No progress in 4 months in a non-competitive area !

[EnjinFrance]

Hi SEOs

We are a SEO and Web Agency based in Cholet, France. We have this client (Alpage Choaille : <cite class="_sd">www.alpage-choaille.fr/</cite>‎) for now 3 months, we have done all of the on-page optimization so far but can't get ANY progress on all of the 15 keywords tracked.

This is not a competitive area, and we are looking at "local" rankings ( chalet beaufortain, gite beaufortain, gite en savoie, gite de charme, chalet de charme).

We haven't done much OFFSITE, and we can't see any links on Open Site Explorer or Moz as this site is not part of their database.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

Best Regards,

Benjamin

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Benjamin,

My French is terrible so I must have missed something probably. But when I check the keywords you provided against the site and it's pages I can't find any keyword in the META title of these pages. That's one of the basic on page elements if you want them to rank only based on, on page factors.

[EnjinFrance]

Hi Martijn, No worries for french its one hell of a language to master it

Regarding Page Optimization, I took the example of the Home Page :

Home : Meta Title Gite en Montagne - Chalet - Savoie

H1 : Alpage du Choaille d'en Haut - Un Gîte en Savoie

H2 : Bienvenue au Gîte Choaille d'en Haut

H3 : Bienvenue à L’Alpage du Choaille d’En Haut !

Footer : Gite en montagne beaufortain d'exception

Body : Keyword "dans ce gîte montagnard" x1

Too many variations on "Gite Savoie" Maybe, I guess ?

Many Thanks

[MattAntonino]

You have 7 total links on this site.  There's no authority built - you need to actively attempt to figure out offsite SEO.  The onsite is a bit thin but the offsite is holding you back.

Hint: start with TripAdvisor.

[johnny122]

1/ "This is not a competitive area"... It depends :).

Your homepage title is "Gîte en montagne - Chalet - Savoie | Alpage du Choaille d'en Haut"

"gite en montagne" "gite savoie" "chalet montagne" "chalet savoie" are quite competitive in terms of SEO or SEA.

It you want to target "beaufortain", you should include it in your page title.

2/ Average #1 ranking = 2000-2400 words. Your text = 200 words.

3/ As Matt-Antonino explained, you lack of authority ; you need more links... and more anchors text relative to your keywords.

4/ As far as I'm concerned, I would add a blog to talk about the area, to explain why it's great to stay there and what you can do, testimonials, videos etc.

Is there a way to do great content and to get a few natural links ?

[JaneCopland]

Hi there,

I'd echo the points above regarding on and off page, especially off page: a poorly optimised site from an on-page perspective can gain rankings based on its great backlink profile. A perfect website with perfectly optimised pages will not rank if it does have links.

Have you engaged in any link development during the fours months? Along with looking at the points Erwan raised, I would look at the backlink profiles of your competitors in the area and decide on a 12 month goal for how many links you need and from which types of sites. Have a look at the link development category on the Moz blog for years worth of good ideas as well.