Stuck on Page 4...is this diagnosis on the right track?
-
My website's (http://bartlettpairphotography.com) SERP rank is #45 for my targeted keyword: Philadelphia wedding photographers. My site is several years old, with 31-Domain Authority and 42-Page Authority. I've been stuck in SERP 40's for about a year now (I used to be top 5) and I have been pulling my hair out trying everything to no avail. I have an inkling that some configuration is seriously wrong, and would be very very appreciative is someone could point me in the right direction! I'm evidently not an expert at this, but here are my high level thoughts, though I could be totally off base here:
Homepage problems (ranking 45 for highest priority keyword: Philadelphia wedding photographers):
- The #5 rank has a flash website, homepage = 33-DA/44-PA (slightly better than me). This makes me wonder if my problem is off-page? I have recently been submitting my photography work to many relevant wedding blogs so I think I will get some nice relevant backlinks in the coming weeks/months.
- The #11 rank has the same wordpress theme as me (ProPhotoBlogs), and homepage = 26-DA, 35-PA (somewhat worse than me) and similar homepage content etc...this makes me think I have an on-page problem?
- As you can see, my targeted keyword starts off with a geographic location. Geographically, our location is ~1 hour outside of the location, so ranking on Google maps etc. is very competitive (hundreds of competitors that are closer). Therefore, I'm mostly focused on non-local ranking. Both of the competitors I mentioned are ranking non-locally and both are 1 hour outside Philadelphia. With that said, would it still benefit me to add local content to my homepage (insert google maps, address, hours etc.)?
NON-homepage problems (ranking ~30 for longer tail keywords, i.e. specific wedding venues)
- My blog page (http://bartlettpairphotography.com/blog) is ="noindex,follow." My reasoning for the "noindex" is because I'm showing FULL posts rather than excerpts (because I want my brides to flip through ~5 weddings rather than only clicking on 1). My thinking was that the FOLLOW aspect would pass along the link juice, while avoiding a duplicate content penalty by noindexing? I don't think this problem affects my higher priority homepage problem, but still wanted to point it out.
- We have ~100 published posts, but honestly I only care about ranking for ~30 of them. What should I do with the ~70 that I don't care about? Are they sucking up link juice that would be better elsewhere? Or should I just leave it because it's more content?
Other than that, I'm really lost as to how I can improve my site. I gave the above examples to show that I am trying, but ultimately I feel like I'm looking in the wrong areas. With my SERP in the mid 40s, I feel like many things are broken that I am not able to figure out. I would be so very grateful if someone could help diagnose my issues!
-
Great! I will work to clean this up. I'm hoping that since there is no Manual Action that the algorithm will take care of itself without needing a Manual Reconsideration.
-
I was thinking how to answer this, but it is so simple: Yes and Yes for both of the questions
Let me know if you need further assistance.
-
Thank you Keszi - after reading your link I agree that there are several steps to take before disavowing.
Before I jump into all this work, i'm still looking for clarity that I actually have an anchor over optimization problem (or if it's something else). Based on the March 22, 2012 note above...and also the fact that I don't have anything in the Manual Actions of my GWT, is it reasonable to think I have a penguin anchor problem given that commercial anchors comprise ~25% of my backlinks? Especially since I remain indexed and Google seems to be penalizing me for the keywords that were over-anchored?
-
Hi Lincoln,
I'd be cautious using tools that automatically generate a list for disavowing links. Instead take a day or two and go over it manually, filter out those which do look spammy. (You can use Opensiteexplorer to export your backlinks.)
Here you have a very good article from Modestos Siotos, on how to conduct a link audit.
Gr., Keszi
-
Well, the story is becoming clearer now. I just looked back in my GWT and found a message (see attachment) from Google on March 22, 2012. I suspect this is related to over optimized backlink anchor text (probably mostly lots of anchor optimized comments on other photography related blogs).
I plan on using this tool (http://cognitiveseo.com/blog/3524/the-fastest-most-accurate-unnatural-link-detection-case-study/) to discover/disavow links. Does that sound like a good approach? Can I submit the same disavow tool to Bing and Yahoo, or just Google?
This is the first and only time that I've received a warning. Does that mean anything? Also, I am able to rank pretty well for long tail keywords (it kinda seems like the penalty is most severe on the anchors that were over optimized?), so it's not like I've been banned...do I have to do a reconsideration request or will the disavow be a good step?
-
Thank you so much Miriam! Yes, I was so concerned about getting a high non-local ranking that I lost focus of some basic local optimization.
i just bought Yoast's local plugin to add NAP with a map etc..should I add this to my homepage? Or only my contact page?
i have 25 reviews on WeddingWire (which Moz ranks as a top citation source for wedding photographers), but none of those are showing on my Google Local page. How would I fix that?
-
Hi Lincoln!
