New Service/Product SEO and rankings

[seomozinator]

Hello, fellow MOZers.

We are a web design company, and we had SEO as secondary service for years. Due to changes in the company we started pushing SEO as one of our main services about 6 monhs ago. We have separate page , targeting that service, as well as case studies, supportive information pages, even SEO Center, which is like a blog about SEO only. We are not using black hat SEO, doing honest link earning and building, don't use keyword stuffing, everything is by the book.

I understand that SEO takes time, especially for a company which has a footprint as web design company, not as SEO company. We are ranking very good for web design related keyphrases, however, we don't see any improvements for SEO related keywords. It always was and is between 25-30 SERP.

At the same time, competitors, who are ranking on first page for SEO related phrases are pretty bad looking. Design-wise as well as blackhat-SEO-wise. Everything is keyword stuffed, UX is horrible, prices are ridiculous.

So, do you guys have any thought/advise on how we can see results / why we are not seeing results.

Links:

Google search result: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=seo%20houston

Competitors: www.seohouston.com, www.graphicsbycindy.com

Our pages: https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com/seo-houston.php, https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com/seo-houston/

[CleverPhD]

Howdy from Dallas!

For what it is worth, you have 2 pages that you want to rank for the key term, but which one?   I took a quick first glance at them and here is what I saw (this was quick first glance remember).

On both of the pages you mention, you only have "Seo Houston" in the title and URL and don't mention it anywhere else on the page with the exception of having your Houston address in the footer.  Just glancing at your pages with my human eyes, I cannot see anything on the page that talks about why you are the best SEO in houston.

Your pages, read to me (with a quick glance) that you offer great SEO services and have great SEO resources, but not for houston per se.    You competitors do work SEO Houston into the text a lot to the point of being annoying, but at least I could see quickly that they service Houston.

I was thinking, it is a shame he does not have some case studies on that page that talk about what he did for some Houston businesses, that would be a good way to work Houston into the copy with our looking spammy.  On second look of your SEO Houston page, I saw the links to the case studies.  Now, if I want to see the case studies, you take me to another page, plus I cannot tell by reading the original page if these are Houston based businesses or not.  You might be helping some business from New York City for all I know!

I then thought, lemme find out more about this guy, he is probably pretty good, and I go to the about us page.  I see the item about the Houston Business Journal, and I think, that info should be on his SEO Houston page, a natural thing to talk about that can pull in the key phrase.  I go back to your Houston SEO page a third time and then notice the H1 tag.  I think I scrolled past it the first time as I looked at the graphics on the page and scanned.

I went back to writing this response and then looked at the page the fourth time and see, a-ha!  SEO houston is in the copy 1x and among all the logos at the bottom there is a logo to the Houston Business Journal.

I hope this makes sense, as a user, I had to do a lot of work to see that you specialize in SEO in houston.  I do not think you need to you do not need to H-Town, Hustle Town or Clutch City the heck out of your copy.  You have all the elements, but I would say it needs a little more work to find a happy medium between what you have now and how your competitors use the term.

Check out the 5 second test at UsabilityHub  http://fivesecondtest.com

If the user cannot tell in 5 seconds what you offer, then tweak the copy until they do without overkill.  That would be my first step before any backlink analysis or speed testing etc.  I think you have awesome stuff, it is just not hitting me as quickly when I first visit the page.

Good luck!

[seomozinator]

Thanks! I have noticed that we pretty much don't have the keyphrase on a page anywhere. Work is going to be done on that for sure.

Now, you are talking about UX, but what about crawlers? that's what defines your rankings, pretty much, isn't it? When i look at our Google master tools "content keywords", "seo" is number 1, "Houston" is number 2. Also, we have "seo houston" phrases in html elements like alt tags, metas, titles etc.

So, I do agree that there is no "seo houston" phrase for human eye, however, there should be plenty for crawlers. Does that matter? Am I thinking in right direction?

[CleverPhD]

In my head, good UX results in good SEO.  I think you need more copy for the user to talk about all of your great Houston SEO experiences, but that will also give more fodder for the bots to read and traverse.

Other things that come to my mind.  Google search console is looking at your entire site.   On your site as a whole, the word "houston" is mentioned a lot and the word "seo" is mentioned a lot and probably "houston SEO" happens a fair amount. But if that is the case, out of all the pages on your site, which one should Google rank for "Houston SEO"?  What signals are you giving that are clear to the point of whacking a 2x4 over the head that "this" is the most important page on your site that relates to that key term.  You may need to look at how you use keywords across the site.  You may want to look at how you link internally and on what anchor text you use internally.

I know this is not the same example, but what comes to my mind is this WBF

https://moz.com/blog/why-good-unique-content-needs-to-die-whiteboard-friday

Rand states that if you really want to rank a page on something, your content has to be 10x better than everyone else's. It has to be that good to stand out to Google and users to rank in the SERPs.

Is your SEO houston page content 10x better compared to all the other pages on your site (and to your competitors' sites) as it relates to Houston SEO?  The suggestions I gave on how to add more content related to Houston SEO to a specific page underscore that idea and in the process, it also adds some additional keywords on the page without it looking too spammy.  Good for users good for Google.

The other aspect that not a lot of people talk about is how making the page "sticky" aka making it really useful, helps with SEO.  Google tracks people clicking on a result and then coming back to the SERPS with the idea that if you stay longer on a page then it must be "better" and it helps with the rankings.  (This is also why making sure your meta description is on point for conversion as you have to get people to click that result if you ever want a change to have them get to your site and stay a while).  Adding all that additional "houston SEO" content on a page will hopefully cause the user to stay longer and improve your quality score with Google from the standpoint that Google should see people spending more time on your site before or if they click back.  This is also why using bulleted lists and short paragraphs work.  People skim.  If they see a bunch of long text, they will leave quick as they do not want to process that info.  Lists, bullet points, bolded highlights, pictures, I will hang around and glance through that for sure!  

Moz blog post and video on pogo sticking.