Question For SEO Companies From An On-line Retailer
-
When employing an SEO company what should I be looking for? When I go to a companies website I look for how many keywords they have ranked on Semrush. Most of the companies that I have looked at do not rank very many. Saying most I am talking about 10-12 companies. There was one company that had a lot more than anyone else but their reviews were awful.
Then I look at their clients websites to see how many keywords they have ranked and this is where I am baffled. Quite a lot of them especially retail sites with lots of products have very few keywords ranked and my belief is that the more related keywords that you have ranked the better you will do.
I also look at how the thier organic traffic is doing over a number of months. what surprises me most is that companies are advertising clients websites where it looks like traffic is climbing and then all of a sudden there is a big drop. Am I missing something in order to find a company that will do what we are paying them for?
Thank you in advance.
-
Number of keywords ranked in SEMRush?
This isn't such a great metric for a number of reasons.
-
SEMRush as a whole isn't all that great for small to mid-sized sites. It's great for huge sites and even "pretty large" places but I wouldn't think you'll find many results on dentists, plumbers, photographers & even SEO agencies.
-
"my belief is that the more related keywords that you have ranked the better you will do."
I'll take "dresses" and you take 250 keywords related to window tinting in Kyoto. "More" keywords isn't necessarily better. A lot of SEO agencies don't bother trying to rank keywords as they're often busy working on client work and not on their own marketing (I know two of the agencies I'm intimately familiar with don't 'drink their own koolaid' - their marketing is way behind their actual skills.)
Finding a good company is challenging but you should look places like here (Moz Q&A is great and you get to know people before you work with them) as well as LinkedIn local groups, social media (again, insight) and try to get an idea of what someone's philosophy is before you engage them.
When you talk about traffic "drop offs" - again, if this is SEMrush, it's hard to say ... but I've seen frequently when a company is engaging an SEO agency that has their own private network, the contract ends and they remove links. If you have 20-200 strong links removed, you're going to take a massive dive. Also, check if these dives are around algorithm changes.
-
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
-
H1 question
is it recommended to have the page title labeled as H1? or better to have page title and separate H1 ? thank you
On-Page Optimization | | gergi0 -
Is it possible that not having cookie warning message penalizes our SEO?
Hi! I'm wondering if not having a cookie warning message in a web may be a reason for google algorithm to penalize SEO. (we're talking about a european website) Does anybody know it it is so? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Canexel0 -
Quick H1 Above the Fold Question
I was wondering if the H1 for this page was alright even though it is below the fold: http://www.seniorplanning.org/assisted-living-phoenix-arizona/. Any suggestions/comments would be very helpful. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | JacobEdward0 -
Time on Site vs Bounce Rate Question
If you follow my questions here on SEOMoz, you know that we have quite a few issues with a particular site. http://bit.ly/RE8V2a Our bounce rate was over 85% for quite some time. We changed the site template and the Bounce Rate has dropped to around 5%, but the Time on Site has dropped dramatically. We were just over two minutes, now we're averaging 1:34. But here's the thing, time spent on the Home Page is averaging 24 seconds! What would you take away from this? Thanks so much!
On-Page Optimization | | Linwright0 -
SEO capability on web pages v blog posts
firstly, apologies if this is a daft question, I am very new to this! We are about to launch a new website (very exciting) and our CEO is mad about incorprating a "tag cloud" because it looks good! Our web designer therefore has to convert all our web pages to "posts" in order for the tag cloud to pick up the "tagged" words associated with the specific pages (soon to be posts). Question: With regards to SEO, will the change from "web page" to "post" have any positive or negative effects? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Joelfarrow0 -
SEO strategy recommendations?
Hi My website http://www.harrisbassett.co.uk is now ranking on the 1st page of Bing and Google for phrases such as Chartered Accountant Swansea and Tax Planners Swansea But the phrase 'accountants swansea' is still performing poorly - as it is near the bottom of the second page? Would I be better placing more accountant swansea phrases on the homepage of the site or would this have an adverse effect on the current 'Chartered Accountants Swansea' ranking as would this be classed as keyword cannabilisation? So would it be better to further optimise http://www.harrisbassett.co.uk/accounting.htm and include the phrases Accountants Swansea and Auditors Swansea or would this act against the homepage? Sorry for the questions I am just looking for the best route forward to further boost the ranking on additional terms as the majority of the 1st page listings seem to weak?
On-Page Optimization | | idv0 -
Do you ever forget the SEO basics?
We all get a little sloppy at times. Just yesterday , someone pointed out that I accidentally blocked the robots from one of our primary pages, because it was being included in a wildcard match on one of the disallow commands in robots.txt. Sometimes the mistakes are very basic. The one below is just too funny. I thought I would share the love. Search Google for "MD care" MD Care Inc. - Welcome<a id="LXPLSS_979677678U1"></a> <cite>www.mdcarehealthplan.com/</cite> This is an SEO description that will be seen by the search engines and used in the search results. The meta keywords tag is even funnier: <meta name="keywords" content="spam,the,keywords,here,like,this,and this,good" />
On-Page Optimization | | irvingw2 -
Duplicate Content Question
On the home page of my site I have a read more link that takes you to a different URL with basically the same content, just more of it. Home Page: http://www.opwdecks.com/ Read More Link on Home Page: http://www.opwdecks.com/deckmaintain.htm I think this may be affecting my seo. Any suggestions on what I should do about this? Should I add a canonical to the home page and/or on the other page? Both pages are indexed by google. Thanks for any help or tips.
On-Page Optimization | | opwdecks0