Failing Miserably - Should I Just Bin This Site
-
I am in the last weeks of my 3 months paid subscription with SEOMOZ and very sad to go.
The main reason is that my website design business site is delivering no business to me at the moment. Zero - zip - nada. It has been live for the past 4 years and cumulatively it has probably paid for few beers and pizza. Most of my business has been through word of mouth and not through direct traffic to the site. I had really hoped the site would be the sweet 25% extra. Now the overall website business is reasonably healthy but I cant understand what I am doing worng with the site.
I have tried and failed to optimise and am at my wits end what to do with it. If anything my ranking is dropping over the past months.
Could any of you guys give me some ideas and tips before I literally hang up the shingle on this site and start from scratch with a new design and revision.
I want to rank for website design and as we all know you need to be above the fold on page 1 to do this but I think my overall design and strategy for this site is flawed and I should start again. But if you have ideas then shout before I head over the high Irish sierras for better lands.
http://www.grangewebdesign.com is the site - feel free to check it out and give tips -
-
That's great Kieran!
Chew slowly and savor your progress at it happens
Just a couple of things I thought to mention in case you hadn't caught up with them yet...
-
On-page reports in the Pro App show you the on-page elements you can improve, including things like keyword usage, amount of text etc. The trick with these is that you have to load the keywords you want to optimize for in the campaign. Don't worry if it seems to want to apply keywords to the wrong pages, just use the manual selector at top of page to choose keyword and then type in the URL you want.
-
Not sure how the timing works for you, but there is a Weekly Welcome Webinar for Pro members every Friday morning (Seattle time). When you sign up for it on the Webinars Page there is an opportunity to tell Aaron if there are particular things you would like to learn more about.
Of course, if you already knew about these things, just ignore my ramblings
Have a great day,
Sha
-
-
Wow Sha
Thanks for the words above - you are right on the nail and I already made some changes. I am doing a root and branches change now to the language I use and the We v. I that is prevalent throughout the site which reads badly.
I am a terrible speller and your points on even these simple points make sense and I have corrected this glaring grammatical error and I increased the amount of words on main page, added my Google Places map and wrote a little bit more about me as well.
I am now working through ALL my 106 blog posts to make them crisper, with better keywords and of greater value as a lot of them were written in haste and need work and proper spelling (!!)
I am revisiting my decision to leave SEOMOZ and may stay a little longer as even this postalone is worth the fee for this month!! I hadn't actually realised I had a once a month private question either so I am lining that one up.
LAstly I am starting to munch on the elephant.
-
Hi Keiran,
After reading the comments here and taking a very quick look at your site I would say just a few things (since I am playing hookey from a project to recharge with a cuppa and really must get back to meet a deadline
-
Please DO NOT ignore the text errors on your site. While many view this as a minor issue, there are some other things to consider. You are in the web design business. Errors are NOT an SEO issue, but a conversion issue!
First, there is a typographical error on your home page which has completely changed the message you are trying to convey to potential customers "You do need any technical knowledge". While those of us in the business understand what you are trying to say and will read over the mistake, potential customers with little or no knowledge of web design may at the very least find themselves questioning whether it is a mistake. Some will even take it to mean that they need technical knowledge if you build their site!
The other very significant problem with errors in your text is that you are sending a message to potential clients. Remember you are selling a service which requires you to build pages full of text. If your own website is full of errors, the message you send is that the websites you build are likely to also be full of errors. That is without even considering the secondary message that there may be an issue with attention to detail in your company
Having read a blog post I am surmising that part of the error problem may be your reliance on an editor to catch the errors. While it may be alerting you to obvious spelling and typos, it is not letting you know when you have repeated words etc.
Yes, I'm a self confessed word nerd so I'm always going to be sensitive to the error thing, but in this case it is all about the sales message you are sending.
-
The home page feels a little unfinished with the 3rd column and service sections looking empty and to be honest I would be looking to get some more text into the page. I would also make sure that text adds some more local emphasis (not just the county name, but some more specific references to your location). Have you claimed your local business profiles in Google Places, Bing and the best known citation sites? The links in these profiles will provide some trust signals and increase your chance of moving that page 1 keyword above the fold.
-
You are missing out on some nice keyword inclusion opportunities with your Blog Titles which also appear on your home page via the feed. Consider perhaps - "If I Had A Hammer - Could I Create Your Website In A Day?". Two things here actually. First, including some relevant keywords and second, talking to your prospective client in the first person. The text and images on your site are your first face-to-face meeting with your client. Speak directly to them and you have a much better chance of engaging them - that is the first step to converting them
If I were you I would keep the Pro account a little longer, do all the reading Stephen suggested and use the Q&A forum to learn and ask for help. Don't forget your monthly private question where you get to ask SEOmoz staff and Associates for specific help too.
