Failing Miserably - Should I Just Bin This Site
-
I am in the last weeks of my 3 months paid subscription with SEOMOZ and very sad to go.
The main reason is that my website design business site is delivering no business to me at the moment. Zero - zip - nada. It has been live for the past 4 years and cumulatively it has probably paid for few beers and pizza. Most of my business has been through word of mouth and not through direct traffic to the site. I had really hoped the site would be the sweet 25% extra. Now the overall website business is reasonably healthy but I cant understand what I am doing worng with the site.
I have tried and failed to optimise and am at my wits end what to do with it. If anything my ranking is dropping over the past months.
Could any of you guys give me some ideas and tips before I literally hang up the shingle on this site and start from scratch with a new design and revision.
I want to rank for website design and as we all know you need to be above the fold on page 1 to do this but I think my overall design and strategy for this site is flawed and I should start again. But if you have ideas then shout before I head over the high Irish sierras for better lands.
http://www.grangewebdesign.com is the site - feel free to check it out and give tips -
-
That's great Kieran!
Chew slowly and savor your progress at it happens
Just a couple of things I thought to mention in case you hadn't caught up with them yet...
-
On-page reports in the Pro App show you the on-page elements you can improve, including things like keyword usage, amount of text etc. The trick with these is that you have to load the keywords you want to optimize for in the campaign. Don't worry if it seems to want to apply keywords to the wrong pages, just use the manual selector at top of page to choose keyword and then type in the URL you want.
-
Not sure how the timing works for you, but there is a Weekly Welcome Webinar for Pro members every Friday morning (Seattle time). When you sign up for it on the Webinars Page there is an opportunity to tell Aaron if there are particular things you would like to learn more about.
Of course, if you already knew about these things, just ignore my ramblings
Have a great day,
Sha
-
-
Wow Sha
Thanks for the words above - you are right on the nail and I already made some changes. I am doing a root and branches change now to the language I use and the We v. I that is prevalent throughout the site which reads badly.
I am a terrible speller and your points on even these simple points make sense and I have corrected this glaring grammatical error and I increased the amount of words on main page, added my Google Places map and wrote a little bit more about me as well.
I am now working through ALL my 106 blog posts to make them crisper, with better keywords and of greater value as a lot of them were written in haste and need work and proper spelling (!!)
I am revisiting my decision to leave SEOMOZ and may stay a little longer as even this postalone is worth the fee for this month!! I hadn't actually realised I had a once a month private question either so I am lining that one up.
LAstly I am starting to munch on the elephant.
-
Hi Keiran,
After reading the comments here and taking a very quick look at your site I would say just a few things (since I am playing hookey from a project to recharge with a cuppa and really must get back to meet a deadline
-
Please DO NOT ignore the text errors on your site. While many view this as a minor issue, there are some other things to consider. You are in the web design business. Errors are NOT an SEO issue, but a conversion issue!
First, there is a typographical error on your home page which has completely changed the message you are trying to convey to potential customers "You do need any technical knowledge". While those of us in the business understand what you are trying to say and will read over the mistake, potential customers with little or no knowledge of web design may at the very least find themselves questioning whether it is a mistake. Some will even take it to mean that they need technical knowledge if you build their site!
The other very significant problem with errors in your text is that you are sending a message to potential clients. Remember you are selling a service which requires you to build pages full of text. If your own website is full of errors, the message you send is that the websites you build are likely to also be full of errors. That is without even considering the secondary message that there may be an issue with attention to detail in your company
Having read a blog post I am surmising that part of the error problem may be your reliance on an editor to catch the errors. While it may be alerting you to obvious spelling and typos, it is not letting you know when you have repeated words etc.
Yes, I'm a self confessed word nerd so I'm always going to be sensitive to the error thing, but in this case it is all about the sales message you are sending.
-
The home page feels a little unfinished with the 3rd column and service sections looking empty and to be honest I would be looking to get some more text into the page. I would also make sure that text adds some more local emphasis (not just the county name, but some more specific references to your location). Have you claimed your local business profiles in Google Places, Bing and the best known citation sites? The links in these profiles will provide some trust signals and increase your chance of moving that page 1 keyword above the fold.
