Can't figure why ranking dropped after SEO improved.
-
I took a website that never had any keyword research performed, meta data filled in or anything strategic regarding getting ranked on the search engines. We rebuilt the website from an old Dreamweaver install using Wordpress, did keyword research, optimized one page per keyword term, filled in all the appropriate meta data and alt tags. The site has dropped in rankings and I've been working for the past 3 months to attempt to raise it up. Can you see what I am doing wrong? (This is the client site: http://www.atozqualityfencing.com).
-
Under the performance tab and general settings check to see if debug mode is checked. Not that I am expert on this plugin! It is very complex.
Best!
-
Awesome catch, Chris!! I will look into this issue. Had no idea it was there!
-
I also noticed there appears to be a W3TC debug file on the home page that is pretty big. Is it possible this plugin is misconfigured and causing issues?
-
All in all, I'm sure there's a lot of things that can be done on-page. Though the main thing I'm seeing is that the server is pretty slow. I've managed to get response times from five to nine seconds. That's way too long and more than likely the main thing holding back the site.
Then there are a lot of requests on the home page, ~120. When you're dealing with a slow server, a lot of requests makes for a bad situation. It looks like the Facebook widget makes up about half of them. If you could find a lighter weight replacement, that would help. Plus you could enable server side compression.
Take a look at tools.pingdom.com and Google Page Speed Insights for a little more insight.
Basically, it looks like there's a lot of foundation work that needs to be done. Once that's done, you'll probably see some improvement. Then you can fuss over the paint/siding.
-
Did you 301 redirect all the old pages to the new pages (assuming URL structure was changed)?
What were they ranking for previously? And what page was ranking?
I may would advise having a more specific keyword for the home page considering it probably has a higher Domain Authority.
Thanks,
Cole
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
-
Looking for an SEO Expert
We're overwhelmed with client work and looking to hire an SEO professional to handle our local rankings and give us a fresh perspective. Feel free to message me privately or reply here. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | ScottImageWorks0 -
Ranking Oddities
In my local marketplace, I have competitors who have the following: unoptimized title tags and description tags (really long using keyword stuffing), stuffing keywords into the Meta keywords tag, lacking keywords in the body copy, using spammy footers or sections of text with a lot of local cities listed where no physical business is located, unattractive design (in my humble opinion), lower page authority, lower domain authority, lower number of back links and are organically outranking my site that I have tried to optimize using the MOZ tools, Market Samurai, other tools, and other great advice provided by people much more knowledgeable than myself about SEO. I don't understand how these sites that lack SEO continue to rank in the #1 or #2 spots in Google for my main keyword phrase + location, while my site is either not in the top 50 or in the top 40s range. How is it that sites with little to no optimization, no blogs, and very few backlinks, continue to rank quite well? These are not all new sites. Domain ages range from 1 to 10 years. What I am seeing appears to go against the grain of SEO recommendations. Any general thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | ajgrossman1 -
I want to improve our client's website structure, so he gets more traffic locally. What advice do you have ?
We want to "revamp" our client's website, by improving the overall looking (content, images, structure). Our client is a small retail business but wants to have more traffic. What advice can you give me ?
On-Page Optimization | | marketingmedia.ca0 -
Description tag not showing in the SERPs because page is blocked by Robots, but the page isn't blocked. Any help?
While checking some SERP results for a few pages of a site this morning I noticed that some pages were returning this message instead of a description tag, A description for this result is not avaliable because of this site's robot.s.txt The odd thing is the page isn't blocked in the Robots.txt. The page is using Yoast SEO Plugin to populate meta data though. Anyone else had this happen and have a fix?
On-Page Optimization | | mac22330 -
New jobboard: Can redirecting folder (site.com/jobboard) to subdomain (jobboard.site.com) hurt SEO?
Hi there, I'm planning to implement a jobboard on my website which needs to be installed on a subdomain (jobboard.site.com) but I'd really like to use site.com/jobboard for promoting this jobboard (jobboard collects external industry jobs). Are there any possible disadvantages when I set up a 301 redirect from jobboard.site.com to site.com/jobboard? Also: What if I want to move this jobboard to a unique domain one day (e.g. jobboard-industry-xy.com), Would that be tricky (as I'd basically have to redirect the folder-to-subdomain redirect to an external domain and therefore get a folder-to-subdomain-to-external-domain redirect...)? Cheers, Thomas
On-Page Optimization | | stl990 -
Youtube Videos For SEO
Besides enhancing the page and time on page, can youtube videos do anything for seo? Can we save the videos and rename them with keywords? Ty
On-Page Optimization | | TP_Marketing0 -
New site not ranking for it's name
Performed on-page SEO for this new site that went live a couple of weeks ago - no link building or anything of that nature yet. http://maven-management.com I'm starting to see the site rank on Bing for some keyword phrases but it doesn't rank for the business name "Maven Management" on any major search engine. SEOMoz gives my on page optimization an A for the business name for the home page. Am I just being impatient? I didn't really put much effort into ranking for the business name because that generally seems to happen without any issue. There are other companies online with the same name. Any insight is appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | DenverKelly0 -
Has anyone ever attempted (successfully or not) to consciously reduce their amount of homepage links in order to improve their search engine rankings?
I work for a retail company that is highly segmented. We have a lot of categories to cover the types of merchandise we offer on our home page, and way more than the recommended # of links on our homepage because of it. Has anyone ever attempted (successfully or not) to consciously reduce their amount of links (and categories) in order to improve their search engine rankings? If so, can you walk through your process and your advice on whether or not reducing links on a site like mine is a good idea?
On-Page Optimization | | reallygoodstuff0