Inherited a site by well known company - Input and opinions please!
-
Hi all,
Just handed the keys to this site "newly" designed and put together by a large well known company during a small business experiment they were running. They took a dated old non-responsive site with questionable architecture and even more questionable SEO practices and made it responsive and well... what you see now. I skimmed it and started to review and audit but decided I was a little too close to be neutral so thought some third party opinions would be helpful as a start.
I guess I'm just hoping for some fresh eyes to take a look and give me your overall impression re: structure, coding, SEO etc and then some idea of how you might tackle all of what I was handed if it were a perfect world scenario where there was actually a good, strong budget and a lot of time to spend. WWYD in other words!
Thanks so much for any comments in advance!
-
Hey Pixel,
I wanted to mention that, for some reason, every time I've tried to access your site in Firefox, I get a Server Not Found error, though I can access it fine in Chrome. Something you might want to look into.
The site is lacking some very basic Local SEO best practices, including but not limited to:
-
No complete NAP in footer
-
No complete NAP on contact page
-
Title tags are not optimized with reference to San Jose
-
Homepage text also makes no reference to San Jose or any geography at all
So, while whomever built the site has made some good efforts at visual appeal, this business is hardly coming across as local at all, due to a lack of basic best practices.
In addition to working on the optimization of the site, I would suggest running the business through our free Check Listing tool (moz.com/local/search) to start assessing the state of citations.
Looks like there is good room for growth in this area:
And earning reviews will be super important. I'm seeing zero on Google or Yelp.
Here's a good post from Casey Meraz on auditing local businesses: https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-local-seo-audit
There is great opportunity for this business to improve - lots to do! Good luck to you!
-
-
Thanks very much Patrick...Those are all things right on the money for what I was thinking in terms of how to go about the process of getting a handle on this. The design/typography is pretty bland so I now it needs some reworking on that front, too.
I haven't run it through any technical audits yet because I'm a bit afraid of what's going to turn up but yes, that's on my to do list this week. With that said, let's say this comes back with issues beyond the SEO, what should take priority here...Optimization and a ton of local SEO or code/compliance/structure fixes?
Right now this client needs calls and the way the site was put together, he's basically starting from ground zero in terms of results. I'm guessing there were no redirects or any attempt at saving a bit of the small results he had before and so it's like a whole new entry. Sigh.
Anyway, thank you again for the quick skim and advice. It really helps to have fresh eyes on it. If anyone has anything else, please throw it out there and don't be shy. I didn't design this site so I have no skin in the game other than I have to deal with it now. Also, if you anyone has any favorite tools, Id love to hear the suggestions.
Best to you all!
-
Hi there
I went through and did a quick skim. Here's what I found:
- Titles need to be optimized
- Meta descriptions needs to be optimized
- Remove meta keywords
- Images don't have alt tags
- No schema on the website (lots of opportunities here)
- URLs could be updated
- No canonical tags
- www. and non www. URLs both work
- https returns warnings
I would also run through a technical audit to make sure your bases are covered, as well as this site migration guide to make sure proper steps were taken.
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
-
We are adding an ecommerce feature to our site. noindex the order. subdomain?
our site currently consists of directory listings for different stores but we will now be adding an ecommerce feature to our site. people from the main site will be able to click a button that will direct you to the orders. subdomain. we are thinking about noindexing the subdomain as i can't find any use cases in organic searches for this new orders. subdomain. What is the current best practice for this type of situation and will noindexing the orders. subdomain harm us in anyway?
Local SEO | | imjonny1230 -
Another local fence company used (stole) one of my images
We have a local fence business in Oklahoma City and one of the other local fence companies took the liberty of using one of our images that I took myself on their website...creating a similar page even. They took the our image from this page: http://www.a-better-fence-construction.com/metal-fence-post.html And used it on their page (2x they used it!): http://fenceokc.com/2016/07/13/all-about-fence-posts/ They didn't even bother renaming the file "metal-fence-post.jpg"! I'm not experienced in what I should do? (I did a google image search and lots of websites are using it...but one contractor locally in OKC is using it and one in Dallas area is also using it.) I just wonder what other people are doing to prevent images being used or if your not worrying about it. Brad metal-fence-post.jpg
Local SEO | | SuperNovi0 -
Duplicate site with same content
Hi All, I hope someone can assist, We have 2 brands that sell the exact same products. We have a main and an off brand. We just redeveloped the main brands site and now have to do the off brand (was owned by another company and we acquired them, we then changed their products to match ours). Am I able to pretty much clone the site and just change the branding and rel canonical each page to its original on the main brand? Granted I will lose rankings but will it be something that will affect anything else? I want to do this so it saves us time in updating products on both sites (and avoids errors in incorrect pricing). Would appreciate some guidance with this one 🙂 Cheers Dave
Local SEO | | CFCU1 -
Local SEO same company two different locations
I have a client who has 2 locations approx 20 miles apart. He wants to reach new customers at the second office location. He is an owner of a law firm he practices elder law, in the second location he has an attorney who practices injury law. The second location is in an area where targeting prospects for elder law could also be lucrative. We currently have two separate websites for each area of law. My question is... Would it be suggested to create another elder law website to target the potential clients in this second location. Also for the first location we have put in place a content marketing strategy that has increased revenue considerably. Basically creating content (blog posts) that resonate with the target audience. If a new website is in order can the blog post be posted here too with a canonical referencing the original website. Im thinking a slow redistribution of content on the new site. Advice here is greatly appreciated as this new market for my client could increase revenue even more.
Local SEO | | donsilvernail0 -
Video marketing strategy for new sites - Youtube / third party vs self hosted?
Howdy Mozzers, We are a new UK solar comparison site looking to implement video to help buid our site traiffic / leads. We currently make a 1 min video summary of our blog posts using Animoto and embed the video at the top of the blog post on our site. The original thought of introducing video was to help our blog posts rank higher. My question is, which of the following strategy is the best for building traffic and generating leads for our site 1. Hosting video on Youtube and embedding it on our site 2. Hosting video on Animoto and embedding it on our site (not sharing on youtube) 3. Hosting the video on our own domain and not sharing it on Youtube and other third party sites 4. Embedding the video from youtube or animoto on our site and sharing it everywhere (dailymotion, vimeo,etc) Our target audience is UK only for the time being. We would like to build traffic quickly and are focused on the short term. I would be appreciate any replies discussing the different advantages disadvantages of the options and a final personal opinion. Thanks!
Local SEO | | MozBoy0 -
Law firm wants two separate sites
My client is a new law firm that represents criminal and personal injury cases. They want one site for criminal defense and one site for personal injury. Both of these sites can be filled with a ton of unique content. It is two separate areas of law and two different client bases. What I want to know is if this is bad for rankings? Will Google punish the sites? Thanks
Local SEO | | mrobby10 -
What is the best sites for Press Release
I am looking at all the various press release sites out there. I have a local business relocating and we want to use a press release to get the information out there and hopefully get the move picked up by a local newspaper. Any experience/suggestions on best PR sites?
Local SEO | | bricegump0 -
Mobile Options for indexing mobile sites and live sites.
Our development team has noindexed our mobile versions of desktop pages in Wordpress. I am wondering if there is a negative impact to noindexing the mobile pages? We have a desktop version of the page live so the content is available in both locations and I believe we would be avoiding duplicate content issues by no indexing the mobile page, is there a reason I am missing that I would not want to noindex my mobile pages? Thank you in advance for your assistance.
Local SEO | | Highline_Ideas0