Can you advise why my site get outranked by sites with way less authority and so on
-
Hello SeoMoz,
As a new member I first want to thank you guys for your service, seomoz is by far the best resource and toolbox I have ever found.
I have a question, or more of a request if you could advise me on what I do wrong.
I have a website: www.letsflycheaper.com with a Domain Authority of 80, and my target keywords are keywords like: cheap business class, business class flights.
My target page is: www.letsflycheaper.com/business-class.php.With all my keywords I am page 2 and I have a real hard time getting on the first page, but if I look at my competitors like: www.wholesale-flights.com with a Domain Authority of 'just' 50, crappy backlinks and so on, they are all on the first page with almost all of my keywords that I want to target.
What do I do wrong? Can you maybe give me a couple tips on where I should focus on more?
Hopefully you guys can help me...
Kind Regards,
Ramon van Meer
-
It depends on how long it will be before the new content is up -if it's a couple days, might as well leave it. If it's weeks or longer, it's best to change them, though honestly making the change one way or another at this point is not necessarily going to move the site in any significant way - it's difficult to judge how much, if at all.
-
Thanks for your reply Alan, yes you have a good point, my writer is now writing new content for those pages. A page for each mayor city with introduction on that city, tips for the business travel for that specific city and handy sites for the business traveler.
Do you think, that I should take out the "Business Class" out of the anchor text until I got the new content up?
-
This is much better from the previous over-saturation perspective. Here's my next question though - all those links in the lower part that still remain - they all use "business class CityName" as anchor text.
Except none of them points to a business class specific page. So how do you confirm to Google that "these pages really are about business class services", other than by using that anchor text from that one page?
-
Alan, I changed the www.letsflycheaper.com/business-class.php page, could you maybe take a quick peek if this is better?
Thanks!
-
Hi Egol,
Thanks for you message, I have the same gut feeling.... To bad there isn't a way to find out which links are possible devalued....
-
Domain authority of 80? That's incredible.
Just sayin' what comes from the gut...
... I would be wondering if some of the links have been devalued by Google.
-
The other replies here have been spot on so I will only add something on the side.
You need to use link building in the most natural form possible. Instead of trying to focus your links to /business-class.php you need to spread it throughout your website with a large variation of anchortext not forgetting about long tail keywords aswell.
-
Without enough links to the target page (a mix of keyword variations and generic non-keyword specific), the target page doesn't have enough off-site "trust" as compared to other sites when compared head to head.
yet if all you have was links to internal pages, that too would look unnatural, so always have some of your new links point to the home page.
-
Have another quick question, as far as finding high quality backlinks, is it better to link it to my /business-class.php page or to my main page?
Thanks
-
Hi Alan,
Thank you so much for your advise! I will defiantly will start working on those tips....
-
Looking over this real quickly and running the 2 sites listed, yours and wholesale flights, through OpenSite Explorer, I see that yours mostly has img alt links titled "Lets fly cheaper", some of your other high PA links are titled: "Ramon Van Meer", and "Cheap International Flights", none of which are your target keyword mentioned above.
Your Wholesale Flight competitor has links titled "Discount business class tickets", your desired keyword.
You would be better off with text, not img alt links. See if you can get those changed out.
-
Ramon
There could be several other factors however here's a quick hit finding:
1. Inbound Link anchor text spread
While you've got much more content and many more links, wholesale-flights.com has a much broader variety of inbound link anchor text related to "business class" than you do, including pointing to their home page. (OpenSiteExplorer.org is great for providing insights like this).
2. Internal keyword saturation
You've got an extremely over-saturated usage of keywords in your internal linking (all those links in the bottom third of your home page for example)
By not having enough inbound link quality relative to that specific phrase, and simultaneously having too much use on internal links, you're out of balance.
3. Core architecture flaw
When I go to your Business Class page, the entire top navigation is gone. As though you've made that specific page into more of a PPC landing page than a primary site page.
