SEO Consult?
-
Is there anyone here that I can pay to give me a deep analysis of my website and my competitors with recommendation on what to do? I am a small business and I cannot afford expensive monthly SEO fees. I can probably afford a one time consult fee, then I can do the work myself. Or maybe I can pay a-la cart for some of the fixes. I understand this may not be something SEOs want to do since they make their money off doing the work and may not want to share trade secrets. I just thought I would throw that question out there.
I've been working on trying to SEO my site for a year now... I was improving and happy with my progress until October and lost 30 positions over my tracked keywords. I have no idea why. I'm kind of at my wits end!
-
That makes sense! Thank you for taking the time to clarify!
-
Those are pretty good engagement metrics in my book! Your design may not be a problem after all.
What you're describing sure sounds like Penguin, but of course we can never know for sure.
In a few weeks Moz will probably be posting an article that I am writing called "A Beginner's Guide to Disavowing". Ideally, it's best to have someone who knows what they're doing analyze your links but it can be expensive to get someone who is good.
For now, what I would recommend is to keep taking advantage of the Moz Q&A. Ask really specific questions. When you get answers, remember that everyone who is answering is a volunteer here and so not all of the answers will be 100% correct. It helps to look at the Moz points or stars under a user's name. If they've got lots of stars then usually you can trust their answer.
-
Marie,
I believe I've been reading through a lot of articles that you have written. I really appreciate you taking the time to write such a thoughtful post to my questions.
I appreciate the honesty on SEO and the cost for high quality. It is difficult. I do have someone that helps me part time. They did build links that I think were maybe "okay" at the time and not good now, so I feel I have some work to do there. It is very hard to trust anyone to do off-page SEO work now.
I found that the drop happened between Oct 15th and Oct 22nd. I had 8 keywords ranking 1-3 and then I had 2 keywords ranking 1-3. Moz shows a drop in organic traffic, but Google analytics does not. So that would be Penguin right? I do have a slight increase over the last week. My local results have not dropped at all. Now, I have 4 keywords that rank 1-3. Would I have that increase if I was penalized by Penguin?
I am going to look at cleaning up my link profile... I just so dang scared to touch it now. Afraid to loose more ranking, or hurt myself. I also am having a hard time understanding what is truly a good link. (But I will save that conversation for a new post).
Like I mentioned above to Pixel. I did find that my page was loading slow a few days ago in Google Analytics. I'm trying to pinpoint why, but I tasked the guy that helps me with the list of recommendations to speed up load time. I'm having a hard time with the Trip Advisor Widget loading asynchronously. I love the widget thought because we are ranking #1 for activities in our area, so we get a lot of business through TA.
I guess my site might look outdated to someone in the web industry. I actually just updated it last year!
LOL! I think the fishing industry is a decade behind.
My husband insists on keeping the menu like it is. He also doesn't want the site to change that much. I do want to get rid of the border and put in full width high res photos, but I need to buy a DLSR first. We have SO MANY people call us and tell us how much they loved our website and that really sold them on booking with us. My husband thinks its because the menu is simple to use, that's why he won't let me change it. Also, over the last month, my average pages per session is 6, average time on site is 2:49, average bounce rate is 24%, and average click through rate is 8%. That means engagement is pretty good right?
I need to look at the bots... So, thank you for pointing that out.
Again, thank you for your time!
-
Hello,
Okay I'll try to break it down a bit more.
So imagine Google has a quality score out of e.g. 100 - we do not have access to that but what we do have access to is Moz's DA (whihc is trying to act like Googles score and give you a hint of it). Now whilst its not perfect it gives us a rough look at what might be similar to what Google ranks well, so its roughly helping you judge how well a site is and giving you a clue to how it might react with Google e.g. good / bad, page 1/page 10 etc.
Obviously that's all a bit over simplified but I hope it get the point across. Now knowing the above lets says you and your competitor both have 100 links.
Each links has its own value that can all add up, your links might all add up to 200 (lets say ranking 'points') but your competitor may add up to 250 "points" thus giving him a higher score (e.g. DA).
So in a less silly way what i am saying is you have more links than your competitors but your domain authority is a bit lower then theirs which might be a clue as to an area to improve, this doesnt mean you need to remove any links just means you might want to focus on getting some higher authority links etc. to help boost your link portfolio.
Let me know If I lost you there (think i lost my self a bit!) Having said all that the real problem comes down to the "how" on getting high authority links afraid you are on your own a bit on that, my best advice is find what the user is looking for and make it e.g. a fishing guide in the area?
Good luck!
