Rankings lower than expected
-
It's an age old question, "why is my site lower in the ranking than theirs"
But in this case, I'm really not sure!... and we perform the SEO on both sites in question.
The problem site is www.esp-machinery.co.uk
We are looking for ranking for phrases such as Used Machine Tools, Grinding Machines, Drilling Machines, Used Lathes etc.
We aren't getting it as high as we have already with another customer of ours:
We perform the SEO on both these sites, yet we've put far more work into the ESP one, and still not getting very far.
There are more linking domains to ESP than BW, in truth the BW site has a higher mozrank, but by only a single point.
We did not build the ESP site, whereas we built the BW one.
There have been some URL problems with the ESP site, but we have hopefully improved things enough working with their original developer to be on the right track now.
Any advice most welcome.
-
Hi Baptiste... yes, we failed to get him to even have one /category/ in there... I do not know why he couldn't do this.....!
-
I've read several article about keyword posiiton in the url, my thoughts on this is simple : put it close to the left if you don't have a good reason to put it farther.
In your case, having /category/category/ is useless. At least remove one category, right now /category/ is a duplicate of the home. Even if you remove one category, you should put a breadcrumb on the site to make /category/ indexable, and usefull.
My final advice is to have the category slugs in the root, ie : /lathes/. But this means having a good developer which is not the case I guess.
-
Hi Baptiste, thanks for putting the time in to look for me, much appreciated.
The ESP site is built in a way which we don't like, but we've tried to get those URLs sorted with their developer. Previously they weren't even showing as static style URLs. with every category page showing as category.php?=......
I read up on root URLs vs. folders within folders URLs, and the suggestion was that it didn't make a difference?
Thanks for the tip on the top nav... although not sure hot I'm going to fix that - I guess some clever CSS perhaps!
-
Two quick things I noticed :
On ESP, your top menu, which are the first links of the page, are not about machines. The effect can be seen in the site: request : http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.esp-machinery.co.uk&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla
official&client=firefox-a
You should put the most important menus here : machines ! BW does this.
Second thing : /category/category/sheet-metal-work-machines on ESP vs /sheetmetal-machines.asp on BW. ESP keywords are far from the root whereas BW has a page in the root with the good keywords.
There is several other improvements possible, especially for long tail ranking. For example, you don't have a single item page linked in a category : http://www.esp-machinery.co.uk/category/category/sheet-metal-work-machines. Optimised text on this page is missing too.
-
HI Alan, the content is very similar, they should both have their own unique content, but the navigation is structured very similarly.
They are different sites, so there are differences, but it's certainly not like comparing chalk and cheese.
-
What about the content of each site, how do they differ?
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
-
I'm struggling with ranking for a really important keyword!
I'm helping with SEO for a client who has a very old website, but is updated regularly and has lots of relevant content for the keywords i'm looking to rank for. For other keywords we are able to get to position #3 on Google, yet for this one - the name of the town the website is about - we rank on page 15 of Google. I haven't done anything differently between the two and I really can't see why we can't get there. I've just done the monthly report for the client, and it's showing as being at position #1 for all of July - I checked during that month, and it wasn't. And then on 1st August it dropped to page 20 of Google. I understand slight fluctuations but this is pretty major. Can anyone help?
On-Page Optimization | | Cubiqdesign0 -
Is adding video to my homepage a ranking signal
Just had a lengthy chat with an SEO guy and one of the points bought up was that video on the homepage is a definite signal these days and the bots read the metas better than ever. I'm not sure about this, I do think that videos are a thing that improves the user experience but to rank? If it was to rank would I embed a YouTube video as its owned by Google, Vimeo for the quality or self-host but cause me to have a heavy page. I'm a bit lost here and would appreciate some guidance.
On-Page Optimization | | Libra_Photographic1 -
Google Page Rank has no any rankings as of now. what to do?
my domain and page authority is working well right now but my Google Page Rank has no any rankings as we speak. What to do now? can some of you give me advice on this? Thank you very much in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Panoramictrip0 -
Stolen Content reposted on other sites. How does this affect ranking?
Visitors often copy and paste my content and post it elsewhere... on Facebook, on Tumblr, on forums and sometimes on competing websites... but they don't link to me. How does Google treat this duplicated content? What is the best way to handle it? File DCMA claims or ask them for a link?
On-Page Optimization | | brianflannery0 -
Organic Rankings - Y=5, B=2, G=Not Found!
My on-page SEO efforts are focused on generating higher visibility in Google's SERPs for my site: http://www.thegrossmanlawoffice.com. My primary keyword phrase is "winter garden divorce lawyer" I have noticed that my home page ranks higher in Yahoo (5) and Bing (2) for my primary keyword, and Google does display my site in the 7-pack local results but does not rank my home page organically. It actually ranks my business's Facebook page on page 3 of the SERPs. Yahoo includes me in the local listings in position #2...at least today it does! I am happy that Google includes me in the local results, and I am curious why it does not rank my home page organically at all. Yahoo's rankings seem to be accurately tracking my keyword phrases and the appropriate pages, and it has me ranking really well for many of my keyword phrases. I am not quite sure why Yahoo and Bing see my relevant pages and seem to be ranking me appropriately, but Google is not. I recently (within last week) cleaned up my backlink profile per a great suggestion I received here. Is that the likely culprit? Any thoughts? Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | ajgrossman0 -
Anchor_partial_atpiu??? in ranking factors
Could anybody explain what does it mean anchor_partial_atpiu in ranking factors http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#metrics-1
On-Page Optimization | | PeterSEO0 -
Homepage Hogging Too Many Keyword Ranks?
Hello: I've been the publisher and SEO for Indie Rock Cafe since starting it in 2007. It's done great, and has #1 - #5 positions in Google for many strong keywords like "best new albums", "best new bands", "top new bands", "popular indie rock songs", and so on. However, for many of the results, the homepage keeps popping up over and over again. I thought I'd done everything right to get other pages on the site to rank for top keywords. Another potential issue is that I expected the homepage to have a 6 PR by now, but it seems stuck on 5. Any ideas? Insight from SEOs and experts is always enlightening and helpful, so thank you in advance for your thoughts and advice.
On-Page Optimization | | holdtheonion0 -
Home page ranking dropped below internal pages
The index page for a site I manage has dropped significantly - internal pages rank above it. It's a new site, 2 months old but was ranking at 1st. Any suggestions as to how I can debug this?
On-Page Optimization | | OptioPublishing0