Organic Search Problems?

[WPColt]

Hey guys,

I am in need of a little help!

I am currently an aspiring SEO (trying to absorb as much information as I can and implement changes to help my site organically)... Most of my experience revolves around SEM.

That being said, I have a problem. My site is doing well through paid search... great quality scores, etc. However, the content on my site (and even my site as a whole) does not "appear" to rank well in Organic.

To explain further... My site is federalautoloan.com... and when I type in exact article names (or even federal auto loan) into Google, nothing shows up. And yes, my content is all original/unique content. I've even recently added a unique Calculator to my site.

site:federalautoloan.com in the search bar shows results for all of my pages... but it just seems as though Google does not like my site for some reason. At least in Organic. The odd thing is, none of my other sites have this problem.

Do you guys have any advice?

The only thing I can think of is that somehow my 301 redirect was performed improperly. Yes, I had a permanent redirect performed on my site about 4 months back. The URL we were using prior just wasn't performing as well in Paid Search. But seeing as how that is the preferred method by Google... I'm really at a loss...

Again, my site is FederalAutoLoan.com.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. Even generic SEO advice would be appreciated.

Edit: Two other things to note... I have plugged my site into the SEOmoz Pro tool... the tool is not showing any issues for my site. I am also making use of Google Webmaster Tools and the only error that shows up for my site is a Soft 404 for one of my pmcs... Not sure why it is even pulling one of my pmcs... but as far as I can tell, there really shouldn't be any problems.

Note on the 404 for anyone who might give a response on that issue... http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers returns a 200 OK response.

Edit2: Question presented below.

[lwnickens]

Colt, many of your blog posts have multiple links to the home page and all are using the same anchor text. That on the surface looks a little spammy. That might be sending up a red flag to someone,  because I know that if I were a customer reading them for the first time, and since they're all in red, I'd be thinking something along that line too.

Good luck finding the issue, Lowell

[WPColt]

Thank you all for the responses so far.

Based off the responses thus far, it seems as though the site doesn't have any Google-related issues (I hope).

However, I am still concerned that specific article names do not show up. For example, when I type "count the costs before you get an auto loan" into the Google search bar... our article doesn't show up. At least not for a substantial number of pages.

I'm deeply worried that this is an issue related to our permanent redirect... as none of our other sites have this problem (sites that haven't been around for as long... counting the time before the redirect). The original URL was GetGreatAutoLoans.com if that helps at all.

Thanks!

[WPColt]

Great!

Thank you very much Nux! Really appreciate the help.

[nux]

I'm not sure if you can use htaccess with your hosting, but if so this will force www:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]

RewriteRule .* http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

and this should force no Default.aspx:

RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/]+/)*Default\.aspx\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(([^/]+/)*)Default\.aspx$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

References:

http://www.stevefortuna.com/redirect-to-www/

http://www.stevefortuna.com/remove-index-php-from-url/

[WPColt]

Hey Kyle,

I guess my problem is that I am trying to "compare" SEO and SEM a little too closely at the moment. Right now our content, etc. is doing great for our SEM strategy... So obviously I'm wanting to see the same for Organic.

Everything I've read so far speaks to really focusing on quality/original content that are keyword specific. I assume I can't go wrong by building an extensive database of articles for specific (and long-tail) keywords.

Thanks for the Tool link! Glad you liked the site. We put a lot of effort into each of our sites.

Thanks for the response Kyle!

[WPColt]

Hey Nux!

Great idea, thank you! Transitioning from FederalAutoLoan.com to Federal Auto Loan makes perfect sense.

http://federalautoloan.com/

http://www.federalautoloan.com

Both of these links point to http://www.federalautoloan.com. As far as I know, this is a pretty standard tactic for users that don't use www. when typing in a URL.

As for the /Default.aspx... I'll check into it. Our IT is using it for some reason. I'll have to get back to you on that.

Thank you very much for the response!

[WPColt]

Hey Zsolt,

Thanks for the response!

I'll get on the H1 tag issue right away.

As for the code issue... is that really a significant problem? It's how my in-house IT department has coded all of our websites... and frankly, they are pretty good at what they do. Unless it is causing us major issues with Organic Search, I'm inclined to leave it as is. Let me know.

I have done a bunch of keyword research as of late - and read a lot about the importance of long-tail keywords - so this is good advice... and currently in progress. Obviously over-night results aren't to be expected. Is there a specific way I should be developing content for these keywords?

I'm working on our linking strategy as well. And will definitely avoid purchasing links.

Thanks Zsolt!

[nux]

Two things I see when I did a quick look at it.

First, I suggest you change the title to "Federal Auto Loan: Fast and Easy Auto Loans" instead of "FederalAutoLoan.com: Fast and Easy Auto Loans".  Right now your first keyword in the title is your domain name.  Ranking for this keyword won't be an issue at all and will happen naturally.  Federal Auto Loan would be a much more relevant keyword to push for.  The keywords in the title are given importance from left to right.

Second, I would make sure your homepage is only accessible from one URL.

I see you can access the homepage with these different URLs right now:

http://federalautoloan.com/

http://www.federalautoloan.com/

http://www.federalautoloan.com/Default.aspx

Google may be able to differentiate between all of this, but links built in with one URL will quite possibly only benefit that one URL and not the other two.

[sesertin]

Hello Colt,

First and most important thing is that organic SEO differs from paid search. One thing is that you have multiple instances of h1 tag and that is spamming. Just leave the most important as h1 modify all other to h2.

I think you have quite a long code for this short page. I would try to shrinken the code somehow. One other problem with the code is that your page is built using tables: that is not up to date anymore. You should use divisions and format them via css.

The hugest matter of all is that you have only got 2 inbound links: all two from the same site. If you want to rank in organic search with compatitive terms like loan and credit you should have tonns of inbound links. Read more somewhere on linkbuilding what is possible and what is forbidden. Do not purchase links.

Do some keyword research or get some from your paid campaigns: optimize for long tail words, loan and credit are so compatitive words, that with really hard work you need at least a whole year to get to first page, and i am not sure that is even enough.

Why you are not ranking for federal auto loan is that it contains loan as a compatitive words, federal that is another nice word used mostly on governmenr sites, and auto that can be a lot of things. So your brand name is composed of three really compatitive and hard words, you need patience and lot of hard work to rank for that.

[kchandler]

I just did a quick analysis and it looks like your domain strength is low (DA 17) and you are trying to rank for moderately competitive keywords 30-40%

The only way you can rank for the keywords mentioned with that low of a domain strength is by AWESOME on-page-optimizations. Use the Term Target Tool tool to help with the process. Shoot for an "A" on each page and definitely have an exact match in your title tag. Currently your home page only has a grade of "C" for the term "federal auto loan" so there is room for improvement.

Keep focusing with your on-page, you have a sharp looking site so once you get traffic there you should be all set!

Good luck - Kyle