Traffic going down in all sites in a niche
-
Hello,
A client has three Ecommerce sites in a niche.
Because of competition and a (possibly) non manual penalty due to doorways and paid links (though I think it's mainly competition too) our traffic is going down.
What are the keys to increasing traffic at this point.
Feel free to include tricks that cost money. A Hrefs (I love Moz though!) has some neat content tricks. Please give me the best tricks in the industry to increase traffic.
We're adding content to the main site of the three and maybe that's what to focus on, but we're having trouble driving serious traffic with the content. We need serious traffic.
We are experts in our field and capable of almost anything as far as information goes in our field.
Thanks.
-
Hi Bob. Are these sites duplicating themselves in the same niche? It sounds like you have one main site, and two that are secondary to that. Is that the case?
There's a lot that goes into a decision like this, but it may be that the multi-site approach is diluting your brand. If all three sites have their own distinct voice, social media interactions, branding, design, and so on, then keeping all three as separate entities and addressing the issues within each would be fine. On the other hand, if the other two sites serve as doorway and paid link portals pointing towards the main site, you should really consider making the one main site the best resource and store within the niche.
Broadly, the traffic increase options are standard: paid advertising where applicable or ROI appropriate, funnel improvements which pay dividends when traffic increases, improved rankings, link garnering content, and so on. A classic blog post by Oli Gardner on the subject is here: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/the-noob-guide-to-online-marketing-with-giant-infographic-11928
Cheers!
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
-
Am I over "Optimising My Site" or following "Best Practice"
Hi We're developing our site an wanted to ask if we are "over optimising" or following best practice. Maybe you have some recommendations. I've provided 4 examples below. Eventually we'll use Moz on page grader but as a new start up, I'd appreciate your help. Thank you, Faye. 1. URL: http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns/cipressa/ PAGE TITLE: Cipressa | Engineered Brown Wood | The Wood Galleries H1: Cipressa – Engineered Brown Wood KEYWORD: Engineered Brown Wood META: Buy Cipressa Brown Engineered Wood, available at The Wood Galleries, London. Provides an Exceptional Foundation for Elegant Décor & Extravagant Furnishings. IMAGE TAG: Brown Engineered Flooring KEYWORD IN BODY CONTENT: YES (1) 2. URL: http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/beiges/mauro/ H1: Mauro | Beige Engineered Wood | The Wood Galleries PAGE TITLE: Mauro – Beige Engineered Wood KEYWORD: Beige Engineered Wood META: Buy Mauro Beige Engineered Wood Flooring, available at The Wood Galleries, London. Designed to deliver Rich, Dark Undertones with Light hues of Muted Brown. IMG TAG: Beige Wood Flooring KEYWORD IN BODY CONTENT: YES (2) **3. URL: http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/beiges/vela-oak/ ** H1: Vela – Beige Engineered Oak PAGE TITLE: Vela | Beige Engineered Oak | The Wood Galleries KEYWORD: Beige Engineered Oak META: Buy Vela Beige Engineered Oak Wood, available at The Wood Galleries, London. Crafted from the most widely respected hardwoods in the world. IMG TAG: Engineered Oak Flooring KEYWORD IN BODY CONTENT: YES (1) 4. URL: http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/darks-blacks/ciro-rustic/ H1: Ciro – Engineered Rustic Wood PAGE TITLE: Ciro | Engineered Rustic Wood | The Wood Galleries KEYWORD: Engineered Rustic Wood META: Buy Ciro Engineered Rustic Wood, at The Wood Galleries, London. Its stylishly classic oak look exudes a sense of luxury that is simply undeniable. IMG TAG: Dark Wood Flooring, The Wood Galleries KEY WORD IN BODY CONTENT: YES (2)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Faye2340 -
Direct Traffic has Dropped 48% to Last Year
