Specific KW question...
-
Hi,
I have this site: http://www.aerlawgroup.com.
It's ranking very well overall for all targeted KWs. However, I have seen a drop for one main KW: "Los Angeles criminal defense attorney." It currently ranks #8 (it used to be as high as #2). What's interesting is that for similar (yet slightly less competitive KWs, he ranks much better - "Los Angeles Criminal Defense Lawyer."
I'm not trying to be greedy with rankings, but I would love feedback and/or tips regarding any issues that could be contributing to this drop.
Thanks.
-
Hi, thank you. I probably should have specified my question was focused on Organic, not Local. I think he's doing fine on local, given that his office is in Pasadena.
I agree with you 100%. He needs more reviews for his listing. Most of his reviews have gone to Avvo, as real criminal defense clients don't want to leave non-anonymous reviews.
Thanks again for the excellent feedback. I appreciate it.
-
Good question. It's funny to hear you say "less competitive" as all searches related to "legal" and "Los Angeles" are going to be really competitive--fluctuations within the top 10 are normal, and are going to happen. I did a search for those keywords and it seems that your site shows up twice--once in the middle of the local pack, and again in the serps. Your drop in rankings could simply be because so many local listings are showing right now (7 by my search) pushing the serps down the page.
I'm noticing that you don't have any reviews for your local listing, while your competition has 22, 37, 22, and 35 reviews respectively, and are getting the much-coveted "5 stars" next to their local listing. I'd focus on getting some good reviews, as that will help with conversions.
Also, the hummingbird update really changed the chess board on long tail search, which will also effect rankings. The days of creating separate pages for "Los Angeles criminal defense attorney" and "Los Angeles Criminal Defense Lawyer" are over. Google is rewarding high quality sites optimized for the general category, and preferring them for all types of long-tail searches. --Hope this helps!
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
-
Setting country specific top level domain as alias - will site benefit from TLDs authority?
I have a host of sites that follow a top level domain strategy. For each local site they will be on the top level domain but with their country-languages prefix as the subdirectory. Such as below: example.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gracejo
example.com/uk-en
example.com/sg-en
example.com/de-de Each local site being on the TLD will benefit them in terms of SEO and it makes it easier to have one strategy. My question however, if the Netherlands comes on board, they would generally have example.com/nl-en. However they want their primary domain as examplenetherlands.nl and the TLD (example.com/nl-en) set as an alias/secondary domain that redirects to the primary. Will they benefit from any SEO if the TLD is not the primary address?0 -
Redirecting M Dot Mobile Website to Responsive Design Website Questions
Hi amazing Moz community 🙂 Couldn't find this question anywhere, and knew this was the place to ask! We are helping a client redirect an M Dot website to a Responsive Design website. We want to retain our mobile rankings for keywords. Three questions - We should use 301 redirects from the M Dot website to the new website correct? (not 302s?) How long does it take for Google to understand that we have launched a responsive website? Can we remove the 301 redirects after a few days (if the M Dot website interferes/breaks the new Responsive website)? We have verified an account on Google Search Console for the M Dot website, along with a mobile sitemap that has been submitted and verified. What should we do with this M Dot GSC account? Just delete it? Or keep it and upload the NEW XML Sitemap with the new WWW links (because the website is responsive). THANK YOU!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | accpar0 -
Question about Indexing of /?limit=all
Hi, i've got your SEO Suite Ultimate installed on my site (www.customlogocases.com). I've got a relatively new magento site (around 1 year). We have recently been doing some pr/seo for the category pages, for example /custom-ipad-cases/ But when I search on google, it seems that google has indexed the /custom-ipad-cases/?limit=all This /?limit=all page is one without any links, and only has a PA of 1. Whereas the standard /custom-ipad-cases/ without the /? query has a much higher pa of 20, and a couple of links pointing towards it. So therefore I would want this particular page to be the one that google indexes. And along the same logic, this page really should be able to achieve higher rankings than the /?limit=all page. Is my thinking here correct? Should I disallow all the /? now, even though these are the ones that are indexed, and the others currently are not. I'd be happy to take the hit while it figures it out, because the higher PA pages are what I ultimately am getting links to... Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobAus0 -
Questions about duplicate photo content?
