I can't get my page to rank. What am I doing wrong?
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I'm new to this forum and this is my first question. So if I'm not supposed to ask this type of question, please forgive me. I'm trying my best to get http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/#!roofing/bbb1e to rank on the first page in Google for "roofing contractors" in the following SW Florida cities: "Naples, Bonita Springs, and Fort Myers."
Our company has a physical address in Fort Myers only so I understand it's going to be harder to get it to rank for Naples and Bonita Springs. But I can't even get this page to rank well for "roofing contractors in Fort Myers." The page authority is 25 and our domain authority is 27. Our home page authority is 39.
Our primary category in Google is building restoration & preservation. But we have divisions in our company:
- Roofing
- Concrete
- Ornamental metals
I would love it if our roofing page could rank higher than the third page, which is where it currently sits. I worked really hard to get each of our roofing-material manufacturers to link directly to our roofing page, not the home page.
My hope is that you can help me because I'm really discouraged. Thanks in advance.
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hello i would like to show you my case study....
i did a seo service for a website in my country for a really competitive keyword 'wedding dress'. total of 15,000 searches a month!
from checking my competitors (the firsts google result) i found out easily they used wix!!
nice website - not to go crazy about. with really thin content - only big image slider and 5 words on the ranking page
now how did they get there? compering to others who offers much better content!
they did a really good link building. their links are coming from major big websites!
and their on page seo is ... sorry for the word ... !@#$hit
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Brent,
Thank you for pointing out the two H1 tags. I thought it was one tag, but now I see that it's not.
As for breaking out _flat, metal, tile, and shingle, _that's the way WCFE's previous site was set up but those pages didn't rank well. I figured it was due to them not having enough content to stand on their own. So I decided to combine them into one page, thinking that Google would reward it with a tremendous amount of helpful content. That hasn't been the case, unfortunately.
Thanks for all the other links too. I've got a lot of homework to do!
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Hey Jake!
My pleasure, and I hear you on trying to compare one client to another. With geography/competition both playing such major factors in how well any given business ranks, it can be like comparing apples to oranges. Wishing you good luck!
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No worries about the single page site, Miriam.
I have created other websites on the wix platform such as MontessoriAmerican.com and this site ranks fine for preschools in the Chula Vista, CA area. But there are others that aren't ranking as well. So it's been hit or miss.
Thanks for the Moz community article "wix, is it any good for seo?" I have to say that there is much more functionality now than when that thread originated in 2013. Even since 2015, it's gotten better...many of my pages are getting indexed by Google.
Your suggestions for a unique page for each city and a unique page for each service are probably what I'll do. We are a small-to-medium company. Thanks again!
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Hey Jake!
First, I need to apologize. I misread the # hash bangs in your URLs as skip links and mistook your website for a single page. I'm sorry about that. We've had some good debate on Moz about the pros and cons of Wix sites you might like to look through (https://mza.seotoolninja.com/community/q/wix-is-it-any-good-for-seo) to decide whether there are any SEO drawbacks to your platform, but as I've never worked with a Wix site, I can't say first-hand.
That's great that your citations are in such good shape. Super!
No, I'm not suggesting that you make a page for every service/city combo. While that is an approach that can be taken, it's one I'd only recommend if the company has really significant resources for differentiating all of the content this would require. In most cases, small-to-medium businesses will be better off with a unique page for each city and a unique page for each service, rather than trying to make pages for every combo of the two.
Hope those links will be useful to you in auditing your scenario!
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Jake -
A few recommendations for your http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/#!roofing/bbb1e (just know there is more you should be doing)...
- There are multiple H1 tags being used on the page. There needs to be only one H1 tag (you can have multiple H2-6). The H tags set the hierarchy of the content. I would recommend adding a variation of your targeted term to the H1 tag. Right now the two H1 tags are, "West Coast" and "Florida Enterprises".
- I would recommend targeting this page for Fort Myers as this is where your physical business is located.
- Create individual secondary pages targeting the other cities. Make sure you are incorporating the city name + service in the H tags.
- I would also break out "Flat Roof", "Metal Roofs", "Tile Roofs", and "Shingle Roofs" into individual topical pages.
Here are some good references...
Wireframe for a "perfectly optimized local page". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDAWyZ4i7ks
The Anatomy of an Optimal Local Landing page http://niftymarketing.com/optimal-local-landing-page-infographic/
How to pick (or improvise) the right Schema.org markup for your local business. http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2014/06/30/how-to-pick-or-improvise-the-right-schema-org-markup-for-your-local-business/
34 Experts Share Their No. 1 (Actionable) Local SEO Tip http://seosherpa.com/local-seo/
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Here are some other folks having issues with their WIX SEO.
https://mza.seotoolninja.com/community/q/wix-is-it-any-good-for-seo
http://soundwebsolutions.net/2016/01/why-web-designers-wont-touch-wix-seo/
http://mmthomasblog.com/wix-review/
And I can vouch that many CMS aren't going to give you the kinda control you want and you'll often end up having to " hack " things together to get desired results.