On that Business Class page, you've got section level navigation specific to Business class, with the top link labeled "home". Again, this communicates that this really isn't a core part of the main site, but some sort of isolated section. This then isolates this section improperly. Then on one of those sub-pages, not only are the top navigation links gone, so are the primary site footer links.
Yes, it's good, and important to maintain that section level navigation, yet it's just as important to communicate that it's a core section of the main site.
4. Section level content.
Other than the initial business class page, none of the other pages in that section have any substantial content to speak of - they're all very weak overall.
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 -
New site. How important is traffic for a new site? And what about domain age?
Hi guys. I've been building a new site because i've seen a real SEO opportunity out there. I'm a mixing professional by trade and so I wanted to take advantage of SEO to help gain more work. Here's the site: www.signalchainstudios.co.uk I'm curious about domain age. This site fairly well optimised for my keywords, and my site got pretty good content on it (i think so anyway). But it's no where to be seen on the SERP's (link at all). Is this just a domain age issue? I'd have though it might be in the top 50 because my site's services are not hard to rank for at all! Also what about traffic? Does Google want to see an 'active' site before it considers 'promoting' it up the ranks? Or are back links and good content the main factor in the equation? Thanks in advance. I love this community to bits 🙂 Isaac.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | isaac6631 -
Micro Site Penalty?
I have been carrying out On-Page optimisation only for a client www.shade7.co.nz. After three months or so I have been getting some great results, improving to the top three positions for at least 30 of 45 keywords targeted. Couple of more tweaks and I would be a very happy camper. Disaster overnight! Rankings CRASH! Unbeknown to me the client a month or so back decided to link just about every product/link on a micro site he owns (www.shademakers.com/ ) plus one other site he owns. Explorer I think discovered over 350 back-links (follow) from these sites! As this is a site he owns and it is targeting the same keywords I presume this falls into the EVIL bucket of SEO. Two part question do you believe I am correct that this is the reason for this rankings crash and what would be the best way to resolve this! server-side 301 redirect for the micro site? Delete the micro site (drastic measure) Remove all the links other than maybe one in the contact page saying visit our other site shade7 other options? The client or I have not received any bad link Emails from Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Moving-Web-SEO-Auckland0 -
301s from previous site
Hi! Got quite a tricky problem regarding a client, http://www.muchbetteradventures.com/ and their previous site, http://v1.muchbetteradventures.com/ Here's the background: We have approx 1500 'listing' pages like this: http://v1.muchbetteradventures.com/listing/view/1925/the-barre-des-ecrins-or-the-dome-des-ecrins-mountaineering-trip They bring in min 2k hits/month, and also add to the overall site authority I suspect. They will eventually all have a home on main domain. When they do, they will also each have been rewritten to be unique, so the value of them will increase (many are currently not). We also have landing pages like this: http://v1.muchbetteradventures.com/view/559/volunteering-holidays- which despite being hideous are ranked fairly well (page 1 for key terms). We cannot currently fulfil all these on main domain, but do not want to shut them down and lose positioning. Choices as I see it: Make a landing page e.g. muchbetteradventures.com/volunteering and a) redirect from old landing page, b) redirect all related 'listings' to this page. May help preserve rankings of main landing page (the most important), but not of any listings? Import all listings to have a home on main domain, (probably as children of a landing page, but not rewritten to be unique just yet). Make them not accessible from homepage, and change functionality of them so that new visitors from google are told we cannot currently help them with this trip. This is more work to complete so will take longer to do and is a distraction from our core focus so needs good justification! Stay running largely as we are, slowly redirecting 1 page at a time as we carry over more and more options to main domain. This will take over 12 months min.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
Our quilting site was hit by Panda/Penguin...should we start a second "traffic" site?
