Rankings question
-
We have just taken on a client who is really struggling in the rankings, even for noncompetitive terms.
Here is the URL: www.freshsmiles.co.uk
they are targeting 'dentist york, dental implants york, teeth whitening york, orthdontist york'
The content on the site seems very good (we have been working on ensuring that the content is duplicated and of good quality) They have also been doing blogs http://www.freshsmiles.co.uk/blog/
We've installed webmaster tools and there are no manual spam action warnings and I have checked the inbound links to the website and they don't seem spammy.
Any help would be much appreciated!
thanks in advance
Marcus
-
Hi Marcus
I'm going to just go through a bunch of items in no particular order;
- Internal links in footer - the anchor "private dental practice in york" linking to the homepage is a little over-optimized. As is linking to the marketing and web design companies with exact commercial anchors.
- The actual brand name is a little unclear. Is it "fresh Smiles" or "FreshSmile" or "fresh dental" or "fresh dental smile clinic"? It's super important to have this clear to make a strong brand presence. "Fresh dental smile" and "fresh smiles" don't return a normal "branded" search result with 8 or 10 sitelinks. See this screenshot for an example. This has to be 100% clear on-site and off-site, especially in local listings.
- The homepage title tag for example is a bit overdone. It should be the main keyword / service and the brand name. Also, "cosmetic dentist" appears in almost every page title tag. You want to avoid repetition, have the titles describe the page well, while fitting in the main keyword for that page. Follow Google's guidelines on titles.
- For back links, there's definitely some over optimization going on - see Open Site Explorer's anchor text report - and the use of anchors like "dentists in york" "dentist york" etc is a bit excessive. Get those anchors changed to brand names if possible. Believe it or not, there's just too many links in general, and many of them are keyword links. What I mean is - you're not ever naturally going to see 100's of back links for a dentist. Google knows this. So it sends a red flag to have too many low quality over optimized links. I would stress obtaining a few links but of super high quality.
- Social Media - the facebook feed for example is just a blast of "push" marketing - teeth services, photos and so forth. Very minimal activity in general. They should pick maybe one social network that aligns with where their customers are and use it as a communication medium - a place where patients can leave messages, the office can post fun and engaging things. See Social Media Examinar for plenty of social ideas - I recommend possibly using either Pinterest or Instagram as well. Twitter doesn't make much sense for a dentist. I am mentioning social media because in my opinion it helps SEO.
- Rel Publisher - even if they're not posting activity on Google Plus (same as the Google places page now) use Rel Publisher to connect their website to their G+ page. Check that its set up correctly with the rich snippet tester
- Site speed seems poor - here's a test result from webpagetest - note that many of the images (like this one) are taking almost 1 second each to load. You definitely want to try to get those to say 50-75k with some compression etc. Site speed is a small ranking factor as well as UX factor for visitors.
- The site has a lot of pages indexed for a dentist web site - over 1,000 as you can see here. What I would do is see if they are all getting traffic (check in analytics) - and HIGHLY consider killing off pages like this: http://www.freshsmiles.co.uk/teeth-straightening-in-york/ which are is a blog post format, designed to just target a keyword and even the image is broken now. There are a LOT of pages like that indexed. Here's another: http://www.freshsmiles.co.uk/we-also-offer-patients-facial-rejuvenation-treatments/ - this will all seem like thin content for sure, and affect rankings.
As you can see, a lot to work on! I don't think any one thing is going to fix the site, it's going to have to be a bunch of improvements.
EDITED TO ADD: I would just kill the tag archives. Remove them from navigation and delete them. Check to see if a few might be getting traffic (using my method here) and 301 redirect the few that might be and just remove the rest. I was trying to crawl the site, and it's already queued up to over 1,500 pages - most of them tag archives.
-
Hi Marcus,
When a ranking drop happens, there are typically 3 possible causes:
-
The business has been surpassed by more active competitors
-
There is a temporary shakeup going on, meaning that rankings will likely return in a short time
-
The business has been penalized, meaning that time goes by and the previous high rankings do not return
From your description, it sounds like it may be the last of these. You mention "once they had they transferred over" and I'm not quite sure to what this refers, but a key task here will be to see if the client can put a date on exactly when they lost rankings. If they can't maybe their analytics can help you. Then, perhaps you can tie this time period to a known Google penalty, as well as being sure that all of the bases are covered in my original list of Local SEO requirements.
