I just took over a site with 100k visits per month, where do I start?
-
A friend has been running a blog about mold (moldblogger.com), of all things, and I'm trying to get it up to spec. There are hundreds of articles of dubious quality, potentially thousands of links to who knows where (comments haven't been monitored closely).
Traffic is mostly Google organic, with less than 15% of visitors returning. Bounce rate is 80%+. As this is an ad supported website, the goal is to increase page views (more ad views). He has noticed that the more articles they post per month, the more overall views. Even though the new articles barely get traffic, it seems Google likes to see "new" content on the site, and bumps up the results for the top pages when there is a lot of activity.
Given a limited budget, where do I start? What's going to be the best return on time invested?
-
Love Patrick's response. Refer to it often. Thank you!
-
This is a really good answer Patrick! Thanks for making it so structured!
-
Patrick is correct above.
With a limited budget and time you might also consider going to GA and studying customer behaviour. Find out what pages customers like, and the stickiness & find out when and at what page the customers leaves the website. There is a retail site in India called Jabong - comparable problem. They have millions of hits a month except there BR was in excess of 90% when it started. Slowly work through it page by page, improving each page where customers drop off, until the conversion rate goes up.
Also by finding out what your customer is up to, by reviewing the pages that they like and do not like - you can identify trends. It may also assist in creating content. I often find customers are drawn to 1 or articles consistently - perhaps expand on those articles. GWT's will also in identifing the pages / keyword process to focus on.
It is a great problem to have lots of traffic - now need to tweak away until you make them a satisfied customer. Platforms like unbound and optimizely may also be of assistance. The good news is and it is gold - you are collecting lots of data - and with data you can make informed decisions on what to focus on in the value chain.
Let me know if need any more clarity on any point.
-
Hi there
I would start with:
- Running an audit
- Run a technical site audit
- Check traffic against Google's algorithms
- Running a backlink audit
- Running a content audit
- Check ranking history over time
- Run a competitor analysis
From there, you should be able to prioritize your work pretty easily and see where the easiest wins are. You'll also begin to see the landscape from the content standpoint and be able to help out in developing an editorial calendar as well.
You should also check out Moz's blog for some great categorized content that can help immensely. I would also make sure you get a routine going from a weekly, monthly, quarterly, 6 month, and yearly standpoint so you have a system in place.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
One month later, MOZ has not scanned my web
It's been more than a month since we published our new website, you can see the link in my profile, and MOZ has not scanned or taken out the links to my page.
Link Building | | Expansyon
Do you know any way to tell MOZ that the page is published?
I have checked my robots.txt and everything seems to be ok. Google search console, takes out all the links correctly but MOZ is not able to.
Thanks to all of you for helping me1 -
301 redirect from a de-indexed site
Is link juice passed from a website that has been intentionally de-indexed by webmaster? The scenario is I had 2 websites with similar content. I decided to get rid of one by de-indexing. I also did a 301redirect from my de-indexed site. Not the whole domain but just the 2 URL's which I believe could pass on link juice. In this case how long the link juice would flow via 301 redirect?
Link Building | | riyaaaz0 -
Backlinks from non-relevant site
There's a forum I used to participate in that allows you to include a link to your website in your signature block. I have over 500 posts in the forum so that provides a lot of backlinks to my website. However, I recently decided to remove my website link from my signature for two reasons: The forum is 95-99% dead. Hardly anyone uses it anymore. BTW, the website that houses the forum is still popular within is niche (articles, etc). Just the forum appears to be dead. The website and its forum really have no connection whatsoever to my business. I'm in a completely different niche. However, I have no idea if I've made the right decision. Will removing my signature and the backlinks hurt my site? Or will it help it since the other site really isn't related to mine? Thanks for any thoughts on this!
Link Building | | emh19690 -
Back linking to t foreign sites
One of our major competitors seems to be linking to an Asian speaking website that has a blog/product review formant. I was wondering how they are achieving this. Are there any non English /Asian sites worth submitting to and what is the best way to go about this if English is the only language you speak! And of course is it worth while doing this from an SEO perspective.
Link Building | | Hardley10 -
Is this directory submission site worth the money?
http://www.pegasusdirectory.com/directorysubmission.php Has anybody tried these guys before or anything similar?
Link Building | | adriandg0 -
New PDF Guide. On My site or linked by blogs?
Hi experts, I created a new worth guide about food. Its purpose it to improve backlink by adding website's URL on PDF's footer (spider crawls that one, is it true?). I want send my guide to trusted blogs so users can download new pdf guide on the web. Is it the best way to gain popularity and let my backlinks grow? I've seen that seomoz published is guide such as html pages.
Link Building | | Greenman
Could it be the worth way for me? Thanks a bunch in advance! G.0 -
Best Way to Analyse Linking Structure of My Site
My site http://www.taxproblem.org is now undergoing many changes due to bad report card scores from this site. I've had people tell me that my linking structure was obviously artificial, especially if most of my links are from "Mr. Wong - social site" O.K. stop laughing 🙂 Yes we use bookmarking demon and rss feed wp plug ins, etc. But haven't discovered how to best get links yet, although reading a lot and waiting on seomoz's DVD's I ordered. 1. What is the best way to analyse our sites linking structure to determine if Google will consider it bad (my site was trashed by Google twice in the last two years) probably for link farms and the like. I know the obvious, but I was looking for a program with guidelines to judge by. 2. The best source to review the many strategies for getting back links so I am not a victim of rehashed b/s based on someones fears of Google, but actually good methods that work. We offer something of value. (CPA firm doing IRS rep. and we have a free download so people can do their own IRS rep and save thousands, and know it's done right) I need to know the bast way to market this. I need good souces for info and for keeping up. Thanks in advance to all that can help.
Link Building | | joemas990 -
How do you find out what (and when) new websites are linking to your site?
I may be missing the obvious here, but is there any way (a programme or site) of seeing what new links come into your site? Obviously as anyone who works in SEO, I like to see which links we have got with the work we put in contacting webmasters, etc. But is there a better way than just manually looking through ALL the links? Any help will appreciated.
Link Building | | Weerdboil0