Since February of 2013 our organic traffic at http://www.weddingshoppeinc.com had been declining. We were able to get traffic back up to par with numbers from the previous year by December of 2013. In March of 2014 our direct traffic took a major hit and hasn’t improved. We know our mobile traffic is part of the problem, but the issue has affected traffic from desktop and mobile devices. Is this an organic traffic problem, or is our decrease in direct traffic coming from somewhere else? Has anyone else seen this issue, or does anyone have advice? Here is what we’ve already looked into and updates to note: Before this issue, when we compared organic and direct traffic, direct was usually half of what organic was (i.e., if organic was at 10 visitors, direct was at 5). However organic traffic has followed normal trends and direct has dropped. In August we updated our .net code to MVC to drop our first byte from 1,700 to 300 milliseconds. However, if you look at our m. site, it’s around 1,000 milliseconds. We changed our SEO strategy in May to follow best practices. We’ve been rewriting old content. We haven’t ever done any black hat SEO, just have some old blogs from 2010-2012 that have too many keywords. These are getting edited. In March we moved our images to a CDN for our images. We’re currently working on server errors and broken links, but nothing significant changed around March to affect our traffic. Very recently, our web developers said that they believed our direct traffic had been getting tracked wrong in Google Analytics prior to March 2014. However they think they fixed the issue in a March push. We've taken this theory into account, but we also see a drop in revenue at the time of their push that correlates with the drop in traffic, so we know there’s a bigger issue. Any input you can provide would be greatly appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JimmyFritz1 -
Please Correct This on-site SEO strategy w/ respect to all the updates
Hello, I believe my on-site SEO process that I used to use a couple of years ago is not working well anymore for a couple of my sites, including this one. I'll tell you the old strategy as well as my new strategy and I'm wondering if you can give me pointers that will help us rank where we should rank with our PA and DA instead of getting moved down because of what could be our old on-site SEO. OLD ON-SITE SEO STRATEGY: Title tags usually match the page, but title tags occasionally on this site don't match the pages exactly. There's not many of them, but they do still exist in a couple of places. Title tags are either 1. A phrase describing the page 2. Keywords 1, Keyword 2 3. Keyword 1 | Keyword 2 4. Keywords 1, Keyword 2, branding The keywords are in the h1 and h2 of each main page, at the very top of the page. The h1 and h2 do not exactly copy the title tag, but are a longer phrase with the keywords appearing in their exact word order or in word variations. See this page for an example. Keywords occur 3-4 times in the body of the main pages (the pages with a menu link). Right now some of the pages have the exact phrases 3 or 4 times and no variation. meta description tags have exact keyword phrases once per keyword. Meta description tag are a short paragraph describing the page. No meta keyword tags, but a couple haven't been deleted yet. FUTURE ON-SITE SEO STRATEGY: I'm going to change all of the page titles to make sure they match the content they're on exactly. If the title is a phrase describing a page, I'm going to make sure a variation of that phrase occurs at least three times in the content, and once in the meta description tag. Title tags will be either a. Short phrase exactly matching page b. Keyword 1, Keyword 2 | branding c. Keyword 1 | branding 2. I'm thinking about taking out the H1 and H2 and replacing them with one tag that is a phrase describing the page that I'll sometimes put the keyword phrase in, only a variation in it and not the exact keyword phrase - unless it just makes total sense to use the keyword phrase exactly. **I'm thinking of only using the keyword phrase in it's exact words once on the page unless it occurs more naturally, and to include the keyword phrase in word variations two more times. So once (in non-exact word order) in the at the top, once (exact word order) in the text, and two more times (varied word orders) somewhere in the text. All this will be different if the keywords show up naturally in the text. **3. I'll delete all meta keyword tags, and still use exact keyword phrases in meta description tag, though I'll change the meta description tags to always very closely match what the page is about. Do you think my new strategy will make a difference? Your thoughts on any of this?****
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Partner Site In Bound Links
We have a staffing agency client that uses a 3rd party site (with different URL) to display open jobs for web viewers to see. However we are getting a bunch of backlinks from this site from the footer because it is set up as a White Label... Should I add a rel=nofollow to the links in the footer? Disavow the links from the site? Do nothing? I am not really sure. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Aqabatech0 -
The purpose of these Algo updates: To more harshly push eCommerce sites toward PPC and enable normal blogs/forums toward reclaiming organic search positions?
