What is wrong with my site?

[chuckakins]

I could use suggestions/input.

My site is consistently being beaten by doorway pages with zero to no content.  In fact, on the keyword "lawrenceville plumber" I am being beaten by a KID with a blank wordpress installation.

I really need help determining what my issues are and what I can do to help.  According to all of the graders, ranks, etc my site is great.  I have written tons of unique content, have added a blog unique articles and self-helps.

Please help!

My site is www.akinsplumbing.net.

Thanks!

[grojoh]

Hello chuckakins,

I noticed that the keyword density for your homepage is a little bit too high.

• plumbing has 6.79 %
• atlanta has 6.04 %
• plumber has 4.53 %

To avoid to be filter for over optimization (especially since Penguin), try to bring the keyword density to a natural level. Around 2 % should be good.

Even though you seem to have a good amount of incoming links and Google in honoring that with a PageRank of 3, a lot of incoming links have the keywords plumbing, atlanta and plumber in their anchor text (-> Opensiteexplorer). To Google that might not seem like the links are build naturally.

Did you always have ranking problems or is that something more recent?

Hope this helps you a little bit.

Johannes

[APICDA]

Hi Chuck,

Along with what Johannes mentioned, I noticed that you have two websites.

• Akins Plumbing
• Akins Plumbing and Septic

While these sites are different, the content is very similar and so, you my be beating yourself up with the two.  Also, I noticed you have many many  links to a tattoo parlor, that may not be helping much either.

A few years ago, I had two sites in a situation such as yours.  I got rid of one to save the other.  Worked out great!  Thats just my two cents.

Best of luck

[chuckakins]

The ranking problem is more recent.  I will adjust the density to closer to 2% . I was told to stay around 2-6%, but you aren't the first person to advise that.  The Plumbing keyword is difficult because it's in our company name.

[ToughTimesLawyer]

I do my business' SEO.  I own a bankruptcy firm, so we're in the same boat SEO wise.  I've found that content really helps you move up the rankings.  I have a competitor with thousands of inbound links who used to beat the hell out of me, but he never added content.

I blog regularly.  It's tough to get in the habit.  I try to write three 500 word posts at a time and then schedule them to publish every other day.  It helps you Google that you have a fresh site.  It also helps you hit the long tail searches like "hair clog in drain."

Also, I second Quilbur. Having two closely related sites can hurt you.

[chuckakins]

Okay, I got my keyword density to 3% and 3.5%.  That's about the best I can do.  Having plumbing in your company name makes it hard, but I figured out a work around.

Any other suggestions guys? I really appreciate the help.  This has hurt us pretty bad!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Chuck,

Sorry to hear you're having ranking problems. If your site has been around for awhile, it's usually it's a combination of several factors that come into play.

Short of doing a full site audit, I did notice that a lot of your anchor text seems highly optimized:
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?page=1&site=www.akinsplumbing.net%2F&sort=domains_linking_page&source=phrase&target=domain

And a lot of your links come from the same few sites, including the footer of the aforementioned tattoo parlor. These links are generally found site-wide, in the footer, such as on this page:http://www.dec-international.com/products.html

Also, OSE shows a lot of links from related sites like this: http://bestathensplumber.com/contact-us/  (although it looks like the link has bee recently removed). These are apparently sites owned by your company.

The takeaway is Google will most likely devalue these links, and may even penalize you for not only over-optimization, but for too many inter-linking sites (link-network) If you own multiple sites, it's okay to interlink them a little bit, but in a way that's natural and included in your editorial content.

My best advice would be to try to trim some of these links, and work to replace them with hard-fought editorial links.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Wouldn't worry too much about keyword density. It was possibly a factor in the early age of search engines. But today there's no correlation.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-myths-that-scare-seos-but-shouldnt-whiteboard-friday