Major penalties and troubleshooting fall outside my areas of knowledge, so I am going to request that one of our expert traditional SEOs might also come look at your question. They will likely be able to ask questions and see things that I can't.
-
-
Hi again Marcus,
In this case I used majesticseo to have a quick glance, you will be able to see these links even with the free version. Remember to start slowly with new links and change your anchor + do not link only to home, build a strong net all over your site. Wish you good luck, keep me posted!
Cheers from another really sunny morning in southern Spain.
-
Hi Claudio,
Thanks for that - I had a look at the inbound links to the site via Opensite explorer and it didn't pick up the ones you've mentioned, so I will investigate their link profile a bit further.
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for getting back to me, according to the client, the site enjoyed good rankings previously and it now seems to have dropped (once they had they transferred over). I'm thinking it must be an algorithmic penalty because the site doesnt rank in the first 8 pages for 'Dental implants York' despite the high quality on the page and that is optimised correctly. This is the same for most of their other treatment keywords.
Thanks
Marcus
-
Hi DentalDesign,
Can you provide further clarification as to what you mean by 'struggling for rankings'? Does this mean the client has lost rankings or is struggling to achieve the high rankings they would like to earn?
As a rule of thumb, high local rankings hinge on -
1. Physical location in city of search
2. A lack of violations of Google's guidelines
3. Consistency of NAP (name, address, phone) across all citations
4. A perfectly optimized website
5. Quality and authority of that site
6. Review acquisition
7. Traditional SEO factors
8. Activities of competitors
Local Search Ranking factors 2013 goes into awesome detail regarding the most important positive and negative ranking factors. It's an amazing resource: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors
-
Hi Marcus,
Have a look to 1778 backlinks coming from asooy.com they look definitely spammy... probably others, also would advise you to move cautiously with new links 100´s links per day could show spammy also with a site that previously had no backlinks except those spammy ones and also about 3000 from bradford-webdesign.co.uk which don´t either look to much of "natural" sort of links...
Maybe disavow those ones and start slowly and naturally with new links, change your anchor, and work them from different domains.
Hope you good luck from southern sunny Spain!
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
-
I have followed all the steps in google speed ranking on how to increase my website http://briefwatch.com/ speed but no good result
My website http://briefwatch.com/ has a very low-speed score on google page speed and I followed all the steps given to me still my website speed doesn't increase
Local Website Optimization | | Briefwatch0 -
How to Rank Local Website in Search Engines?
Hello, I'm the owner of a rubbish removal company based in London - Frank Rubbish Removal and trying to optimize the website of the company for search engines. Until now, I have hired a couple marketing companies but without success. What I want to achieve is to rank for local keywords in the rubbish removal niche, for example, Rubbish Removal Chelsea, waste clearance Hackney, waste removal Harrow...and similar local keywords. I have spent a lot of money on marketing companies and the website still can't go on 1st page of search engines in the UK. Can you tell me what I can do or who can hire to bring my website on 1st page for the local keywords?
Local Website Optimization | | korado112 -
Business has multiple locations, but want to rank for commutable cities, geographies
Hello, The business I am working for has multiple locations, but the service they provide is one that you would commute for. At present, they have 20 or so pages with yucky geographical keyword stuffed content (think "New York computer services" and they are based out of a suburb (maybe 40 miles away). For some ridiculous reason, some of these pages are ranking for exact match search terms? We are in the process of revamping the whole site-taking approx five sites and integrating into one mega site. I want to first, figure out the best strategy for ranking for the region that each is in and serve, without being spammy like the previous SEO. I want to eliminate the spammy pages without losing the rank and link juice. What is the most appropriate and above-board strategy? These are my thoughts. Should I: 1. Keep the pages, but tweak them enough to make the content quality? If I do, should they be geo pages? Should they be "locations served", statistics of the area, etc? 2. Group the pages according to region (one page per region) that are location-oriented and tweaked to still include the terms they were ranking for (without the spammy look and stuffing), along with a map, etc? And then, I have to figure out how to redirect so not to lose the value we have now for some of them. The company deals with treatment for addiction, so in recommending and tips-remember that our audience will commute by car, and eventually (hopefully) by plane. 😉 Thank you so so much for any and all help you can provide! Sorry for such a long description!
Local Website Optimization | | lfrazer1231 -
Site is not ranking, please help.