-
Pixel,
Thank you so much for taking a look! That gives me quite a bit to digest. I don't really understand what you mean by "Moz's DA is a good rough idea of potential now why you may have more links you don't really have more authority or trust, you can work on that a bit more too.". Do you mean that I need to work on the quality of links? Adding higher quality and getting rid of spammy?
I was just looking at the page speed a few days ago when I discovered that in Google Analytics. I sent the list to the guy that helps me maintain my website!
Again, thank you!
-
_I've looked at that list before and those companies seem out of my price range. I looked a few and they were in the thousands of dollars per month range. _
Unfortunately, I'm noticing a real problem in the SEO world lately. The problem is that it is getting harder and harder to find good SEOs. In the past, it was quite easy to learn tricks that could propel a site to the top. As such, there were lots of people that could offer relatively inexpensive SEO that actually worked. In many cases, these "companies" could charge a few hundred a month and outsource link building to India for a fraction of that fee. And those techniques actually worked! But, since the creation of the Penguin algorithm, not only do those links not work anymore but they can get sites in trouble. As such, the number of people in the world who can offer good, effective SEO advice has really decreased. And, those people who are out there who really know SEO well have the luxury of being able to pick and choose their clients and charge a premium. As such, I really feel for small business owners who need help and can't afford it. But, I don't have a solution for you other than to see what kind of advice you can get here. Know though that obviously what we can tell you in a quick forum post will not take the place of a thorough SEO consult.
Here are my thoughts.
You mentioned your site dropped in October. Can you pinpoint the date? There was a big Penguin rerun that started around October 17. But there were also refreshes to Google's Panda algorithm. If you can pinpoint a date then this might help determine what the main problem is.
When you did your own SEO, did you do a lot of link building? What I mean by this is did you create a lot of your own links? If so, then Penguin is a possibility. If this is the case then you'll need to try to remove any of the self made links that you can and use Google's disavow tool to ask Google not to count the rest. If you have done a good enough job, then the next time they rerun the algorithm you might see improvement provided you actually have good links. But, you may not jump back up to where you were, especially if your previous rankings were based on unnatural links.
One thing I noticed when visiting your site is that it took a long time to load. Google's pagespeed tool gives you a score of 33/100:
That can have some effect on your rankings.
You're disallowing a lot of bots on your robots.txt which in my opinion is probably not necessary.
The site also looks a little dated to me which can affect the user's perception of the site and user engagement.
-
Couple of things I noticed are:
Moz's DA is a good rough idea of potential now why you may have more links you don't really have more authority or trust, you can work on that a bit more too.
Check where you've put your noindex tag and make sure you definitely want it there
e.g.
http://www.sealeveler.com/flfishingblog/category/fl-fishing/page/2/
a rel=prev / next tag would work better
few ideas of things you can try there too!
I'm also showing that your publisher tag is not working
Little off topic found some of your "bad bots" in your robots odd e.g.
User-agent: Xenu's Disallow: / its just a cralwer like screaming frog this wont affect seo though so dont worry! Lastly, have you considered Moz' excellent Local tool ? Hope that is enough to keep you on your toes. Good luck!
-
Thank you.
I've looked at that list before and those companies seem out of my price range. I looked a few and they were in the thousands of dollars per month range. I just thought maybe someone on this board might have their own company and maybe help me with some consulting.
My website is http://www.sealeveler.com
My competitors are www.orlandoprincess.com, www.fishobsession.com and www.misscape.com to name a few of the strongest.
Use Keyword "deep sea fishing cocoa beach" as one example. I was ranking 2-3 before October and now 6-8. Local ranks 2.
-
Here is the Moz suggestion -
Looking for SEO consulting?
Moz doesn’t provide consulting, but here's a list of recommended companies who do!The reason you lost 30 places in October might be Penguin it was released then and you might of gotten hit.
Did you try using Majestic Seo / Ahrefs / Open site Explorer to help you do your own analysis, should save you a buck.
I bet if you share your site you can get some free advice here on Moz for your site.
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
-
What is the best SEO way for a shop
Hi there ! A client want to sell some products on its future website but just a small range (the most part of this website will not be an online shop). The idea is to add a "shop" button in the menu to redirect clients in this shop. I would like your opinion about how should I construct this shop, what do you think is the best for SEO : "www.website.com/shop" or "shop.website.com" thank you in advance for your answers !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EnjinFrance0 -
Looking into the future! Changing SEO for the trends.