-
You are missing out on some nice keyword inclusion opportunities with your Blog Titles which also appear on your home page via the feed. Consider perhaps - "If I Had A Hammer - Could I Create Your Website In A Day?". Two things here actually. First, including some relevant keywords and second, talking to your prospective client in the first person. The text and images on your site are your first face-to-face meeting with your client. Speak directly to them and you have a much better chance of engaging them - that is the first step to converting them
If I were you I would keep the Pro account a little longer, do all the reading Stephen suggested and use the Q&A forum to learn and ask for help. Don't forget your monthly private question where you get to ask SEOmoz staff and Associates for specific help too.
Also - when the problem seems insurmountable, remember two things ...
- The heart of this community is TAGFEE and that means help is close by.
- Best way to eat an elephant - one mouthful at a time!!
Oops ...back to my deadline!
Hope this helps,
Sha
-
-
An alternate view:
Specific comments like fixing spelling mistakes, get better anchor text or redirects, is doing more damage than good here
It leads to false hope that this will help rank for the term "web design" and that Kieran will rank for this if he "just tries hard enough"
If you have been here 3 months and think that trying to rank for "web design" is a good business move, then yes, let the SEOmoz contract lapse if the money is an important factor. Read the blog, read everything on this site in the last year
The problems you face are not analytics or SEO or anything OSE measures - its understanding how the web works, understanding how customers are going to react when they see your website.
Seeing your website, Id say your best bet is personal recommendations. Knock the site into shape to convert people you send their personally, and don't waste time or energy on SEO
S
-
No problem thank you for commenting.
-
Thanks Ryan. I have my graphics guy working on cleaning up the logo which Is not great. I will look at the spelling errors and of course I don't take offense in fact go as hard as you want.
I appreciate the comment on focusing the level of expertise at least in terms of on site. One of the items I need to do is work back through all my blog posts over the past year and tidy them up as I know the need a ton of work in the first place and this is an area I will work on,
-
Yes that was my comment's meaning. Sorry that I wasn't clear.
-
Thanks Nicholas - I have redirected that contact number page - careless to say the least. I am on page one for website design cork but below the fold
I will look more closely at my index page - any thoughts welcome of course but thanks for the feedback to date.
-
Thanks Sean. I agree that Website Design is competitive and is probably aiming high. I will try and aim for website design Cork.
Most of the forum comments were done without link building in mind and I suspect that if I didn't use real name in a lot of these cases my post would not be accepted.
However the guest post space is somewhere I will investigate and see what impact it will have.
-
I would suggest finding a niche market and going for that. As one example, you list wordpress, drupal, and joomla as your area's of expertise, and go on to say you can provide expertise in any other CMS. You may find more success in picking one, and becoming a recognized expert in that CMS specifically. Also focus locally. You still haven't reached page 1 for "web design cork", so that'd be a good first goal.
I also noticed some spelling errors and non-transparent colors in your logo, little things that would stop me from contracting business services from someone. I mean no offense, but those should be fixed asap.
-
By looking at your site I still feel like you could be doing a better job with your on-page seo and also with the content on your index page.
I would start researching local keywords and work from there. "Website Design" is too broad, IMO. Maybe start with Website Design firm in Cork, Ireland, or something like that.
Also, by Googling your phone number I was able to find your old site/design, this could be resulting in some duplicate content.
-
Sorry double post please delete
-
I think what he's saying is, ranking for 'website design' is going to be really, really tough - it's a highly competitive term. You'll need a DA of MUCH higher than 30 to be ranking for that term. Which means building links from more authoritative websites. I noticed that some of your best (i.e. highest domain authority) links were forum/blog comments which probably aren't passing much link juice. I would look to get guest blog posts on higher domain authority sites that can link back to you. And remember that all important anchor text - a lot of your links have the anchor text 'Kieran Daly' rather than 'website design'. Not forgetting the value of writing great linkable content, of course
-
Not sure what you mean?? Can you clarify???
-
You want to rank for "website design", bold suspect others want the same. Mozbar states your DA as 30. Surely thats ambitious. I am pretty new to this as well but it looks like you want to be playing for a different term.
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
-
Our new site will be using static site generator which is supposed to be better for SEO?
