SEO: what part art and what part science?
-
Hi All:
Just writing in the hopes of a reality check. When I compare the first page or two of companies in any field it's usually clear why the top two are on top and why the bottom two are on the bottom, but for everything in between, it often looks pretty gray to me. It's very difficult to find a smoking gun as to why companies rank where they do. While looking at one you could say it ranks because of Yelp reviews and another because of links, but then there are other completely contradictory examples. So I guess I'm asking, is this just the nature of the business? Is a lot of this simply unknowable and you look at what you can do that is most expeditious and will have the most impact, as well as more expensive longer term steps, decide what is practical, move forward and see what happens?
Grateful for anyone's thoughts so I can better understand just how lost i should feel.
Cheers, Wes.
-
Good advice, thank you. Luckily I know some of those other things better than SEO, so that works out well.
Cheers,
Wes
-
We have a very basic mobile site as we have not put our full attention to that yet. It's not responsive, it's just basic. I think it will work for now, but I want something better as the brand definitely suffers. I'll check out dudamobile. I need simple. Thanks very much for the tip.
-Wes
-
Wes,
Do you have a mobile site? Or a responsive design site? Or neither? We are in the works of creating a responsive design site, because that's what google says to do. However, for now, we just have the desktop and mobile ones. if you don't have either, I would recommend dudamobile. It is super easy to build and very cheap. (I mean cut and paste easy. No tech skills required).
- Ruben
-
There are multiple ways to do everything in SEO. Multiple ways to rank highly, multiple ways to lose all rankings. I'd say it's pretty much 0% science, because if any part of it was then it wouldn't be nearly as hard. Even the things that one might say we have down to a science (proper title tag structure, well written meta description, etc.) aren't really because Google can display them how they want to display them - not how you wrote them.
The most important thing I can stress is don't rely solely on SEO. Don't rely solely on any one strategy. That's a guaranteed way to fail. Use SEO, PPC, email marketing, etc. Diversify your strategy and you won't freak when Google changes the algorithm and everything goes upside down.
-
Hi Ruben:
Thanks very much for writing. That's pretty much what I'm doing as well. Hats off to Moz for keeping things simple and making it accessible to folks who aren't as computer literate as a they might like to be. Step by step works. I am doing local and the Moz Local is definitely where are start. Thanks again for the note.
Cheers,
Wes
-
Hi Wes,
It's okay to be lost. I've been on this forum for about 6 months, and I still feel insanely lost...but our rankings have improved. I'm not particularly good at understanding why one page ranks higher than another in the cases you've described, but I can tell you how our rankings improved. Most of it is very "knowable" and while, it may not be the best strategy, it has worked for us.
Not knowing much of anything when I started, I started with on-page optimization. I just filled out the Moz's Page Grader with the keyword and the URL. Then, I followed the steps till everyone was an A. Ironically, when I started, we did have some pages with "C's and F's" that still ranked well, and pages with "A's" that didn't, but that wasn't the norm. All of our rankings have improved from the on-page optimization.
Another easy-fix for us was improving our pagespeed and loading times. I just used pagespeed insights, and followed their instructions on what Google wanted me to do to improve my score. Though, some of that got pretty technical, so I did have to outsource some of it. However, there's a lot of competition for that type of service, so it's not very expensive.
Blogging: I try to write at least one article a week that is useful and/or topical. Like "Why your primary care doctor won't treat you after a car accident" or "Jameis Winston's Current Legal Situation" and I make sure there are not any grammatical errors. Also, I make sure I'm allowed to use whatever pictures I use. I do not know how to make something go viral, but I do know if you consistently write unique, quality articles, google will like it.
Duplicate Content: We had a ton of duplicate content, because most of our pages were almost exactly the same. Just the area of practice or location was changed. That was very time consuming to fix, but it was not difficult to understand or change.
I'm just now trying to get us ranking well in the Local category. Not sure if that applies to you or not, but it will help our company out a lot. What am I doing since I don't know much about Local? I put my citation in the Moz's listing checker and I do what it tells me to do to improve my score...(noticing a theme here?)
More generally, assuming you use this forum to ask a lot of questions, read through the responses, research terms that you don't understand and keep up with the blogs, you'll be surprised how quickly you'll learn.
Best of luck! Happy Friday!
Ruben
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
-
SEO rank down after Magento migration
Since November we migrated our shop from Magento 1 to 2 and our organic traffic has dropped by 50%. We still haven't figured out the cause (or a solution). Are there more Magento users who have the same issue? Charlotte (www.dochorse.nl)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DocHorse0 -
Do Bit.ly links have SEO Value?
In looking at one of our competitors in Moz today, I noticed in their linking domains report showed a bit.ly link with a DA of 97. According to Moz this is a follow link as well. Should I be using bit.ly links to take advantage of their high domain? I was under the impression that bit.ly links were not considered backlinks. fRT2j5cRtXo3ARPq9
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | misterfla0 -
Javascript and SEO
I've done a bit of reading and I'm having difficulty grasping it. Can someone explain it to me in simple language? What I've gotten so far: Javascript can block search engine bots from fully rendering your website. If bots are unable to render your website, it may not be able to see important content and discount these content from their index. To know if bots could render your site, check the following: Google Search Console Fetch and Render Turn off Javascript on your browser and see if there are any site elements shown or did some disappear Use an online tool Technical SEO Fetch and Render Screaming Frog's Rendered Page GTMetrix results: if it has a Defer parsing of Javascript as a recommendation, that means there are elements being blocked from rendering (???) Using our own site as an example, I ran our site through all the tests listed above. Results: Google Search Console: Rendered only the header image and text. Anything below wasn't rendered. The resources googlebot couldn't reach include Google Ad Services, Facebook, Twitter, Our Call Tracker and Sumo. All "Low" or blank severity. Turn off Javascript: Shows only the logo and navigation menu. Anything below didn't render/appear. Technical SEO Fetch and Render: Our page rendered fully on Googlebot and Googlebot Mobile. Screaming Frog: The Rendered Page tab is blank. It says 'No Data'. GTMetrix Results: Defer parsing of JavaScript was recommended. From all these results and across all the tools I used, how do I know what needs fixing? Some tests didn't render our site fully while some did. With varying results, I'm not sure where to from here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nhhernandez1 -
Blogger API and SEO
My company wants to move their blog from example.blogger.com to company.com/blog They want to do it by using Blogger API to surface posts on company.com/blog What are SEO considerations for this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | georgeanthonyporrata0 -
Pixel tags impact on SEO?
I was asked by our IT if switching to a tag management company that removes the pixels from our site and is replaced by a javascript would have a negative impact on SEO. I have not been able to find anything that discusses this: Does anyone have experience with this? Has it caused any issues? Has it caused any issues? How do crawlers see pixel data, and what do they do with it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn_Huber0 -
SEO firm site audit
needs recommendation for a site audit. Post panda/ post penguin experience preferred. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | skyao0 -
Hosting Providers and SEO
I have been wondering for a while which web host provider is the best for SEO purposes? Things to consider. Shared Hosting vs Dedicated Server Location of the Host Provider Site Up Time One question that I have been thinking about is what impact would changing a host provider have on a websites serps ranking? Is there a possible negative impact and if so how can it be avoided? Name the top 3 Web Hosts for SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
The SEO process...step by step
In what order do you carry out your SEO? do you start with keyword research or competitor analysis or is it on-page and then on to link building, do you concentrate on article submissions and then move on to social networking? List your step by step process here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IPIM0