Hi Mozzers, How is it going? I run a website called Orange Octopus that offers videogame tips from the best pro gamers in the world. We get plenty of long tail traffic but the keyword that is most important to the business is "FIFA 14 tips". Using Moz as a template, I tried to model my site's category pages after Moz. (http://moz.com/ugc/category/link-building) and OrangeOctop.us (orangeoctop.us/fifa14-tips/) With the new FIFA 15 videogame a few months away from being released, I wanted to start preparing for the keyword "FIFA 15 tips" and "FIFA 15 guide". Being proactive and aggressive with rankings for when the game first comes out. Would you recommend starting a new category? Or changing FIFA 14 tips to FIFA 15 tips by just changing the url and title of the category page? Really need some expert help. Play hard! Joey
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | orangeoctop.us0 -
SEO: what part art and what part science?
Hi All: Just writing in the hopes of a reality check. When I compare the first page or two of companies in any field it's usually clear why the top two are on top and why the bottom two are on the bottom, but for everything in between, it often looks pretty gray to me. It's very difficult to find a smoking gun as to why companies rank where they do. While looking at one you could say it ranks because of Yelp reviews and another because of links, but then there are other completely contradictory examples. So I guess I'm asking, is this just the nature of the business? Is a lot of this simply unknowable and you look at what you can do that is most expeditious and will have the most impact, as well as more expensive longer term steps, decide what is practical, move forward and see what happens? Grateful for anyone's thoughts so I can better understand just how lost i should feel. Cheers, Wes.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wrconard0 -
Unknown factors affecting our SEO effort
Good morning / afternoon / evening all, We are continually working our website - www.movingeverywhere.co.uk , it has suffered some drastic drop in rankings with the last 2 google algorithm updates which we have been working to resolve. This has involved: Redesigning the website (responsive now) , increase of speed, reduction of code, better UX and generally better all round experience for the user. Signed up to Moz and resolved any issues which have been highlighted. (Hopefully fixed the last ones today) Investigated our inbound link profile to try and weed out any bad incoming links or any links that were damaging the site. Increased our social network profile and reach. We have done competitor analysis and we are beating all of our competitioers with on site factors as per Moz results but it appears we are missing something which means we are not reaping the fruits of our efforts at the moment. The site is wordpress and we read there could be a canonical issue with Wordpres ssites We are asking the Moz community for any guidance and assistance to try and diagnose any negative factors affecting the SEO effort on the site. Thank you for your time and help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wtfi0 -
Multinational SEO
Hi all The situation: We have a .com website that is the core of our business over the last 3 years we have built this into a very sucessful brand. Customers are able to purchase products from our website and have it delivered anywhere in the world. As part of the development of our business we want to obviously rank high within serps regardless of what country our potential customer is from. We understand that we will need to translate much of our website to achieve this and that is something that we have in the pipeline. My question is more aimed at the English speaking countries and how we should optimise our website for these. For example: websitename.com.au and websitename.co.uk were initialy setup as 301 redirects to websitename.com, however, we have now set them up as their own domains which display the exact same content as the .com website. So to clarify the content on websitename.com/product1.html is also on websitename.com.au/product1.html and websitename.co.uk/product1.html What would the best way to ensure that our .com.au and .co.uk gain traction within the appropriate country? Is duplicate content still an issue? All our prices are displayed in USD will this go againts? We use US English (with a sprinkle of chinglish) as our websites copy languange should we change spelling for AU and UK? Does anyone have any case studies and or other reports I can read that may help me find the right solution for us. Thanks Danny
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DannyCarter0 -
SEO Ideas for B to B Website?
Hi, I am running SEO for a medium-sized B-to-B website. We sell cloud-based software to other businesses/organizations. Our site currently consists of static product-related pages that already have been highly optimized (correct tags, rich content etc) and a blog that we updated regularly. For 2012, I've been tasked with coming up with ideas to significantly increase SEO. Assuming no budget constrains, what are some other general content ideas / other strategies to increase SEO for a B-to-B website? Some of my current ideas include: starting a keyword-targeted YouTube video series and acquiring more links. What are other tactics that could work for a b-to-b site? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mindflash0 -
Dynamic SEO resources
Hi everyone, Could any of you recommend a good resource to learn about dynamic SEO? Thanks very much, Diana
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
What are the SEO implications of a CNAME?
(please ignore ridiculousness of hypothetical situation) Lets say Amazon had a food division which was at food.amazon.com. I partnered with Amazon's food division and now food.amazon.com will point to my website (food.com). Amazon adds a CNAME record so food.amazon.com resolves to food.com. If food.amazon.com has built up significant page rank / domain authority, will food.com be getting those benefits? Also, lets say food.amazon.com/rice has a lot of PR / authority -- will food.com benefit from the value of those internal pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chadburgess0