Hi folks, Our dev team is planning on building our new marketing webpages on SSG or Static Site Generator(we are stepping away from SSR). Based on my research this is something that can help our SEO in particular for site speed (our site has a poor score).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TyEl
Are there any challenges or concerns I should be aware regarding this direction? If so what are they and how can this be addressed? Thanks0 -
Keyword phrase for entire site
Hey everyone! I'm fairly new to SEO but I have a large number of sites I'm needing to SEO. I'm a tad confused as to how many keyword phrases I should use throughout my site. For example, my site is www.uluru.travel. I want to rank highlight for the phrase 'uluru tours' throughout the site, as many of my pages list uluru tours and people searching for this phrase are my type of customers. As you can see I've tried to do some basic on page SEO for that phrase by including it in page title, headings etc. But the entire site doesn't seem to rank very well. Would you guys suggest trying to target 'uluru tours' phrase throughout the entire site of just focus a couple of pages on this term? Any advice is greatly appreciated guys! Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mysites0 -
Site Migration of 4 sites into 1?
Hi Guys, I have a massive project involving a migration of 4 sites into 1. 4 sites include: **www.MainSite.com ** www.E-commerce.com www.Membership.com www.ResearchStudy.com Goal of this project is to have 1-4 regrouped into Main Site I will be following the best practice from this post https://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos which has an awesome checklist. I am actually about to start Phase 3: URL redirect mapping. Because all of these sites have hundreds of duplicates, I figured I should first resolve the Main Site dup issues before creating the URL redirect mapping but what about the other domains (2,3,4) though? Should I first resolve the Dup issues on those ones as well or it is not necessary since they will be pointing into the Main Site new domain? I want to make sure I don't overwork the programming team and myself. Thanks For sharing your expertise and any tips on how should I move forward with this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Development site is live (and has indexed) alongside live site - what's the best course of action?
Hello Mozzers, I am undertaking a site audit and have just noticed that the developer has left the development site up and it has indexed. They 301d from pages on old site to equivalent pages on new site but seem to have allowed the development site to index, and they haven't switched off the development site. So would the best option be to redirect the development site pages to the homepage of the new site (there is no PR on dev site and there are no links incoming to dev site, so nothing much to lose...)? Or should I request equivalent to equivalent page redirection? Alternatively I can simply ask for the dev site to be switched off and the URLs removed via WMT, I guess... Thanks in advance for your help! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart1 -
SEO Priorities for Ecommerce Sites
Hello All! What is the best way to rank SEO tasks by PRIORITY for Ecommerce sites to improve?? It can be quite overwhelming with all the types of projects/tasks needed to improve organic rankings... How would you rank the most CRITICAL tasks to spend the MOST TIME on to the tasks you spend less on. Appreciate your input in advance 🙂 Thank you! Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickerparadise0 -
Recovering from a site migration
Hi. I've been working on http://www.alwayshobbies.com/ for a number of months. All was fine, but then we had a site migration which involved a huge number of redirects. There's been a couple of similar moves in the past. As a result, rankings have plummeted. To resolve this, we're considering letting all the old pages 404 by turning of the redirects, and removing all links to them where we can. Some key pages could have canonicals added, but basically we're looking to purge as much as possible. Does this sound like a reasonable tactic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
One platform, multiple niche sites: Worth $60/mo so each site has different class C?
Howdy all, The short of it is that I currently run a very niche business directory/review website and am in the process of expanding the system to support running multiple sites out of the same database/codebase. In a normal setup I'd just run all the sites off of the same server with all of them sharing a single IP address, but thanks to the wonders of the cloud, it would be fairly simple for me to run each site on it's own server at a cost of about $60/mo/site giving each site a unique IP on a unique c-block (in many cases a unique a-block even.) The ultimate goal here is to leverage the authority I've built up for the one site I currently run to help grow the next site I launch, and repeat the process. The question is: Is the SEO-value that the sites can pass to each other worth the extra cost and management overhead? I've gotten conflicting answers on this topic from multiple people I consider pretty smart so I'd love to know what other people say.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | qurve0 -
How to remove bad link to your site?
Hello, Our website www.footballshirtblog.co.uk recently suffered a major Google penalty, wiping out 6 months of hard work. We went from getting 6000-10000 hits a day to absolutely nothing from Google. We have been baffled by the penalty as we couldn't think of anything we've done wrong. After some analysis of Open Site Explorer, it seems I may have found the answer. There is a ton of bad links pointing to us. A few example domains are: ru.gg/ gogopzh.com/ 0575bbs.com/ This is nothing to do with us and so I can only assume some competitor has done this. As we were only about 4-5 months old, I guess Google has punished us. What do we do now? This is not a situation I have experienced before and would really appreciate your expert advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ukss19840