What are your best moves if you want to get your traffic and rankings back for a specific keyword?

[wspwsp]

Hi all

We are server and website monitoring company for over 13 years and I dare to say our product evolved and mastered over the years. Our marketing not so much. Most of our most convertible traffic came from the keyword "ping test" with our ping test tool page, and for the first 10 years we have been positioned 1-3 in Google.com so it was all good. The last two years we have been steady on positioned 8-9, and since 7-30-13 we are on the second page.

We have launched a blog in 2009 at http://www.websitepulse.com/blog, and post 2-3 times a week, and are working on new website now, and my question is what is your advice in our situation?

Aside from providing fresh content and launching a new website is there anything specific we could do at this stage to improve our position for "ping test"?

Thanks

Lily

[KarlBantleman]

Hi Lily,

I think the first thing you need to do is a full back link analysis because it sounds as though you may have been hit a little with the Penguin/Panda updates. Have a look through your links and be really strict about the ones that you know are quality and get rid/disavow the others. That will give you a good starting block.

The next thing is, what are you going to do with this fresh content that you are producing? You need to find websites where it will add value, it doesn't necessarily have to be about the ping test but it adds to your credibility in the industry. Make sure you have your Google +1 account setup. There has been a lot of talk about it recently with Moz directors getting a bit of negative comments from Matt Cutts but it will definitely help to have a G+1 account up and running.

[wspwsp]

Hey Karl

Thanks so much for your tips! I will definitely prepare link analysis and emphasize on our Google+ presence.

Anyone else would like to add up?

[Ron_McCabe]

Lily,

If your target market is localized you may want to consider doing some local off page SEO.  Getting these directories set up has created some dramatic results for our clients. A simple first step is to use the get listed.org tool to get the basic local directories set up.

Ron

[wspwsp]

Ron,

Our target is not local and we do not consider local SEO for now, although I am very much interested in local search.

Thanks for adding up!

[GPainter]

More of a minor point on your blog you can also rel=author on your blog to help establish your self as a bit of an authority on your niche (not forgetting the buzz word of rel=canonical too!). This ties in with what Karl said about G= accounts too. Obviously this isn't going to help massively but I'm sure Google trusts this kind of source more.

You can also always take a look at your competitors see why they are ranking better than you and learn a few tips & tricks from them.

Best of luck!

[DougRoberts]

You've not dropped massively, just enough to knock you onto the second page.As such, I'm not sure you need to be overly worried about a potential penguin/panda penalisation.

I don't think you need to start panicking and disavowing links. This could do your more harm than good.

It's looks like a pretty competitive keyword with lots of high Domain Authority sites ranking on the first page.

The first thing I notice is that you don't have many links to your Ping Test page. Only 11 external links (from 7 domains). For a tool such as this, it doesn't suggest that this is one of the more popular/useful versions. (The #1 result in the SERPS has more than 1400 linking route domains.)

I also notice that all (almost all) of the internal links on your site have the anchor text "PING". You might want to make this a little more relevant (both to visitors and search engines by changing it to "Ping Test" for example. I've also got to say that finding it in your multi-level drop downs was an interesting challenge!

First, I'd take a look at your analytics to find out what the value of organic search visitors to this page are to your business. What's the conversion rate? How many of them end up taking a look at your services and then signing up? This, combined with the average lifetime customer value will give you feel for how much time/effort you're willing to spend on this page/keyword.

While looking at your analytics I'd also take a look at some of the page engagement metrics. What's the bounce rate / time on site look like. Are people actually using the tool or just leaving straight away.

If people are bouncing back to the search results and picking another tool from the SERPS then that's a pretty good signal to google that perhaps the searcher didn't find what they were looking for on your site.

It might be worth looking at the design (I'm sorry, it looks a little dated) and the user experience. My first impression looking at the ping test page is that there's a lot of small text which just adds friction. A nice big friendly input field and an appealing button would be nice!

How many of your visitors come from mobile? Worth looking at your analytics again. If people are trying to use their phone to figure out if their server is up, then I'm sure they'd appreciate a mobile optimised/responsive form to make their life easier.

Can you remove any of the clutter? What about removing the marketing message so that it's only displayed on the results page?

It's important to remember that your site isn't the only horse in the race!

I would do some competitive analysis - look at the Moz Keyword Difficulty report to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the pages you're competing with in the search results.

Take a look at the competitors pages. What are they doing that you're not? Be honest and consider whether your page is really the best page for someone searching for "ping test".

It'll be super-tough, but can you come up with something that'll make your ping-test stand out? Some USP that you can use to promote your tool (and maybe get some more, relevant links.)

Once you've got something worth promoting, it'll make it easier to get links.

You might find it worth your while to look at what other opportunities you may have to attract search traffic.

Hope this helps.

[wspwsp]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your tips. We did that yesterday, now we are waiting for Google to update its index. We are also paying closer attention to our competitors now, checking what kind of content they develop and publish, and I am now researching their link profile.

You guys are great help!

Thanks so much

Lily

[wspwsp]

Doug,

That was splendid add up! Thank you very much for the time and effort you've put to help us out. I will do all the things you suggested.

Thanks

Lily