Also - when the problem seems insurmountable, remember two things ...
- The heart of this community is TAGFEE and that means help is close by.
- Best way to eat an elephant - one mouthful at a time!!
Oops ...back to my deadline!
Hope this helps,
Sha
-
-
An alternate view:
Specific comments like fixing spelling mistakes, get better anchor text or redirects, is doing more damage than good here
It leads to false hope that this will help rank for the term "web design" and that Kieran will rank for this if he "just tries hard enough"
If you have been here 3 months and think that trying to rank for "web design" is a good business move, then yes, let the SEOmoz contract lapse if the money is an important factor. Read the blog, read everything on this site in the last year
The problems you face are not analytics or SEO or anything OSE measures - its understanding how the web works, understanding how customers are going to react when they see your website.
Seeing your website, Id say your best bet is personal recommendations. Knock the site into shape to convert people you send their personally, and don't waste time or energy on SEO
S
-
No problem thank you for commenting.
-
Thanks Ryan. I have my graphics guy working on cleaning up the logo which Is not great. I will look at the spelling errors and of course I don't take offense in fact go as hard as you want.
I appreciate the comment on focusing the level of expertise at least in terms of on site. One of the items I need to do is work back through all my blog posts over the past year and tidy them up as I know the need a ton of work in the first place and this is an area I will work on,
-
Yes that was my comment's meaning. Sorry that I wasn't clear.
-
Thanks Nicholas - I have redirected that contact number page - careless to say the least. I am on page one for website design cork but below the fold
I will look more closely at my index page - any thoughts welcome of course but thanks for the feedback to date.
-
Thanks Sean. I agree that Website Design is competitive and is probably aiming high. I will try and aim for website design Cork.
Most of the forum comments were done without link building in mind and I suspect that if I didn't use real name in a lot of these cases my post would not be accepted.
However the guest post space is somewhere I will investigate and see what impact it will have.
-
I would suggest finding a niche market and going for that. As one example, you list wordpress, drupal, and joomla as your area's of expertise, and go on to say you can provide expertise in any other CMS. You may find more success in picking one, and becoming a recognized expert in that CMS specifically. Also focus locally. You still haven't reached page 1 for "web design cork", so that'd be a good first goal.
I also noticed some spelling errors and non-transparent colors in your logo, little things that would stop me from contracting business services from someone. I mean no offense, but those should be fixed asap.
-
By looking at your site I still feel like you could be doing a better job with your on-page seo and also with the content on your index page.
I would start researching local keywords and work from there. "Website Design" is too broad, IMO. Maybe start with Website Design firm in Cork, Ireland, or something like that.
Also, by Googling your phone number I was able to find your old site/design, this could be resulting in some duplicate content.
-
Sorry double post please delete
-
I think what he's saying is, ranking for 'website design' is going to be really, really tough - it's a highly competitive term. You'll need a DA of MUCH higher than 30 to be ranking for that term. Which means building links from more authoritative websites. I noticed that some of your best (i.e. highest domain authority) links were forum/blog comments which probably aren't passing much link juice. I would look to get guest blog posts on higher domain authority sites that can link back to you. And remember that all important anchor text - a lot of your links have the anchor text 'Kieran Daly' rather than 'website design'. Not forgetting the value of writing great linkable content, of course
-
Not sure what you mean?? Can you clarify???
-
You want to rank for "website design", bold suspect others want the same. Mozbar states your DA as 30. Surely thats ambitious. I am pretty new to this as well but it looks like you want to be playing for a different term.
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
-
Just moved to CDN and site dropped in Google
Hi there, I have been modifying a clients site for months now trying to get higher up in Google for the term "wedding dresses essex" on the website https://www.preciousmomentsbridalwear.co.uk/ It's always ranked around 7th / 8th place and we want to try and get it into 4/5th position ideally. I have optimised pages and then due to the site speed not being that great we moved it to MaxCDN this week which has made the site much faster, but now we have dropped to number 10 in Google and in danger of dropping out of the first page. I was hoping that making the site much faster for desktop and mobile would help not hinder! Any help would be appreciated! Simon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Doublestruck0 -
What do you think about SEO of big sites ?
Hi, I was doing some research of new huge sites for example carstory.com that have over million pages and i notice that many new sites have strong growing for number of keywords and then at some point everything start going down (Image of traffic drop attached) there are no major updates at this time but you can clearly see even on recent kewyords changes that this site start loosing keywords every day , so number of new keywords are much less that lost keywords. How would you explain it ? Is that at some point when site have more than X number of indexed pages then power of domain is not enough to keep all of them at the top and those keywords start dropping ? Please share you opinion and if you have any experience by yourself with huge sites. Thank You very appreciated 2LC3AxE
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | logoderivv0 -
When Mobile and Desktop sites have the same page URLs, how should I handle the 'View Desktop Site' link on a mobile site to ensure a smooth crawl?