For some reason, we have been fighting and fighting to get a website to rank and no matter what we do- nothing seems to work. I'm just taking over the website handle it personally, but was curious if anyone here had advice on what the issue may be. It isn't even ranking for its brand name, any ideas? http://estesroofingtx.com/
Local Website Optimization | | spadedesign0 -
Are there any suggestions when you completly redesign your web page keeping the same domain but change the host? I want it to go smoothly and want to avoid the rankings we already have including sub pages.
I am currently having our website completely redone by a design company. Are there any suggestions on this process as to not lose the rankings we currently have for our site? The domain will remain the same however we are planning on changing our host. We also have a good amount of sub domains that the web company will not be changing for us.
Local Website Optimization | | molchman0 -
Competitor Ranking High with Questionable Backlinks
Happy Friday Mozzers! I wanted to pick your brains this morning, and see what your thoughts were on how Google missed this one. One of our competitors is ranking high in Google, and has been for some time. About 5-6 months ago, his site skyrocketed from page 3-4 to the top of page one. The site meta tag is pulling in logo alt text, content is very messy and sales driven, and after looking at the backlink profile in MOZ tools, it has a ton of links from China, Japan, Korea. Most of the backlinks are from blog pages, about everything under the sun, from UFO's to porn sites. This site has consistantly ranked high at the top of the page for many different competitive keywords. My question is this: HOW? After all the updates done by Google, and their focus on web spam, what is allowing this site to rank high constantly? (5-6 months now, and often in the number one spot). Here is an example of some of the backlinks. There are a LOT of them. http://sundtjek-wp.alexandra.dk/?p=1
Local Website Optimization | | David-Kley
http://ice.anyang.ac.kr/xe/teacher/2095
http://blog.so-net.ne.jp/etsuko_hayashi_ET3/2006-07-02 Don't worry, we are not looking to follow in his footsteps, lol. I was just wondering how this can happen, and for such a long time period.0 -
Perfect Site Structure help please and EMD question
Hello to all, I appreciate your time and trouble greatly, so thank you in advance. Question - 1 - I just watched a video regarding onsite <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym>. This video explained to instead of using a services page to list each service, instead if possible make a page and menu item for the most popular search terms. So my families business site is allspecialtybuildings.com We do construction. I currently have it setup to have a services page then the listings of the services with its own page under the menu. But from watching this video, would you also suggest that it would be best to take maybe the top 3 or 4 services, then list the services as actual page menus? So say instead of this: Service Menu Link -
Local Website Optimization | | Berner
-Pole Barns
-Indoor Riding Arenas
-Garages
-Horse Barns
-Loafing Sheds Would it be best to have each service as a menu in itself like this: Home
Pole Barns
-Pole Barn Construction
-Pole Barn Kits
-Pole Barn Color Charts Indoor Riding Arenas
-Indoor Riding Arena Construction
-Indoor Riding Arena Kits
-Indoor Riding Arena Color Charts Same- Different word
Same- Different Word So basically create specific and relevant pages and remove the popular pages from a service page. Not sure if this make sense, or is basically not needed? Last Question - Branding- I got 2 <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> companies reviews back, and was told to change my branding and domain. See the issue is that the company name is All Specialty Buildings. So All is basically thrown out of some search results, almost like its a stop word. So "Specialty Buildings" shows up on many results. I would like to counter this. So I am curious if I get a new domain, like say something like ColoradoBarnConstruction.com Would this be a better domain for <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> rankings and memory for people? Or would I risk an EMD penalty? When I look for dentists, or <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> help, I get coloradodentist, or coloradoseo(dot)com's So they all rank well, I just want something brandable and easy to remember. I figured the company name would be best, But these companies that want 3500 a month for <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> services are saying different. Again thank you for your time, your ideas, and your advice. Thank you Chris0 -
NAP question about wider service area
My business is based in Suffolk, UK, but I serve an area that includes Essex, Cambs, Herts and Norfolk. I've been making an effort to include a constant NAP across all my local citations for Suffolk in an effort to rank better in local search.
Local Website Optimization | | schitz011
However, what effect does this have on pages when trying to rank for searches for areas where I have no physical location? If my entire site has NAP across it referencing Suffolk, does this impact the ability to rank organically for areas outside Suffolk? If so, what would be the best practice for increasing organic rank in these areas?0