I'm sorry to hear about the troubles you're having! I want to preface what I'm going to write with my opinion that your scenario is likely to require a full audit by an SEO who knows both traditional and local SEO. The Moz Q&A Forum is a great place to get at-a-glance opinions on things, but should not be seen a replacement for a formal, dedicated audit of your company. So, what follows is just my at-a-glance take on this. I am not going to look at penalties - I am just going to look at this from a local perspective.
-
Your website is not locally optimized. There is no contact information. No local phone number, address, etc.
-
So, next step for me was to guess at a Philadelphia zip code and look up your business in our Check Listing tool. The only option I see as a result for your business is located in Morgantown - not Philadelphia. Is this your business:
-
If the above is your business and you are not located in Philadelphia, aiming for Philadelphia-related rankings is going to be a major uphill battle. Doubtless there is major competition from companies physically located in this city who are going to have a significant inherent edge over your business unless you can get an office in Philadelphia.
-
The Check Listing results indicate that almost no citation building has been done for the business. Of the 15 platforms this tool surveys, you have listings on just 3, so it doesn't look like much off-site local search marketing has been done.
-
Your Google+ Local page has earned 0 reviews: https://plus.google.com/107698063096203549335/about?hl=en-US
6. You should research local algo changes that may have occurred around the time that you noticed any drops.
So, in just a minute or two, I'm seeing some important things that, in and of themselves, could explain a lack of visibility for the locally-focused searches you're hoping to rank for. The site is not optimized locally and isn't being marketed locally and the physical location is a big question mark. This is just a start, of course, but I hope it's helpful to get started thinking about these basics that you'll need to begin addressing in your marketing efforts.
Here are some links I think you'll find really helpful:
http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors
It's really smart of you to be investigating all of this, Lincoln, and I'm wishing you good luck!
-
-
So I think I'm going to revisit the content for all of my blog posts. When I'm rewriting them, does anyone have a guide as to how often I should use words that mention the major keywords that I want my homepage to rank for? i have Yoast's plugin to help me with ranking that blog post, but I'm a little lost when it comes to how often I should mention overall homepage words (in my case, Philadelphia wedding photographers).
i also think I'm going to get rid of a lot of old posts that I don't care about.
Any other suggestions based on the graph above?
-
Thanks Keszi...here's how Panguin looks for me.
-
Hi Lincoln,
First of all, I would try to investigate what happened, why you have dropped out of top 5 to position ~#45. If you take a look at the Moz's Google Algo update page: http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change and you compare it with your Google Analytics/Google Webmasters Tools data, do you see any specific update that might have hurt your rankings?
If you want to be quick with this, there is a great tool Panguin.
Before I would jump into troubleshooting the other questions, I would try to figure out what went wrong in the first place. Sometimes resolving old issues on the site can help the success of future efforts. So it might be worth a try.
I hope it has helped, Gr. Keszi
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
-
Multiple service area pages that rank well. However the primary keyword page tends to bounce around between the pages. How can I stabalise the ranking to the primary page
We have multiple service area pages attached to the primary keyword for the site which arent in the navigation and we have the primary page which is in the navigation. Currently Google is choosing different service area pages to rank for the primary keyword so the rankings bounce around a lot for the keyword when it doesn't have a service area target in it. Eg work shirts vs work shirts brisbane.
Local Website Optimization | | jonathan.k0 -
Should I mention locations in service-specific landing pages?
I'm writing new landing page copy for a client in the HVAC industry. The client has one office, but its service area includes several cities in a metropolitan area. I'm writing two types of pages: Service-specific landing pages (e.g. "Air Conditioner Repair," "Furnace Inspections") Location-specific pages (e.g. "Dallas Heating & Air Services," "Plano Heating & Air Services") My question is whether I should also include specific locations within the service-specific pages if I'm already doing the location-specific pages as well. For example, would it make sense to do a page on AC repair with title/H1 elements like "Dallas Air Conditioner Repair Service" or "Air Conditioner Repair in Plano and Dallas" in light of the fact that there will already be 10-12 location-specific pages? My preference is to NOT include location-specific stuff in the service landing pages except for maybe a passing reference to something like "...need HVAC services for your Dallas-area home" or similar. It just seems more natural that way. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | Greenery1 -
Multi Location SEO Page Structure
I am trying to optimize my website for multiple locations. I have setup a landing page for each location. Now I want to optimize services we offer at those locations such as floor scrubber rentals. I'm confused on the best approach for this for ranking locally. I offer the same equipment for rent at each location. So... should I have a link on the location landing page that takes you to an individual floor scrubber rental page for each location optimized for that locations city or should I have just one floor scrubber rental page and would I optimize it for both cities or just optimize it for floor scrubber rentals in general? I have many different categories like this that are offered @ both locations. If I do individual pages all the products and rates will be duplicate but I could change the areas we deliver to and description to be more geared towards that city.
