Does this feel like keyword stuffing or spam?

[jeffpdx]

This post is deleted!

[RobCairns]

Hi Jeff,

I'll answer your questions here and then make a couple suggestions to get you started:

1. Am I trying to be too white hat?

In my opinion, no such thing. Black hat and white hat are 2 sides of the same coin, but the reality is that one of these may cause penalties while the other creates long term results. Success isn't worth it if it only lasts a couple months.

2. Should I find a natural way to work those keywords into my Home Page?

That is always the best way to do it, but it can be tough if you want a streamlined, clean and crisp look from a User Experience perspective. My advice? Place an accordion text box where you can answer FAQ's or provide details your readers might be interested in. These accordion setups don't take up much space, they are crawled by Google and they give your visitors something to read if they are interested but don't force them to scroll forever.

3. Am I ranking poorly because I'm being careful?

It's possible, but being careful is preferable to being foolhardy. Take your time for the best, long-term results. They are worth it when compared to penalization.

4. Is this because the site is pretty new?

It's possible, but the age of a domain is only a small piece of your overall ranking potential. If you provide better, more authoritative content and your site has a strong link profile with high local relevancy, you will out-compete sites that have been around for years.

5. Do I need to work on my links?

This is where I think you are struggling. I ran a scan and your link profile is made up of links almost universally coming from your other domain (https://www.portlandtherapycenter.com). They are also using universally the same anchor text which is showcasing your naked url which can be a big red flag from Google. A naturally-built link profile would have commercialized keywords (the ones you are attempting to rank for) in the anchor text as well.

In addition, the reason why https://www.portlandtherapycenter.com is doing so well is that it is a directory - a provider of information. If these sites are hosting on the same DNS, that is another huge footprint for Google and may be suppressing your rankings.

For my money, this is where you need to improve the most and you can start by removing any "spam" links and incorporating a link-building campaign for local, relevant links based on authority and anchor text.

Lastly, your page loading speed is a bit lower than I would be comfortable with, so compressing images and files may help to bring you up in the SERP's. Don't put too much value on EMD's or exact-match keyword usage, Google doesn't treat them any differently than branded keywords or domains.

Hope this helps to give some insight and answer your questions. Feel free to bounce any questions you have off of me anytime you like.

Cheers,

Rob

[jeffpdx]

Really good idea about the accordion on the homepage. I'll get on that!

Yeah, I mistakenly linked to wellpdx.com from the footer of portlandtherapycenter.com and it created hundreds of links. I deleted that footer link a few days ago. Will Google see that I deleted it? I can't ask for reconsideration because I wasn't manually penalized for doing that. Hopefully it won't be held against me for very long.

The portlandthearpycenter.com address and the wellpdx.com address are using the same domain provider but they have separate DNS's. So that shouldn't be a problem, right?

[BradsDeals]

Don't worry about the footer link that you removed, you'll be fine.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Jeff,
Good feedback from the community so far! I just thought I'd add ... you are in a tough market, because you are not a local business nor are you yet a major directory (like YP or Yelp). Have you looked at the other directories that are doing well for your core terms and assessed why they are outranking you? Age, links, content ... these can all be factors. I noticed the URLs for your pages aren't the best. They are https://www.wellpdx.com/naturopaths rather than locally optimized like https://www.wellpdx.com/naturopaths-portland but it may/may not be worth it to change these now.

Best thought here is to keep your head down and work like crazy to build better content on these topics than any other competing directory can boast so that your site eventually becomes one of the top, authoritative sources for this information in time.