At a bit of a loss as to poor rankings
-
I have a site in the UK, with these metrics:
- 15 years old
- 500 pages in sitemap, but Majestic says 186,000 indexed URLs ?
- DA of 45, PR of 3
- 1000 links from 200 linking root domains, across from 150 IP's (from OSE)
- 33,000 links in OSE when I use the compare tool and look at the "links to this root domain" section
- 24,000 external links according to Majestic
- 350 shares, 2,000 tweets, 60 +1's
- Median PA of linking root domains (from OSE export) = 20
- no Moz on-page errors, or webmaster tools issues
The above metrics are better than 2 competitors who have only just launched, have fewer links, lower DA, etc, and are ranking for keywords like "wedding entertainment", "corporate entertainers"
Our site is www.superted.com
-
Why doesn't OSE show 33,000 links when I select "links to this root domain". Why will those links only be shown when I do a domain comparison in OSE?
-
I'm thinking our anchor text distribution is the problem. We have very few links containing the keywords want. Also maybe our sitemap is an issue as it only lists 500 of our pages? But given our domain age, DA, etc... surely anchor text / site map isn't the only issue here?
Any hints would be awesome.
-
Wowsers... nice response.
Thanks for spending the time on writing all that out
I'll re-work the site structure, taking all comments on board!
-
I think there are generally three areas of weakness for this site at the moment;
- Brand Strength - searching google.co.uk for "superted" or "super ted" and the site is no where on the SERPs, instead you get stuff about a TV show --> http://screencast.com/t/Am735xTr0 - and so if you're going to have the same brand name as another thing out there (even if you came before the TV show) the fact you are not ranking for your own brand means Google does not weigh the "brand" very strongly. The build this up you need
- lots of strong profiles on the web (Google Plus, social, etc) all clearly connecting back to your site
- recent mentions in reputable publications
- people searching for your brand name or branded terms and clicking on your site in the SERPs
- (sidenote: I just realized a while later the "brand" name might also be "the entertainment directory" and you do show one result in the SERP for that --> http://screencast.com/t/hy2wi88VFQtH but this also seems weak and unclear.
- Keyword Targeting / Architecture - I know it would be desirable to rank for "wedding entertainment" but it's really hard to even find a page solely dedicated to "wedding entertainment" that answers that specific query for the user really well. Instead, you have to dig many clicks in to even find such a page and when you do, it's "wedding bands" not wedding entertainment" --> http://www.superted.com/profiles.php/bands-musicians/wedding-bands - what I would do is some really thorough keyword research and align it with architecture - this is a pretty involved process, you can't fix it overnight, but in short;
- You're first do very in depth keyword research - my intuition tells me a site of this magnitude would result in probably 10,000 keywords minimum.
- Then you'd prioritize these by many metrics - search volume, current ranking, conversion potential, competition etc
- Then here's the key - you'd look at top keywords that do not have a singular page focusing on answer this user's query better than any other page on the net
- You'd have to work through a process of aligning keyword opportunities with best site architecture - this may mean building new pages, this may mean removing pages that don't provide value for you or users.
- User Experience - When I land on the homepage it is a terrifying experience. There are so many options, and it is not clear what direction to go in.
- The "hamburger" menu option is probably not clear that it's even there to most people. When I do click on it, there options are overwhelming and clicking on an initial option just brings us to another set of options.
- Then trying the search bar, I expect to get a normal search result - like a list of "wedding bands in ___" but instead I just got a form to fill out, which is surprising and doesn't seem immediately helpful.
- When you click "play" on the video in the slider, the video starts playing but then the slider also starts moving so not only can I not seem to watch the video, I can't stop it from playing once the slider kicks in.
A common oversight I see, is that the site is organized from the site owners perspective not the shoppers perspective. In other words, your basic categories are "bands" "look alikes" etc - but a user would _start _with "I need entertainment for a wedding/party/event ..." - the user starts with the need (X event, situation etc) and would like to see options - so I would consider organizing the core structure of the site around "wedding entertainment" "party entertainment" "corporate even entertainment" etc - think of the categories of events and needs the user has and show them the listings from that perspective.
To answer your questions;
1. I believe the comparison numbers "total links" are including internal links - which there are a lot of.
2. I don't think anchor text is as much of an issue as the other things mentioned above. The sitemap is also not the biggest issue in my opinion. If I were to boil it down it would be site architecture / keyword alignment coupled with user experience.
-
No, but if I highlight a page it may give it more Google signals than the intended page you want to promote and that's just annoying And Google has confirmed it does crawl naked links (links without anchor just written on a page) even if it says they are treated as nofollow it is still a signal.
-
Is it a problem if google crawls this thread?
Thanks for your insight into this!
-
I found this page http://www.superted.com / wedding-entertainment
I put a gap between the slash in case google crawls this thread.
re: first comment, I searched for that because I did a Google site query and there seem to be a lot of similar things coming up, I cant remember what I was looking at at the time that brought that up exactly, but it does seem like there could be a potential quality issue.
-
Interesting.
Why did you search for: "Find event ideas, wedding entertainment or party ideas" ?
When I do it, I get the same result and also the google message about some results being omitted.
Maybe all those pages are considered "keyword stuffed" by Google?
You said you noticed one of them had a page. How do you mean?
There is a landing page for weddings:
http://www.superted.com/wedding-entertainment.php
But no external links to it yet.
-
one thing I did find interesting is if you search for "Find event ideas, wedding entertainment or party ideas", Google comes up with a whole bunch of pages but none of them have that content on them, It has renamed all the descriptions.
It would seem that Google does not think your descriptions are good enough for serps. This shows there could be some content issues on the site.
Have you though of creating two main categories for "wedding entertainment" and "corporate entertainers" work on creating great content for them? I noticed one of them had a page but the content was really not what you want to show on it.