I know that Google is a mystery, so I am not sure if there are answers to these questions, but I'm going to ask anyway! I recently realized that Google is not happy with duplicate photo content. I'm a photographer and have sold many photos in the past (but retained the rights for) that I am now using on my site. My recent revelations means that I'm now taking down all of these photos. So I've been reverse image searching all of my photos to see if I let anyone else use it first, and in the course of this I found out that there are many of my photos being used by other sites on the web. So my questions are: With photos that I used first and others have stolen, If I edit these photos (to add copyright info) and then re-upload them, will the sites that are using these images then get credit for using the original image first? If I have a photo on another one of my own sites and I take it down, can I safely use that photo on my main site, or will Google retain the knowledge that it's been used somewhere else first? If I sold a photo and it's being used on another site, can I safely use a different photo from the same series that is almost exactly the same? I am unclear what data from the photo Google is matching, and if they can tell the difference between photos that were taken a few seconds apart.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lina5000 -
Please help with serp placment question?
We own discount banner printing and we are trying to rank 1 for pvc banners or vinyl banners and cannot understand for example how the below is correct, we did suffer a link penalty years ago but we fixed this and the domain has some good links (more and better quality than the sites above us) and cannot understand how we rank below most of the sites above us? If we type on for example pvc banners we get http://www.bannershop.co.uk/cats/pvc_banners.htm https://www.hfe-signs.co.uk/banners.php http://bannerprintingandroid.co.uk/pvc-banners/ http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html And if we type in vinyl banners we get http://www.vistaprint.co.uk/banners.aspx http://www.bigvaluebanners.co.uk/ http://vinylbannersprinting.co.uk/ http://www.discountdisplays.co.uk/html/vinyl_banners.html https://www.buildasign.co.uk/banners http://www.monkey-print.com/outdoor banners/budget-outdoor-banners http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Ask a Question
We use DNN and we have case studies ran from our CMS. This is so we can have them in lists by category on service/market pages and show specific ones when needed. Then there is the case study detail page, (this is where the problem exists)to where you read out the case study in full detail and see the images and story. We enter our Case Studies into the CMS and this determines which website they show, and it creates URLs from the titles. However, on the detail page, the case studies all share the same page, Case Study.aspx, and they resolve to that page with their respected URLs in place. As seen here, http://www.structural.net/case-study/1/new-marlins-stadium.aspx Because they all share the same page they are being pulled as duplicate pages. They do show in the SERPS with the right title and URL and it all looks great, but they get errors for having duplicate page content and titles. Is there a way to solve this, or is this something I should even worry about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KJ-Rodgers0 -
Canonical Tag - Question
Hey, I will give a thumbs up and best answer to whoever answers my question correctly. The Canonical Tag is supposed to solve Duplication which is fine. My questions are: Does the Canonical Tag make the PR / Link Juice flow differently? If I have john.long.com/home and john.long.com but put a Canonical Tag on john.long.com/home reading john.long.com then what does this do? Does it flow the Link Equity back to john.long.com? Can you use the Canonical Tag to change PR flow in any means? If I had john.long.com/washing-machines and john.long.com/kids-toys... If I put a Canonical Tag on john.long.com/kids-toys reading john.long.com/washing-machines then would the PR from /kids-toys flow to /washing-machines or would Google just ignore this? (The pages are completely different in this example and content is completely different). Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdiRste0 -
Help Needed - 301 a .co.uk to a .com Serp Questions
Hey, really need some help deciding what to do... I have a .co.uk site, its my oldest and best site of my network and accounts for maybe 30-40% of my income. Although its a .co.uk site, it actually makes most of its from from USA traffic and targets many terms for the US market - but the problem is that due to it being a .co.uk it doesnt rank as well in G .com and over the last few years Google has defiantly widened the gap as such for the ability for a .co.uk to rank in G .com. Many terms that I used to be #1 for in G .com, I now rank position 5-10 only, but in G .co.uk I'm #1 and often with a duo listing so I wouldnt put the loss of rankings in G .com down to just losing rankings naturally. Now many of my key pages are gradually losing rankings in G .com which is not good and really frustrating Feedback Needed So my dilemma is do I risk my best site and 301 it to a .com hosted in the US for potential at a guess 50% increase in revenues and more future potential (If the 301 worked well and got some US rankings back - Im sure longtail would increase lots too) ? If people with experience with 301ing sites to a new domain could let me know how they did or if you're an SEO and have done this many times, how many times on average has Serps remained stable / unchanged ? Trying to work out the reward to risk ratio, like on average if the transition is seamless 90% of the time it would seem worth the gamble, but if its 50% then I would say its not worth it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | goody2shoes0