Breaking through strong competition domains
-
We are trying to rank this domain: https://citychurchbloomington.org/ for this phrase churches in bloomington in.
We recently had updated our domain name from citychurchfamily.org to citychurchbloomington.org because 1) it made sense for the organization, the end-user searching, and to help our rankings.
Currently we are at position #4 on page 1 but have three sites ahead of us:
- churchfinder - in the last year this site came out of nowhere and slowly made its way up to the top spot
- high rock - this church had held spot #1 for many years and we've struggled to challenge it's place on the search results and are somewhat unclear why
- sherwood oaks - this site had been in spot #2 for many years and at times we've been able to challenge it's position but its held fairly tightly at spot #2 in the past, #3 since churchfinder rose up in the last year
We've done competitive research and made some changes to our meta title, description, and h1 tag on our site but we're looking to make our next move to try and break into this top tier of results.
I'm asking the community here for any insight/suggestions into what kind of move we should be exploring or making at this stage to move up.
Sincerely,
Andrew
-
I love Robert's advice. I would also suggest adding some long tail keywords. Finding a church is very personal and I'd guess that lots of your prospects are searching things like "Bible based church" "church with active single group" or "church with great music". Don't put all your emphasis on generic phrases.
-
Hey Andrew,
The 1st site is a no-brainer based on the term you're trying to rank for. Google will interpret anyone searching for "churches in_____" as someone who is open to finding multiple churches. As a result, Google will return a resource site over an individual location almost every time. For example, if I search for "gas stations in (city)", Google will return multiple stations rather than a specific brand of station, much less a specific location. Beating this site for this specific term is going to be next to impossible for a single location, so I would be looking for search terms that are not as broad.
For example, you might consider looking up terms for the specific denomination of your church. (i.e. "Anglican churches in bloomington in" and so on).
As for the other 2 sites - it sounds as if you have placed most of your attention on changing your site's on-page ranking factors without much attention being paid to your link profile. My bet is that your link profile is a bit smaller, less diverse or less powerful than your competitors, and that this difference is making the difference in terms of ranking behind them.
However, if you are competing for spot 3 with these minor changes, it suggests to me that their link profile isn't very powerful either, so it shouldn't take you much to get over that hurdle.
My advice, therefore, is to place more importance on generating some links to your site in order to overtake your competition.
There are tons of linkbuilding tips and strategies out there, and the Moz Blog is a pretty good resource as far as link building goes. You might start there if you want to do it yourself.
Feel free to reach out to me any time and I'll do what I can to help out.
Cheers,
Rob
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
-
Preventing multiple market domains from appearing in the local search rsults
Working on an international client, how would you help solve multiple market domains from appearing in the local search rsults?
Local Website Optimization | | Cristiana.Solinas0 -
Maintaining Rank During a Domain Change
Looking to the community for any insights on our situation. We moved a decently ranked domain name that was ranking between 3rd-6th in organic search results to a new domain that we thought would serve us higher position in the long term. We went through Google's change of address tool and over a period of 2 to 3 weeks we went from being off the map with our new domain to showing up again around page 2 - 14-18th position. It seemed that our climb back corresponded to Google indexing our new urls. Each time a large batch was indexed we seemed to jump back up. But, in our last report we noticed that we didn't budge any higher and some of our non-branded keywords actually dropped a little. The old domain was "citychurchfamily.org" and the new domain is "citychurchbloomington.org". We were thinking that the latter would be a stronger domain in the long term. Any insights on why we haven't fully retained our former ranking value at this point or anything I should be focusing on? We are trying to rank for this phrase "churches in bloomington, in". Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | a_toohill1 -
How many backlinks from one domain?
How many backlinks from one domain is too many? 1? 3? 10? For example, directory listings. If you have 5 separate links to one website in lets say DMOZ (good for you!), is it really only "juicy" one time? Or each one just as awesome? What about multiple guest articles on a related website? If I had 2 or 3 articles on one website that each have different contextual links, is it just the same as if I had one article?
Local Website Optimization | | Cantor-Crane0 -
Sub domain for geo pages
Hello Group! I have been tossing the idea in my head of using sub domains for the geo pages for each of my clients. For example: one of my clients is a lawyer in a very competitive Atlanta market http://bestdefensega.com. Can I set his geo page to woodstock.bestdefensega.com? Is this a viable option? Will I get penalized? Thoughts or suggestions always appreciated! Thanks in Advance
Local Website Optimization | | underdogmike0 -
SEO and Redirecting Site to a Different Firm's Domain while Maintaining Current Domain's Rankings
I am a plaintiffs' attorney with a website that ranks well for my major practice areas. I am considering taking a position with a new firm. As part of the discussion, the new firm would allow me to keep my current site so long as it redirects to my bio page on their firm's site. My goal is to keep my current site ranking well and continuously work on SEO efforts, in case I leave the new firm and want to rely on my current site in the future. My questions are: Is there a way to redirect my site every time it shows up in the listings (I have 1000+ indexed pages) without sacrificing its current rankings b/c of bounce rate issues, etc and 2) If I continue to add pages and work on SEO for my site while it redirects to another, will those efforts be worthwhile due to the redirect? I want to keep trying to build my site even though it redirects to a page on a different domain.
Local Website Optimization | | crpoll0 -
Where should I 301 redirect my current domain to given this situation?
My company currently owns three apartment complexes. They are within blocks of each other. Only one of them has a website (believe it or not). The one that has the website ranks fairly well, but only because it has been around for a long time. There have not been any intentional SEO efforts. I have stumbled across a wonderful, keyword rich & location specific, domain name but I have a question. Here's the scenario: We have: Apartment Complex 1 - www.apartmentcomplex1.com (longstanding website) Apartment Complex 2 - No website. Apartment Complex 3 - No website. We are considering buying the domain: www.KeywordRichDomain.com. The new URL structure would be: www.KeywordRichDomain.com/apartment-complex-1 www.KeywordRichDomain.com/apartment-complex-2 www.KeywordRichDomain.com/apartment-complex-3 Should I 301 redirect www.apartmentcomplex1.com to the new root domain or should I redirect it to the appropriate sub-folder of the new domain? Putting myself in the user's shoes, if I were expecting to go to the apartmentcomplex1.com domain, I would want to land on the sub-folder because it's relevant to what I was looking for. However, I don't think people will directly type in the old URL. I think people will be searching for apartments in the area and I want all three of our complexes to show up. By redirecting the good domain to this new root domain, it should help us start out life pretty well in the SERPS. (my assumption at least). Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | MeasureEverything0 -
SEO Value in Switching to ".NYC" Domain?
Recently " .NYC" domains have become available for purchase to New York City based businesses. I own and operate a New York City commercial real estate firm, nyc-officespace-leader.com. New domain would be www.metro-manhattan.nyc Our existing domain has been in use for seven years.would there be an SEO benefit to transferring our site to .NYC domain? Or would a new domain kill our domain rank? Thanks, Alan
Local Website Optimization | | Kingalan10 -
Multiple Domains for Real Estate
Hi, We have 10 different website for our apartments. I am thinking about consolidating them all into 1 website. Is this a good or bad idea? I think it would be good as we would get all the authority for the 1 domain so it would be easier to get new apartments ranked but I am not too sure. I am trying to optimize for local SEO. I am pretty sure that consolidating them is the best option but I would like to be certain about it before we make the investment.
Local Website Optimization | | Jon_B0