Why Does This Site Rank Well?
-
I noticed recently that the website of a local church (http://www.lifepointfc.com/) has climbed toward the top of the SERPS, and I cannot figure out why. The on-site SEO seems mediocre, at best, and their domain authority is 15 while their homepage authority is just 19. Does anyone see how they are working their SEO magic?
-
I just now found this conversation and I want to commend Travis for digging in.
Some other things to consider:
-
Age of the domain and also of the local campaign. If Lifepoint got an earlier 'start' on the web than Sylvania, this could have something to do with it.
-
It does not look like an industry centroid is at play here, because both churches seem fairly equally distant to what I see as the cluster for 'churches in tyler tx'
-
Could Sylvania have any negative issues like duplicate listings that could hold them back?
You might like to check out:
-
-
It's always a good idea to use more than one tool. I like PageSpeed as well, but I think Pingdom does a good job when you need to pinpoint the actual issues.
I would like to do some tests with this - nothing invasive. PM me through my Moz profile if you're interested.
-
Thanks for your response. Life Point does blog more than Sylvania and they have a more prominent social media presence, so their performance may be CTR related. As for speed, Google PageSpeed Insights scores Sylvania Church substantially higher on speed than Life Point.
-
This is pretty interesting because this isn't terribly competitive. It's easier to see the rudiments at work. The finer points seem to be more important.
A recent IMEC experiment noted that you could push a site up through CTR. There's one possibility. Maybe the congregation is more active online and uses a particular set of queries to find the site. Maybe the fact that Life Pointe posts more often gives them more possibilities of being found and thus clicked.
I haven't looked into it, but you may want to see if Life Pointe posts frequently on social channels. That may fractionally drive organic CTR.
I didn't see Life Pointe in any of the organic results for 'baptist church tyler tx'. I found Sylvania showing in the map pack. When I'm at home, my location defaults to Southlake. When I'm in the office, my default location is in Grapevine. I change my search location to Tyler, it was the same every time. However, they are page one organic for 'church tyler tx'.
I'm assuming your search was free of personalization. So that would be pretty interesting to look into as well.
At any rate, if you look at the technical side of things - the Sylvania Church site uses a lot of external JavaScript requests. While the Life Pointe site isn't exactly a gem, it's faster. So you might want to look into that, since page speed is definitely a ranking factor.
I used tools.pingdom.com and set the test location to Dallas, so one could say the test is 'agnostic'.
-
Oddly, Sylvania Church has a better Moz Local score than Life Pointe, but Life Pointe still outranks it at times. It's a strange thing...
-
I thought that until I noticed that Sylvania Church often ranks behind Life Pointe, yet also appears to have local SEO in order and a functional blog with posts approximately every few weeks. Sylvania Church has a higher domain rank and the homepage has a higher page rank than Life Pointe, but Life Pointe still outperforms Sylvania on most searches...
-
They actually have an okay offsite local presence. When it is categorized, it's categorized as a Baptist Church. Check them out in Moz Local.
They appear to have frequently posted new content on their blog starting in February 2014. Also, the keyword isn't terribly competitive.
-
Based on the keywords you gave me, I think it's actually pretty simple. I think it's because they have Google Maps integrated into some of there pages, and contact info properly integrated in the footer of every page. Overall, I would give the site a D- or lower but for those location terms, just having the map and contact info can sometimes be enough.
Either way, you should read this article if you want some really hearty local SEO teachings: http://moz.com/blog/everybody-needs-local-seo
-
Thanks for your response. Two of the most potent keyword phrases are "churches in tyler tx" and "baptist churches in tyler tx."
-
I really don't see why. There doesn't seem to be much content, it always has only decent pagespeed scores and uses a lot of blocking js which hurts user experience. Every time I loaded a new page the screen went white for a second. But i think the question has to be "climbed to the top of the SERPs for what?"
Hard to find an answer without keywords to relate it to.
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
-
Ranking more than one page.
Our travel website has a number of different places listed. The layout of each place is the same as the next. On place ranks on page 1 for its keywords where as others do not. Is there a tool of some description that may identify why this is.
On-Page Optimization | | twiguins0 -
Site Cleanup Operation
Hi, I hope you can help, I have been asked to look at a friends site that is simply shocking, but somehow ranks for its main target keywords, mainly because they are easy. But going through the site he has like 350 links on his menus that are all follow so I need to change them to nofollow, but should anything else normally be marked such as no index etc on a menu link. Also upon doing a Moz scan there are something like 250 missing meta descriptions from old blog posts. When I looked closer they had been using the blog section for posting relevant news headlines, but thats it, So he has 250 useless, low quality blog posts. My question is, what should I really do with them, ie delete, redirect, canonical etc. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks Paul
On-Page Optimization | | propertyhunter0 -
Site is not ranking for a particular keyword !!
One of my site is ranking for all the main keywords except one. This keyword is just a variant of those keywords which are all ranking in top 10 (page 1) in Google. Why is it happening? Does Google punishes site for one keyword. I know competition of keyword matters but other keywords with similar competition are ranking. And even the site is very well optimized for this keyword (titles and site copy without any stuffing) Any Solutions ?
On-Page Optimization | | Personnel_Concept0 -
Different Rankings In Google Mobile
Does Google mobile have different signals? For some reason I seem to rank better with certain pages on the mobile site?
On-Page Optimization | | TP_Marketing0 -
Creating Duplicate Content on Shopping Sites
I have a client with an eCommerce site that is interested in adding their products to shopping sites. If we use the same information that is on the site currently, will we run into duplicate content issues when those same products & descriptions are published on shopping sites? Is it best practice to rewrite the product title and descriptions for shopping sites to avoid duplicate content issues?
On-Page Optimization | | mj7750 -
On-Site Optimization and Repeat Customers
Hello, One of my clients has repeat customers. All of his surface level categories are optimized. None of his 2nd or 3rd level categories are optimized at all. Is there any harm in optimizing these 2nd or 3rd level categories. Is there any way it could cause a problem with repeat customers? I didn't think so but I want to make sure. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Content for ecommerce site
How important on site/page contents are for ecommerce site. Keeping in mind the page layout. Its not that important to have page copy/content at all for ecommerce sites If yes, does position of content is an important factor? if putting page copy/content in upper fold of a page then the most important thing which is product itself will have less exposure if putting near the footer of the page, does that seem like doing just for the sake of SEs and ranking. How important internal linking form that content would be compare to left panel links or links at the header of a website Thanks Rick
On-Page Optimization | | RickGa0 -
Site wide internal links in footer
What is your take on site wide inernal links in the footer, e.g. for the most competitive keywords? Do you think those links are still useful or are those links of little value from your experience? It is an old school tactic but I still see many sites doing it.
On-Page Optimization | | Florakel0