly appreciated you guys! I would love to relay this to the wedding community as well! Warmest aloha from Kauai everybody and have a great day! NjELT NjELT
Local SEO | | Trey30 -
If I kill off the franchisee websites and create a corp SEO monster...will my Company's SEO suffer? Pros and Cons?
Our 25 franchisees sell one product of our 7 within the Corporate porfolio. We getting ready to release a brand new corp website employing all the best possible SEO practices. Since the franchisee's barely maintain their 3-page website...we are thinking of killing them off. We will create some market pages on the Corp side and continue to use HubSpot to pass along leads to the individual franchisees. Corporate has robust Content Marketing strategy in place. Any suggestions? Cases studies?
Local SEO | | Joseph.Lusso0 -
Does the physical location of a server effect the local rankings of a site?
I've just been running a report on a site and noticed that while they have a .co.uk domain it is hosted on a server in the United States and just wondered if anyone was aware, if the physical location of a server mattered to search engines for ranking purposes especially with local search?
Local SEO | | ben_dpp0 -
Law firm wants two separate sites
My client is a new law firm that represents criminal and personal injury cases. They want one site for criminal defense and one site for personal injury. Both of these sites can be filled with a ton of unique content. It is two separate areas of law and two different client bases. What I want to know is if this is bad for rankings? Will Google punish the sites? Thanks
Local SEO | | mrobby10 -
SEO for a web based company with no physical presence.
Hi I only have experience working in Local SEO and now Im facing the challenge of 1 clients which is based in Australia and wants to sell in Australia (protein bars) but the company doesn't have a physical presence. What do you think would be a good strategy? Do you think I still need to create NAP citations (if so that would probably benefit the SEO for one city and leave the others with less SEO influence?). Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Nico
Local SEO | | niclaus780 -
Im a big fan of niche web develop/seo companies. I was wondering how many clients can you ethically take on in the same field, located in the same city
How do niche web development companies justify having multiple clients in the same field in the same cities. I would love an explanation on how to justify this, and how many clients in the same field/same city is acceptable. A good example would be an seo company for auto dealers or hotels. Thanks
Local SEO | | aholyman0