Hi everyone, This is my first post here, and absolutely loving the site and the services. Just a quick background, I have dabbled in SEO in the past, and have been reading up over the last few months and am amazed at the speed at which things are changing. I currently have a few clients that I am doing some SEO work for 2 of them, and have had an ecommerce site enquire about SEO services. They are a medium sized oak furniture ecommerce site. From all the major changes..the devaluing of spam links, link networks, penalization of overuse of exact match anchor text and the overall encouraging of earned links (often via content marketing) over built links, adding to this the (not provided) section in Google Analytics, and the increasing screen real estate that PPC is getting over organic search...all points to me thinking on major thing..... That the search engine is trying to push eCommerce sites and sites that sell stuff harder toward using PPC and paid advertising and allowing the blogs/forums and informational sites to more easily reclaim the organic part of the search results again. The above is elaborated on a bit more below.. POINT 1 Firstly as built links (article submission, press releases, info graphic submission, web 2.0 link building ect) rapidly lose their effectiveness, and as Google starts to place more emphasis on sites earning links instead - by producing amazing interesting and unique content that people want to link to. The fact remains that surely Google is aware that it is much harder for eCommerce sites to produce a constant stream of interesting link worthy content around their niche (especially if its a niche that not an awful lot could be written about). Although earning links is not impossible for eCommerce sites, for a lot of them it is more difficult because creating link worthy content is not what eCommerce sites were originally intended for. Whereas standard blogs and forums were built for that exact purpose. Therefore the search engines must know that it is a lot easier for normal blogs/forums to "earn" links through content, therefore leading to them reclaiming more of the organic search ranking for transaction and non transaction terms, and therefore forcing the eCommerce sites to adopt PPC more heavily. POINT 2 If we add to the mix the fact that for the terms most relevant to eCommerce sites, the search engine results page has a larger allocation of PPC ads than organic results (above the fold), and that Google has limited the amount of data that sites can see in terms of which keywords people are using to arrive on their sites, which effects eCommerce sites more - as it makes it harder for them to see which keywords are resulting in sales. Then this provides further evidence that Google is trying to back eCommerce sites into a corner by making it more difficult for them to make sense of and track sales from organic results in comparison to with PPC, where data is still plentiful. Conclusion Are the above just over exaggerations? Can most eCommerce sites still keep achieving a good percentage of sales from organic search despite the above? if so, what do the more niche eCommerce sites do to "earn" links when content topics are thin and unique outreach destinations can be exhausted quickly. Do they accept the fact that the are in the business of selling things, so should be paying for their traffic as opposed to normal blogs/forums which are not. Or is there still a place for them to get even more creative with content and acquire earned links..? And finally, is the concentration on earned links more overplayed than it actually is? Id really appreciate your thoughts on this..
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sanj50500 -
Is there a way to check if your site has a Google penalty?
Is there a way to find out if your site has an over optimization penalty?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin0 -
Can good penalize a site, and stop it ranking under a keyword permanently
hi all we recently took on a new client, asking us to improve there google ranking, under the term letting agents glasgow , they told us they used to rank top 10 but now are on page 14 so it looks like google has slapped them one, my question is can google block you permanently from ranking under a keyword or disadvantage you, as we went though the customers links, and removed the ones that looked strange, and kept the links that looked ok. but then there ranking dropped to 21, is it worth gaining new links under there main keyword even tho it looks like google is punishing them for having some bad links. the site is www. fine..lets...ltd...co....uk all one word cheers
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | willcraig0