We're about to roll out a mobile site. The mobile and desktop URLs are the same. User Agent determines whether you see the desktop or mobile version of the site. At the bottom of the page is a 'View Desktop Site' link that will present the desktop version of the site to mobile user agents when clicked. I'm concerned that when the mobile crawler crawls our site it will crawl both our entire mobile site, then click 'View Desktop Site' and crawl our entire desktop site as well. Since mobile and desktop URLs are the same, the mobile crawler will end up crawling both mobile and desktop versions of each URL. Any tips on what we can do to make sure the mobile crawler either doesn't access the desktop site, or that we can let it know what is the mobile version of the page? We could simply not show the 'View Desktop Site' to the mobile crawler, but I'm interested to hear if others have encountered this issue and have any other recommended ways for handling it. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | merch_zzounds0 -
Paid Links on Credible Sites
Hi people. I'm wondering, what would be the effects of having a paid link on a credible site. The site would feature a brand page about my site and link to it. The site has a good domain authority and they are credible with quality content. Ultimately though the link would be paid. Would Google treat this negatively? Or would they pick up on it at all? Thanks, Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao0 -
More Indexed Pages than URLs on site.
According to webmaster tools, the number of pages indexed by Google on my site doubled yesterday (gone from 150K to 450K). Usually I would be jumping for joy but now I have more indexed pages than actual pages on my site. I have checked for duplicate URLs pointing to the same product page but can't see any, pagination in category pages doesn't seem to be indexed nor does parameterisation in URLs from advanced filtration. Using the site: operator we get a different result on google.com (450K) to google.co.uk (150K). Anyone got any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidLenehan0 -
Is my site being penalized?
I launched http://rumma.ge in February of this year. Because I'm using a domain hack (the Georgian domain), I'd really like to rank for just the word "rummage". After launching, I was steady at around page 4/5 on searches for "rummage". However since then I've tumbled out of the first 100. In fact I can't even find the site in the first 20 pages on Google for that search. Even a search for my exact homepage title text doesn't bring up the site, despite the fact that the site is still in the index. I'm wondering if one of the following could be the root cause: We have a ccTLD (.ge)--not sure about the impacts of this, but seems like it might not be the root cause because we were ranking for "rummage" when we first launched. Tried running an Adwords campaign but the site was flagged as a "bridge page" (working on getting this addressed). I'm wondering if this could have carryover impacts into natural search rankings? We've tried doing some press and built up a decent number of backlinks over the past couple of months, many of which had "rummage" in the anchor text. This was all organic, but happened over the span of a month which may be too fast? Am I being penalized? Beyond checking indexing of the site, is there a way to tell if I've been flagged for some bad behavior? Any help or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I'm really confused by this since I feel like I've been doing things right and my rankings have been travelling downward. Thanks!! Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | minouye0 -
Are there any concerns moving a site to https?
I am currently having analytics issues where the non-secured (http) front end of my site is not properly communicating to the backend (https) of my site. When a user jumps between the the secured and non-secured, it will display as a bounce in GA and I get duplicate visits. GA has a work around for this but it is messy and not working. So my question is, has anyone had good/bad experiences moving a non-secured site over to the secured side? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 2comarketing0 -
One site or five sites for geo targeted industry
OK I'm looking to try and generate traffic for people looking for accommodation. I'm a big believer in the quality of the domain being used for SEO both in terms of the direct benefit of it having KW in it but also the effect on CTR a good domain can have. So I'm considering these options: Build a single site using the best, broad KW-rich domain I can get within my budget. This might be something like CheapestHotelsOnline.com Advantages: Just one site to manage/design One site to SEO/market Better potential to resell the site for a few million bucks Build 5 sites, each catering to a different region using 5 matching domains within my budget. These might be domains like CheapHotelsEurope.com, CheapHotelsAsia.com etc Advantages: Can use domains that are many times 'better' by adding a geo-qualifier. This should help with CTR and search Can be more targeted with SEO & Marketing So hopefully you see the point. Is it worth the dilution of SEO & marketing activities to get the better domain names? I'm chasing the longtail searchs whetever I do. So I'll be creating 5K+ pages each targeting a specific area. These would be pages like CheapestHotelsOnline.com/Europe/France/Paris or CheapHoteslEurope.com/France/Paris to target search terms targeting hotels in Paris So with that thought, is SEO even 100% diluted? Say, a link to the homepage of the first option would end up passing 1/5000th of value through to the Paris page. However a link to the second option would pass 1/1000th of the link juice through to the Paris page. So by thet logic, one only needs to do 1/5th of the work for each of the 5 sites ... that implies total SEO work would be the same? Thanks as always for any help! David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OzDave0