I built a website for my wife who is a quilter called LearnHowToMakeQuilts.com. However, it has been hit by Panda or Penguin (I’m not quite sure) and am scared to tell her to go ahead and keep building the site up. She really wants to post on her blog on Learnhowtomakequilts.com, but I’m afraid it will be in vain for Google’s search engine. Yahoo and Bing still rank well. I don’t want her to produce good content that will never rank well if the whole site is penalized in some way. I’ve overly optimized in linking strongly to the keywords “how to make a quilt” for our main keyword, mainly to the home page and I think that is one of the main reasons we are incurring some kind of penalty. First main question: From looking at the attached Google Analytics image, does anyone know if it was Panda or Penguin that we were “hit” by? And, what can be done about it? (We originally wanted to build a nice content website, but were lured in by a get rich quick personality to rather make a “squeeze page” for the Home page and force all your people through that page to get to the really good content. Thus, our avenge time on site per person is terrible and Pages per Visit is low at: 1.2. We really want to try to improve it some day. She has a local business website, Customcarequilts.com that did not get hit. Second question: Should we start a second site rather than invest the time in trying to repair the damage from my bad link building and article marketing? We do need to keep the site up and running because it has her online quilting course for beginner quilters to learn how to quilt their first quilt. We host the videos through Amazon S3 and were selling at least one course every other day. But now that the Google drop has hit, we are lucky to sell one quilting course per month. So, if we start a second site we can use that to build as a big content site that we can use to introduce people to learnhowtomakequilts.com that has Martha’s quilting course. So, should we go ahead and start a new fresh site rather than to repair the damage done by my bad over optimizing? (We’ve already picked out a great website name that would work really well with her personal facebook page.) Or, here’s a second option, which is to use her local business website: customcarequilts.com. She created it in 2003 and has had it ever since. It is only PR 1. Would this be an option? Anyway I’m looking for guidance on whether we should pursue repairing the damage and whether we should start a second fresh site or use an existing site to create new content (for getting new quilters to eventually purchase her course). Brad & Martha Novacek rnUXcWd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BradNovi0 -
Network Of Sites...
Hi Guys, Just wondering if anyone can help me out... We have recently been hit by the Google penguin update and I'm currently working though all the bad / spammy backlinks that previous SEO companies have built for us. I have come across 1 particular domain www.justgoodcars.com they seem to have a lot of different domain names: <colgroup><col width="390"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottBaxterWW
| http://www.justpulsarcars.com/nissan-pulsar-warranties/1/United_Kingdom/all.html |
| http://www.justpumacars.com/ford-puma-warranties/1/United_Kingdom/all.html |
| http://www.justpuntocars.com/dutch-site/fiat-punto-warranties/1/United_Kingdom/all.html?selectcountry1=United_Kingdom |
| http://www.justpuntocars.com/fiat-punto-warranties/1/United_Kingdom/all.html?selectcountry1=United_Kingdom | Now all of theses domains names have exactly the same IP Address?? Above is just a few I would say there are 100s of them. Do you think this could have an affect on us? Thanks, Scott0 -
Niche sites: how to optimize them?
Dear SEOmozzers, I am focusing on those keywords I find using the "Keyword Analysis" tool that are not too competitive (among 20%-30% competitiveness). I then buy domains that include those keywords. The sites are in Italian and targeting the Italian search engines, so the competition is lower than it would be in the US. Basically, I'd like to build niche sites and I'd like to ask a few questions that I hope somebody with a good experience in this field can answer: How do I optimize a niche site. Specifically, how do I go about link building? How many backlinks should I get to see some results? How long does it take for a typical niche site to start appearing in the search engines for a certain keyword, after launching an effective link building campaign? Please kindly provide any recommendations you believe to be important when building niche sites. For example, is there a company/professional you know that specializes in this field and who is trustworthy/reliable? Thank you very much for your help. All best, Sal
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0 -
How can we get a site reconsidered for Google indexing?
We recently completed a re-design for a site and are having trouble getting it indexed. This site may have been penalized previously. They were having issues getting it ranked and the design was horrible. Any advise on how to get the new site reconsidered to get the rank where it should be? (Yes, Webmaster Tools is all set up with the sitemap linked) Many thanks for any help with this one!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | d25kart0