Problem with getting a site to rank at all

[DonaldS]

We pushed this Word Press site live about a month ago www.primedraftarchitecture.com.

Since then we've been adding regular content, blog posts 3 times a week with social posts on facebook, twitter, G+ and LinkedIn.  We also submitted via Moz Local about 3 weeks ago.  Yext about two weeks ago and have been adding about 5 listings to small local directories a week.

Webmaster tools shows that the site map is valid and the pages of the site are getting indexed and it shows links from 7 sites, mostly directories.

I'm just not seeing the site ranking for anything.  We're getting zero organic traffic.

I though we did a good job not over optimizing the pages.  I'm just stymied trying to figure out what's wrong.  Usually we push a site live and see at least some low rankings after just a couple of weeks.

Can anyone see anything that looks bad or where we've gone wrong?

[DirkC]

Donald,

There are some issues with your site which could be causing the problems:

1. The load time of the homepage is quite slow -http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150316_8R_Y5A/1/details/ - apart from the heavy images, you also load a huge number of css & js files. If you analyse the page with Google Pagespeed https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fprimedraftarchitecture.com%2F&tab=desktop you get very low scores  - both for mobile & desktop. I would remove some of the fancy stuff on the page & focus on the essentials. Follow the recommendation of both tools to make your site faster. This would be the top priority if it was my site.

2. There are some smaller on-page issues

• not all the pages have a H1 title
  - http://primedraftarchitecture.com/architecture-consultation has a canonical url which doesn't exist
  - http://primedraftarchitecture.com/author/mike-sweebe/ exist 2 times (duplicate: http://primedraftarchitecture.com/author/Mike-Sweebe/)
• images are quite heavy (11 > 100kb)

3; Analytics

You seem to use both Universal & async tags on page (Universal on Contact / Async on the remainder) - on /blog you measure multiple 6 page views when only one should be measured. I would put everything on universal (and implement it in the head-tag

Hope this helps,

Dirk

[DonnaDuncan]

Looks like you're competing for terms with very low traffic and high competition.

I see you have Google Analytics installed, so your tracking is probably working as it should.

When you look at Google Webmaster Tools under Search Traffic > Search Queries, are you seeing any impressions? That would give you a sense of whether anyone's searching for the terms you've chosen to optimize and whether you're showing up in search results. Not always, but it's a sign.

I think you just have a lot of work ahead of you and you're not yet ranking. I used SEO Book's rank checker tool to do a quick check to see how you're ranking for "architect in new jersey", "nj architect", and "residential architect in nj". (I got those terms from title tags on the site.) It indicated you weren't ranking at all.

[DonaldS]

Thanks for the help Dirk!

[DonaldS]

Thanks for the response Donna,

In Webmaster tools I'm not seeing any queries and very few impressions.

I would expect the the site to be at least ranking for "nj architect", even at a very low ranking 50+, just based on the site's content.  I'm not expecting first page rankings yet.  I am just now seeing any at all.  That's what concerns me, that there may some other problem with the way the site is set up.

[RyanPurkey]

Thumbs up that Dirk's analysis of the site speed should probably be your largest concern. I've seen several new sites really struggle to initially rank if they're in the red on those scores. 21 / 25 are really bad.  Do everything you can to quickly get those in the green and you should start to appear in the rankings. This, along with Google's stance on only indexing mobile sites that have high mobility scores are two trends that aren't going away.

[DonnaDuncan]

Makes sense! Two other quick things I noticed are: (1) you're parking your blog posts in the root directory versus the blog folder. That will dilute your SEO equity on main site pages. (2) You should no-index your author, category and tag pages for the same reason.

[DonaldS]

Thanks Donna!

[TheeDigital]

While there are definitely some issues, the main problem here is simply time and links. Moz Local was a great idea but I'd also suggest claiming more social media profiles. Google has a sandbox for new sites where it is reluctant to rank them. A few months from now, with more local listings and social media listings and your site will show a lot better. Be sure to focus on some of your industry specific links as well.

[DonaldS]

Is there a way to tell for sure if you're in the sandbox?

[DirkC]

I doubt that it's Sandbox - if you look at the common signals for Sandbox (http://moz.com/blog/googles-sandbox-still-exists-exemplified-by-gradercom) your site would not be found for any keyword, not even your brand name, and have normal rankings in Bing.

I did a few very specific searches with phrases from your site both on Bing & Google:
"Everything that you are looking to achieve with your home addition or renovation project" => both have the same result (=your site)

Search for brand name - rank 1 in Bing - rank 3 google - so doesn't look like a typical Sandbox situation.

Rgds,

Dirk

PS Noticed that the speed of your site improved dramatically - so hopefully you will see you site start to rank soon

[DonaldS]

Just FYI for anyone who sees this post later on.  We're getting a marked improvement in organic search traffic after fixing some of the page load speed issues.

Thanks for the help!

[DonnaDuncan]

Great follow-up Donald. Validates the advice given.