SEO Help

[ARobinson36]

I am at a loss and believe I have myself so twisted with what to do, with SEO or more specifically ranking, keywords, and backlinks, that I don't even know where to go from here or what to do next.  I use one tool, it tells me I have crawl errors, I use another it says I don't.  I don't really understand keywords anymore or how they're associated with your page other than simply being on it.  I could have swore I got some backlinks, but show none.  Sigh.  I just need help.  Anyone out there down to help a fellow teammate?  I have a computer science degree, whoda thunk, but this website stuff and how to optimize it just has me confused.  I have all these trial memberships to Moz and Ahrefs, but couldn't tell you how to use them or what exactly they'll do for me.

[LauraSultan]

All of the SEO tools out there are wonderful, including Moz Analytics, but no tool can take the place of a solid understanding of SEO concepts and best practices.  Furthermore, if you use tools, you need to understand their limitations.

Regarding backlinks, I don't think there is a tool out there that can tell you 100% of the backlinks to your site. Even Google Search Console won't tell you all of them. If the tool doesn't show the backlinks, that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't there.

As awesome as many SEO tools are, they can't tell you exactly what to do to improve your site's performance in organic search. For that, you have to put in the work and educate yourself about the underlying concepts that each tool is designed around. Or you need to hire someone with that expertise.

If you post your URL in the Moz Q & A with specific questions, you're likely to get some practical help.

[ARobinson36]

Thank you so much for your response, and I do want to learn, I think I have just gotten myself confused.  Is it too broad of a question to simply ask someone to possibly take a look at my site, who has some knowledge, to see if they can see if I am on the right track or things look good from the outside looking in?  My site, is newageawakeninggifts.com.

[KristinaKeyser]

Hi there - Kristina from Moz's Help Team here. Here is a link to some recommended SEO Consultants that we have referred customers to in the past, who were in your position. As Laura stated above, our tool are here to provide you with the data you need, but it does take a fundamental knowledge of SEO to put that data to use.

https://moz.com/rand/recommended-list-seo-consultants/

I'm sure any of the consultants listed there would be able to help you get a better understand of this.

Thank you,
-Kristina

[MattRoney]

Hi there! Have you had the chance to read through our Beginner's Guide to SEO? It might clarify some of these things for you.

[LauraSultan]

Is this a brand new website? If so, you should continue to see rankings improve over the next 2-3 months as long as you don't have any serious issues. Work to earn good backlinks, which is a critical factor in search performance.

Your non-www URL is not redirecting to your www URL, but your canonical tags are set up correctly to tell search engines which URL should be indexed. On the other hand, if you redirect the non-www URL to the www URL, you'll improve crawl efficiency. Make sure your internal links are pointing to the www version as well if the links are absolute.

Double check that your XML sitemap has the right URLs. I noticed that your pages sitemap has the search results URL (https://www.newageawakeninggifts.com/pages/search-results-page), which shouldn't be there. It should really be set to noindex since there's no default content of value for search engines to crawl. See the pages sitemap at https://www.newageawakeninggifts.com/sitemap_pages_1.xml.

Personally, I would get rid of the ad at the top of the page. You'll make more money if someone stays on your site and buys your products than if someone clicks the ad and goes to another website.

You'll improve your chances of competing in search by adding more content to your product pages. It takes time, but it can make a big difference.

There are probably a dozen more ways to improve your site for SEO, so you may want to have someone do an SEO audit of your site.

[ARobinson36]

First of all I'd like to sincerely thank you Laura for helping me I really appreciate it. It is a new website it's only been in existence for about 2 months. I've been trying to learn more about backlinks and I think that's where I'm very confused in addition to working on the other things.

I will definitely look into the non vs www URLs and make sure internal links and otherwise are pointed to the www version.

I will also look into the sitemap. Although odd, bcs I just have www.newageawakeninggifts.com/sitemap.xml submitted for my map. I wonder if SSL can impact the map?

I will also get rid of the ad as I see what you mean.

I am constantly working on the product pages! And, on the seo in its entirety. I'm really trying to do this stuff as I go without having to hire someone. So I greatly appreciate you.

[ARobinson36]

I have looked at that but will look again. Thank you!