Local Website Optimization | | CougarChemMike0 -
Google still indexing home page even after with 301 - Ecommerce Website
Hi all,
Local Website Optimization | | David1986
We have a 301 redirect problem. Google seems to continue indexing a 301 redirect to our old home page. Even after months. We have a multiple language domain, with subfolders: www.example.com (ex page, now with a redirect to the right locale in the right country) www.example.com/it/home (canonical) www.example.com/en/home (canonical) www.example.com/es/home (canonical) www.example.com/fr/home (canonical) www.example.com/de/home (canonical) We still see the old page (www.example.com) in Google results, with old metadata in English and, just in some countries (i.e.: France), we see the correct result, the "new" homepage, www.example.com/fr/home in first position.
The real problem is that Google is still indexing and showing www.example.com as the "real" and "trusted" URL, even if we set: a 301 redirect the right language for every locale in Google Search Console a canonical tag to the locale url an hreflang tag inside the code a specific sitemap with hreflang tag specified for the new homepages Now our redirect process is the following (Italy example).
www.example.com -->301
www.example.com/en/home --> default version --->301
www.example.com/it/home --> 200 Every online tool, from Moz to Bot simulators see that there is a 301. So Correct. Google Search Console says that: on www.example.com there is a 301 (correct) in the internal link section of Google Search Console the www.example.com is still in first position with 34k links. Many of these links are cominig from property subdomains. Should we change those links inside those third level domain? From www.example.com to www.example.com/LOCALE/home? the www.example.com/LOCALE/home are the real home page, they give 200 code Do you know if there's a way to delete the old home page from Google results since this is 301? Do you think that, even after a 301 redirect, if Google sees too many internal links decides to ignore the 301? Thanks for your help! Davide0 -
What is the effect of CloudFlare CDN on page load speeds, hosting IP location and the ultimate SEO effect?
Will using a CDN like CloudFlare.com confuse search engines in terms of the location (IP address) of where the site is actually physically hosted especially since CloudFlare distributes the site's content all around the globe? I understand it is important that if customers are mostly in a particular city it makes sense to host on an IP address in the same city for better rankings, all things else being equal? I have a number of city-based sites but does it make having multiple hosting plans in multiple cities/ countries (to be close to customers) become suddenly a ridiculous thing with a CDN? In other words should I just reduce it down to having one hosting plan anywhere and just use the CDN to distribute it? I am really struggling with this concept trying to understand if I should consolidate all my hosting plans under one, or if I should get rid of CloudFlare entirely (can it cause latency in come cases) and create even more locally-based hosting plans (like under site5.com who allow many city hosting plans). I really hope you can help me somehow or point me to an expert who can clarify this confusing conundrum. Of course my overall goal is to have:
Local Website Optimization | | uworlds
1. lowest page load times
2. best UX
3. best rankings I do realise that other concepts are more important for rankings (great content, and links etc.) but assuming that is already in place and every other factor is equal, how can I fine tune the hosting to achieve the desirable goals above? Many thanks!
Mark0 -
Local site went from dominating first page - bad plugin caused duplicate content issues - now to 2nd page for all!
I had a bad plugin create duplicate content issues on my Wordpress CMS - www.pmaaustin.com I got it fixed, but now every keyword has been stuck on page 2 for search terms for 4 months now, where I was 49 out of 52 keywords on page one. It's a small local niche with mostly easier to rank keywords. Am I missing something? p.s. Also has a notice on the Dashboard that says: "404 Redirected: There are 889 captured 404 URLs that need to be processed." Could that be a problem? Thanks, Steve
Local Website Optimization | | OhYeahSteve0 -
Keyword Cannibalization? My home page is ranking higher for a keyword that another page is targeting
Hello! My website's http://lessonsgowhere.com.sg/ and we're a marketplace for local lessons. I've been working on the site's SEO for maybe 3 to 4 months now, and am seeing some good results. The one thing that really bugs me right now is that my homepage is ranking for a keyword that I'm trying to target with another page. Specifically, I'm targeting the group of keywords for 'cooking class', 'cooking lessons', 'cooking class singapore' with the category page: http://lessonsgowhere.com.sg/cooking-classes However, my home page is currently ranking on the first page for local search (Google Singapore), and my category page isn't! On the other hand, the page that I'm targeting for 'baking class', 'baking lessons', and 'baking class singapore' is doing fine and is already in the top 3 positions for the entire group of keywords. Anyone have any ideas as to what I can do?
Local Website Optimization | | NgEF0 -
Has anyone had any success buying a local domain website, getting it on first page and then selling it to a local business? I have found some good domains that this might work for but I am wondering if anybody has tried this before.
I would like to buy a local domain like scottsdalepaintingcontractor.com and then seo it to first page before I sell it. Has anybody tried such strategy?
Local Website Optimization | | BWoods3