Grr . . . Just can't seem to get there
-
mrswitch.com.au is one site that we are consistantly struggling with . . . It has a page rank of 3 which beats most of the competitors, but when it comes to Google AU searches such as Sydney Electrician and Electrician Sydney etc, we just can't seem to get there and the rankings keep dropping.
We backlink and update the pages on a regular basis
Any ideas? - Could it be the custom CMS system?
-
Thanks for the help! - Perfect advice!
-
No probs Steve, glad I could help
-
Awesome, yeah that does help. Thanks
-
It's a micro format of HTML.
You can use it to, for want of a better word, 'tag' your address, so basically it is a way of saying to bots that hey, you know this string of characters that follows, it is an address... there is some conjecture as to its usefulness, but I believe it is best practice to use it, especially with local search focused projects.
More info here: http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard
And a nice tool here: http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator
I hope that helps
-
What's the score with hcards? I don't know much about it.
-
Also, when you say you backlink regularly, from where? Try to get backlinks from local sites to local pages... i.e. Sydney Electrician: get backlinks from local sydney directories, blogs & sites about Sydney, etc...
I haven't checked any of these for whether they're paid, nofollow, etc... but just as examples:
http://www.sydney-city-directory.com.au/
http://www.sydneycity.net/directory.htm
http://www.sydneybusinessdirectory.net/
http://www.expat-blog.com/en/directory/oceania/australia/sydney/
http://sydney-city.blogspot.com/
http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/sydneylife/
And obviously mix that with relevant links to do with electricians... and preferably sites that are electrician and Sidney based combined if possible... easier said that done I expect.
The same for other trades and other towns.
-
I agree fully with what Ryan suggested above, if local is your target. Also consider using the hcard microformat on your address, as that can't hurt either.
-
Are you trying to get in the local listings? If that's the case just get the address on the page and start submitting through Google Local. If it's a chain submit the bulk listings and/or service areas. Pages like this: http://www.mrswitch.com.au/location are going to hurt you as the engines will see it as a keyword stuffing attempt to manipulate results around any Sydney suburb + "Electrician". I'd recommend getting rid of the location page in its current format and replace it with a few of your actual locations. Use your keywords sparingly, and use the tools Google provides, especially mapping and reviews.
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
-
'duplicate content' on several different pages
Hi, I've a website with 6 pages identified as 'duplicate content' because they are very similar. This pages looks similar because are the same but it show some pictures, a few, about the product category that's why every page look alike each to each other but they are not 'exactly' the same. So, it's any way to indicate to Google that the content is not duplicated? I guess it's been marked as duplicate because the code is 90% or more the same on 6 pages. I've been reviewing the 'canonical' method but I think is not appropriated here as the content is not the same. Any advice (that is not add more content)?
Technical SEO | | jcobo0 -
Pages Not Getting Indexed
Hey there I have a website with pretty much 3-4 pages. All of them had a canonical pointing to one page and the same content ( which happened by mistake ) I removed the canonical URL and added one pointing to its page. Also, I added the original content that was supposed to be there to begin with. It's been weeks but those pages are not getting indexed on the SERPS while the one that they use to point with the canonical does.
Technical SEO | | AngelosS0 -
How to handle pages I can't delete?
Hello Mozzers, I am using wordpress and I have a small problem. I have two sites, I don't want but the dev of the theme told me I can't delete them. /portfolio-items/ /faq-items/ The dev said he can't find a way to delete it because these pages just list faqs/portfolio posts. I don't have any of these posts so basically what I have are two sites with just the title "Portfolio items" and "FAQ Items". Furthermore the dev said these sites are auto-generated so he can't find a way to remove them. I mean I don't believe that it's impossible, but if it is how should I handle them? They are indexed by search engines, should I remove them from the index and block them from robots.txt? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | grobro0 -
I am getting html validation errors on my schema, is there something I've done incorrectly?
When I tried to validate my html after added some schema, I am getting html validation errors. I have some examples below. Any ideas on what I've done incorrectly? www.mexpro.com Line 9, Column 80: there is no attribute "itemprop" `…ontent="http://www.mexpro.com/mexico/images/mexpro-logo.jpg" itemprop=**"**logo" />`_L Line 130, Column 23_: "itemscope" is not a member of a group specified for any attribute `itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">`
Technical SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
Why doesn't SEOmoz see internal/external links on my site?
My SEOmoz analysis that my site contains neither external or internal lnks. I have used other tools and they have all seen the internal and external links on the pages. There aren't many but they are there. Why isn't SEOmoz seeing them?
Technical SEO | | iain0 -
Duplicate Meta Descriptions From Pages That Don't Exist
Hi Guys I am hoping someone can help me out here. I have had a new site built with a unique theme and using wordpress as the CMS. Everything was going fine but after checking webmaster tools today I noticed something that I just cannot get my head around. Basically I am getting warnings of Duplicate page warnings on a couple of things. 1 of which i think i can understand but do not know how to get the warning to go. Firstly I get this warning of duplicate meta desciption url 1: / url 2: /about/who-we-are I understand this as the who-we-are page is set as the homepage through the wordpress reading settings. But is there a way to make the dup meta description warning disappear The second one I am getting is the following: /services/57/ /services/ Both urls lead to the same place although I have never created the services/57/ page the services/57/ page does not show on the xml sitemap but Google obviously see it because it is a warning in webmaster tools. If I press edit on services/57/ page it just goes to edit the /services/ page/ is there a way I can remove the /57/ page safely or a method to ensure Google at least does not see this. Probably a silly question but I cannot find a real comprehensive answer to sorting this. Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | southcoasthost0 -
My Domain Authority is high but don't rank in serps
So i'm a beginner/intermediate SEO and uptil about 3 weeks ago i enjoyed Top 3 rankings for all my keywords(VIrtual Assistant,Virtual Assistants, Virtual Personal Assistant,Virtual Personal Assistants and so on) for my site www.247VirtualAssistant.com. All of a sudden i dropped in rankings and can't figure out why. I ran a link analysis and nothing looks like it changed, in fact i still command much higher domain authority than my competition, but i'm stuck on the bottom of the 2nd page. I can't tell if i'm being penalized, if the other sites all of sudden just outperformed me or something else is happening here. I've also noticed a lot of "dancing" in my serps, I've been in 2nd last position on the 2nd page, then 1st of the third page, then last on the 2nd page and so on. Can someone please help me make sense of this?? Thanks! Thomas, a very confused an desperate website owner
Technical SEO | | Shajan0 -
Ignore url parameters without the 'parameter=' ?
We are working on an ecommerce site that sorts out the products by color and size but doesn't use the sortby= but uses sortby/. Can we tell Google to ignore the sortby/ parameter in Webmaster Tools even though it is not followed by an = sign? For example: www.mysite.com/shirts/tshirts/shopby/size-m www.mysite.com/shirts/tshirts/shopby/color-black Can we tell WMT to ignore the 'shopby/' parameter so that only the tshirts page will be indexed? Or does the shopby have to be set up as 'shopby=' ? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan0