Reducing Amount of Text on Web Pages-Risk of Killing Ranking?
-
We are a commercial real estate brokerage firm in Manhattan. Our site (w w w . m e t r o - m a n h a t t a n . com) is text heavy and somewhat uninviting. Ranking is fair. Conversions awful. Our niche is very competitive.
We plan on reducing the amount of text and making the site more visual. Among the planned changes:
-Reduce amount of text in home page and text heavy pages. More emphasis on product (listings)
-Much larger photos for listings
-Lighter cleaner design with more open white areas
-Use of more visible fonts
-Better formsNew design will be like: http://www.dernieretage-paris.com/
Theme and graphics based on Manhattan. More visuals. Better photos. Less text.
But are we shooting ourselves in the foot by reducing text? Is there a risk that Google will reduce our ranking?
Can we compensate for reduced text that is visible to visitors by completing meta tags more fully?
Any thoughts???
Thanks,
Alan -
Hi Kingalen
I honestly would not use that French site as a model for your own. The homepage is just one big banner and you have to scroll below the fold to search anything,
In my experience, the best home page for this type of site is one big search box in the middle with little opportunity to refine it until they get some results. You have to hook them in with the minimum of fuss.
It's not the amount of text on the homepage but how relevant it is and quite frankly it just drones on about expiring leases and out of town businesses needing a rental. Keep it focused and succinct.Go to MOZ keyword explorer or any similar product and type in 'Office Space New York' and look down the most searched keywords. 'New York Office Lease' as well and write clean contextually strong copy for the home without overdoing it and trying to rank for every keyword you can think of.
Then when a user has clicked on say, Bryant Park, show them the listings. Not just one or two at the top with a link to 'view all' and the rest of the page thick with content - Give them what they want as quickly as you can, and if then add some local area content with a map and image with alt saying 'Bryant Park' below the listings.
It seems to me that someone's attempts at novice SEO has ruined your site and you need to simplify and make the object satisfying your customers as quickly as possible rather than filling the site with cannibalising content and needless words.
Of course, Meta is important for SEO so make sure that yours are optimised 'Bryant Park Office Space for Lease' you have 70 characters so. use them.
Use one (1) H1 on the page! - for some reason your logo is an H1 - Use a logo with an Alt tag - 'Metro Manhattan Logo'
Then the other H1 'Bryant Park Office Space' is OK, grab a photo of Bryant Park and Alt it 'Bryant Park Office Space' and use just 3-500 words per page and you will be fine.
I hope that helps.
Regards Nigel
Regards
Nigel
-
Take a look at the Paris website in Moz Tools. It's not ranking for anything. There's zero content.
You have to have a compromise of text and SEO visibility. Having a pretty site with lots of photos and white space won't do you any favours and will have a negative impact on your ranking.
Stick to 400 words text on the home page and 300-400 on your category landing pages. Alt tags on all images with keyword rich descriptions. In Wordpress add tags and categories to your blog posts. The last one was in January 2017. This doesn't look as if you care about website maintenance.
Meta tags are not SEO.
Content is king. Use internal linking. Add sales text to increase your conversions.
Yes your website looks outdated, just a spruce up should increase conversions but don't lose the textual content.
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
-
Really, what are the benefits of creating a Google Brand page for an e-commerce site?
We have a jewellery store client who already have a Google My Business page set up for its store front business. Should we also create a Google Brand page for its e-commerce site (which has a different business name to the jewellery store)? This client already has a pretty robust Facebook profile. Is it worth it maintaining a Brand page then - since it targets Google plus users?
Branding | | Gavo
And what are the chances of a Brand page appearing on search results when you're not a Nike or a Calvin Klein? Thanks heaps in anticipation of your response.0 -
How Google decide reading time of a page?
Dear friends, I have a question. How google decide bounce rate? For an example- I open a website through organic keyword from Google. Now I have tab of landing page in browser I do not close this tab for 10 minutes and continue doing my other things after some time I come back on that tab and close. Can Google know? This page has been read till 10 minutes. Can Google decide the bounce rate for this session? If I do some click boost for my negative reviews can I do same thing in my website? Is it useful? If I open one tab and come back after one day than what happen? Silly question but confusing me so please help me. I will be very grateful to you! Thanks all
Branding | | docbeans0 -
Gateway Pages
I have read that gateway pages are frowned upon by the search engines? If you have multiple domain names that are related to your main website what is the best way to get the greatest use from those related domain names? Thank-you.
Branding | | Road0 -
YouTube won't let me disconnect a Google+ business page from my channel.
Hello! Here is a good one. My YouTube channel is connected to a Google+ page a created by accident. Since I named this accidental page as a business, when I go into advanced setting to disconnect it from YouTube, it says "This feature is not available for this account." Does anyone know a way around this? I don't want to have to rebuild my Google+ page on the new, accidental page. I have put quite a bit of time onto my current page and would like to get it hooked up to YouTube. Please help! Thank you!
Branding | | sarita3450 -
Add Google + button link to google page and not link
Hello SEOOOOOOOOO moz people ! I was wondering if you know how can I add Google + button to my page I tried to set it up in google page http://awesomescreenshot.com/08d1a9hmef https://plus.google.com/b/109790526955470383191/109790526955470383191/posts But i would like to link the button to my google + fan page https://plus.google.com/b/109790526955470383191/109790526955470383191/about and not the url of the page. As our website is indeed 12 websites if you go to http://www.ibremarketing.com you don't have the same +1 than http://www.ibremarketing.com/me or http://www.ibremarketing.com/ma Any idea of how to do it ? It would be amazing 😛
Branding | | AymanH0 -
Is Tweetdeck Killing My Tweets!?!
So I remember reading a while back that there were some disadvantages to posting on Twitter from Tweetdeck, but when I went back to find this information again, I couldn't find anything related to that topic. With that, do any of you Mozzers out there have any compelling reasons as to why I'd prefer to tweet directly from my Twitter account on the Twitter site, instead of on Tweetdeck!?! Any and all insights/commentary/speculations would be greatly appreciated, thank you in advance!
Branding | | NiallSmith0 -
One Page desapeared from Google results over the weekend.
Has anyone had this happen? My page (just one page) is gone from the search results. Not only did we lose our position in Google (we were #9) now the entire page is completely gone from Google index. However, It is on the first page of Bing and Yahoo. We did have our server down from Friday to Monday. I went into Google webmaster tools on Monday and saw a big X next to sitemap. It said HTTP Error 404 detected on August 21, 2011. So Google went in on Sunday and came up with the error. But why only one page is missing and all the other pages still show up? I was thinking that page was blacklisted by Google but when I went to Webmaster Tools to listen to "Requesting reconsideration of your site" video all they talk about is the "site" being blacklisted not a particular page. Any one has any ideas?
Branding | | DmitryP0 -
Research into citation and it's effect on ranking
Hi I'd like to know if there has been any research into citation (brand mentions on external sites) and how it has / hasn't effected ranking, particularly Google Search? If any body can point me in the right direction, that would be great. Thanks
Branding | | NeilPursey0