On Bigcommerce I've found a good amount of issues I need to work around just to get basic SEO on point. When I brought these things up to BG, it was either it's not that big an issue for your SEO or we're working on it.
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Oh I see. I've been wondering a bit if that was the case. Has anyone else had the same issues with their Wix websites that you know of?
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Thanks for the feedback Miriam.
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I'm a little unclear as to what you mean when you say a "one-page website." WestCoastFLEnterprises.com has approximately 31 pages. Do you mean platforms such as Wix?
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Our company has 4 main services with 4 dedicated pages to them:
- Roofing - http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/#!roofing/bbb1e
- Concrete - http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/#!concrete/ui78c
- Steel trusses - http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/#!steel-trusses/vtsgi
- Custom welding - http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/#!custom-welding-ornamental/lc1tj
Our main service area is Naples, FL with secondary emphasis in Bonita Springs, Fort Myers, and Cape Coral. Do you mean I should create a separate page for each service in each city in this fashion? "Roofing Naples", "Concrete, Naples," "Steel trusses, Naples," and "Custom Welding, Naples?"
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Thank you for these links. I'll check them out.
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YES!! I put a ton of effort into the content on this page and I almost feel as though Google might be penalizing it.
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We scored 97% on Moz.com/local! Woo hoo!
Thank you again for your help.
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Hey Jake!
I'm so sorry to hear you're feeling discouraged. That can be tough, when you work hard but aren't seeing results. Now, my main advice to you here is that you're going to want to consider having a really good Local SEO firm audit your entire situation, but in the meantime, I'm going to give you some cursory feedback on this.-
I am really not a fan of the one-page website approach. I know, these have been trendy for the past couple of years, but given the SEO limitations inherent in them (no title tags, fewer link opportunities, difficult to grow content, etc.), they are simply not an approach I would recommend to my own clients.
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My preferred approach would be to go with a more traditional structure, with an excellent, unique page on the website for each service you offer an each city you serve.
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Yes, the core of your Local SEO will be anchored to your physical location and you'll put a major focus on this on the website, understanding that it's for your physical location that you'll be trying to rank in the local packs, but as mentioned in point 2, you can also build out great pages for your additional service cities. Here are 2 links that should help you get the gist of this approach:
https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/local-seo-checklist
https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages
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I know, it can be tough when you've put a lot of effort into a website to reevaluate whether it's the right vehicle for success or is holding you back. In this case, I'd start with very careful consideration of all of the above.
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From there, you're going to want to move on to the other things covered in the above checklist. It's believed that several hundred factors contribute to local rank (see: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/local-search-ranking-factors). And you'll definitely want to audit your citations. Our free Check Listing tool (moz.com/local/search) is a good place to start.
I hope this feedback is helpful. It's just at-a-glance and can't replace a professional audit, but I hope it provides some good context for evaluating the efforts you are making to meet your goals.
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Not to throw WIX under the bus, but I've heard not so great things about them, in regards to changing code and so forth. That alone would hinder your SEO prospects, not to mention if they're hindering you with code, what else on the backend are the hindering you with?
You can only optimize onpage SEO so much before there simply isn't much more to do. After that, it's left to tweaks on the backend, content creation and backlinks.
You might only be able to get so far with wix and might need to look at another cms at some point.
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Thank you for your suggestions.
Actually, it is mobile friendly. I built it in Wix which creates both desktop and mobile versions of the site.
Nope, it's not secure yet. Wix doesn't offer this functionality yet.
You're right about the page source. For some reason, Wix only shows the source code for the home page even when I try to view the source code for all of the inner pages. They explain a little more here: https://www.wix.com/support/html5/article/viewing-your-sites-source-code. So here is the actual source code: view-source:http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/?escaped_fragment=roofing/bbb1e
Yes, I've fetched and rendered through Google Search console but it doesn't really do anything.
- It never seems to save the full url after the domain name. I think there must be an issue with the hashbang (#!).
- There's just a checkmark under the Render Requested column.
- It simply says "partial" under the Status column.
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Some issues you might want to look into:
Not mobile friendly.
Not secure (https).
When I view page source, I'm not seeing any of the copy that I see when the page loads. Is Google seeing this? Have you tried fetching and rendering the page using Google Search Console?
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