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
-
Having Trouble Ranking .us for branded Keyword
Hi Mozers, First time poster here. I run the website http://OrangeOctop.us/, it provides winning tips for FIFA, NBA 2K, NHL. The domain authority is 22 but I am unable to rank for the term OrangeOctopus. I know there are dozens of factors that should be assessed when looking at competition in Google (such as backlinks, domain age/relevance, social). However, I feel like you guys might have some suggestions for being able to rank for OrangeOctopus. Thank you! Joey
Competitive Research | | orangeoctop.us1 -
Why is this site ranking so well
I just took over an SEO campaign for a company we recently did a website for. The old company created individual landing pages for each city they service, but they didn't have any original content except replacing the city name. We are in the process of creating completely unique content per page. My main issue is that there is a company with no link profile, duplicate content on every page, no social media presence, etc - but consistently ranks for city + fence company The company we are starting to work with is: http://betterdecksandfences.com/ The company that is ranking for everything is: http://www.alcovyfence.com Any ideas?
Competitive Research | | BeardoCo0 -
Help! New site won't rank locally but should...
any help would be greatly appreciated... picked up a new client, a used car dealer in New Jersey. Have a VERY spammy site before, tons of keyword stuffing and lots of dupe content. also had a horrible design. (www.coopscars.com) We updated the design and the content, made it relevant and unique, fixed title tags, etc. Now he's not ranking for anything locally other than his business name. He's got a decent number of links, we've added relevant citations, his social signals are much stronger than they were... We do lots of SEO for car dealers, and we know that he should be ranking SOMEWHERE at this point - not saying he should be page 1, but he should at least be somewhere in the top 5... and yes, bing/yahoo are different, but he ranks over there... one page 1 for "used cars south river" - so why completely non-existant on Google? just as a test, he put up a free website at www.coopscars.net just last week - and it's already ranking for several local terms. I'm completely confused here - i'm not a noob, I know the tactics we've used on him work for other dealers. Thinking there's got to be something that's blocking him, especially since there aren't but maybe 15-20 car dealers to compete against locally and he still doesn't show up... thought i'd come over here and see if anyone has any ideas...
Competitive Research | | Greg_Gifford0 -
Competitor's Ranking's Reports are Showing Blank Values for Rankings
When selecting competitors to see how they rank for specific terms in the ranking's report page here, it loads the page normally, but without any actual rankings. Where values should be, it lists all values as our competition not ranking whatsoever (for all competitors). I'm not sure if there is something we're doing wrong, or perhaps we just need to wait for a refresh, but if anybody could help out, that would be wonderful!
Competitive Research | | ACLens0 -
Blogging just to manipulate rankings?
Hi, I have been playing with Open Site Explorer for a while and have been trying to figure out how some of our competitors could rank with "not so great" articles. I don't want to sound harsh here but some of the articles outranking us are nothing but 6 images + 200-225 words from a press release and a Video. How exactly does Google justify this by ranking them higher than a 1500 word unique article that has been written in no less than 7 days? According to OpenSite Explorer, about the two pages compared, the difference is the number of LINKS. The sad part is, without 1 exception, all their links are coming from blog pages like *.wordpress.com *.typepad.com etc. I would have been just FINE if their links were NATURAL. You may ask me why I assume those blogs are created by them. Because every single post on those blogs are pointing to their domain... I don't think a normal blogger would keep pointing to the same domain. So what are we supposed to do here? Wait 3 months so people discover our articles and natural links will come? (It happens sometimes but then it may not...) Do what they do? Sorry about the ranting but I have one question if you don't want to read the rant. Is blogging to build links, considered black hat or not?
Competitive Research | | Gamer070 -
Trying to rank against keyword in domain
I am trying to rank for let's say the keyword "their site" , my competitor has theirsite.com, with next to no seo but are ranking #1 , my site lets say is mysite.com/their-site my site is about the same age and has a PR of 4,their site has a PR of 0 and 2 backlinks, how difficult will it be to get to number 1, am at spot # 5 in google now. Thanks David
Competitive Research | | David750 -
Can't Grasp Why Pages rank Higher?
The first result "Bankruptcy on IRS" is the search term. Why does the first url rank higher in google. The second one, the IRS.gov page beats them in PA, DA root domains links. The title meta has bankruptcy near the front. unclefed does have the IRS keyword in the title, but an I missing something here? What are the other factors, that are most obvious. Sure one can have bad links, and other negative criteria, but these are pretty decent sites that probably don't engage in much in seo, let alone bad SEO. Sure link text and mix of links can help, but am I missing something here? Actually what I think I really need IS A CHECKLIST OF WHAT TO CHECK IN WHAT ORDER WHEN COMPARING WHY ONE PAGE RANKS BETTER THAN ANOTHER. Appreciate all discussions. Thanks in advance. http://www.unclefed.com/AuthorsRow/Daily/Fwdcsea.html http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98701,00.html
Competitive Research | | joemas990 -
"keyword" - rank the home page or sub page domain.com/keyword?
One of my clients has a pretty decent website that ranks 1st place for most major keywords in their line of business. EXCEPT one keyword that i've been struggling to get 1st position on Google (currently 2nd). My problem is: let's say "tennis shoes" as a keyword the home page of course has several other shoes listed but I've seen that Google took my home page and made it 2nd position (on 1st page). Where the section domain.com/tennis-shoes is on 2nd page of Google. My question is should i rel cannonical from the /tennis-shoes section to the home page so it focuses more on the specific keyword that i need to get the home 1st? Or should i leave the home page generic and focus more on /tennis-shoes to get that 1st position? What do you Moz'ers Think?
Competitive Research | | mosaicpro0