Branded vs Non Branded Homepage?

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

So I understand that I'm never going to get google review stars appearing on my homepage.  The only term I really want my homepage to rank for is the term 'dentist liverpool'.  This figures.

But what I'm seeing from my google analytics is that I can rank pretty much any keyword really well (with stars and a great serp entry) except my homepage.  Which is languishing at position 3-5.

Now I made some observations from the data and the only people who are landing on my homepage are branded searches.  So people who are searching for us.

Why cannot I just make a page and optimise it for 'dentist Liverpool' and go for the number one spot?  That way all the branded people can end up on the homepage and everyone else looking for a dentist in Liverpool can land on my highly optimised 'dentist Liverpool' page?

I think I might be missing something really obvious here and know i'd need to de-optimise the home page.  But I find it so easy to rank for all sorts of keywords but our homepage (because it has everything on it) is just not getting to position one.  It's not specific enough to that keyword. Also how awesome would it be to have the only serp entry with 250 google reviews and stars and sitelinks and all that cool stuff?

[martinxm]

Hi Ed.

Have you analyzed the competition? It may be that the competition has very well optimized the web page. It can also be that the web is older, etc. What is your website to analyze it with respect to the competition?

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

Hey,

Thanks for the response.  I've done loads of top ten benchmarking and their sites are older.  I worry that could be the reason too.  We're only a few years old.  The one and two positions are 6 and 10 yrs old.  But we're outranking them for all our services so my question really is can I ignore the homepage and create a 'services page' with 'dentist liverpool' as the focus KW?

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

So to be clear I've ruled out:

1. Domain and page authority

2. Content and KW density and stuffing

3. comprehensiveness and content topics etc

So all that's left is domain age but I read that doesn't matter anymore so much and how are we outranking them for the non-branded keywords? some of them really super-comeptitve?

It's a mystery.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Ed,

I'm not sure if you realize this, but you're never supposed to use aggregate Schema review markup on your homepage. More on this: https://whitespark.ca/blog/how-to-use-aggregate-review-schema-to-get-stars-in-the-serps/

So, skip that goal of stars showing up from this in relation to the homepage.

I want to be sure I'm understanding your goal here. I believe you're saying that you homepage isn't ranking for your core term. It's only ranking for branded searches. And this is making you think you need to make a landing page for your core term. If you only have one location, that really wouldn't be a best practice. Rather, you have to figure out what WILL move the needle for you and this core term (if anything). Some things (like proximity or filters) will be a brick wall you can't easily pass through. Others (like building authority) are what you're going to typically run into as recommended strategy. There is something about your competitors that is holding you lower than that coveted #1 spot, Ed, and a competitive audit is going to be the best solution to find out what that something is.

I did a post here on the Moz blog about doing a competitive audit to analyze local rankings, but you're talking about organic rank, right? That would be a bit different, though related. Either way, you've got to find that secret something. It could be proximity, it could be links, it could be content, it could be spam!

Am I understanding your topic correctly?

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

Yeah you nailed it as usual.

Schema stars just don't show up on homepages.  You're probably right.  A homepage is a homepage and it's going to kill my local rankings to try to mess around with a 'dentist Liverpool page'  Should I take all the schema review attempts (that failed) off the homepage?  Is it damaging things?

I went through a big phase of consolidating content and it worked really well and now I'm number one for lots of stuff (or sometimes one and two!) I'm experimenting with more specific 'topics' now trying to write more content - also trying not to fall foul of maccabbees or beinng so specific that I just don't get enough traffic/keywords on each page to get them ranking.

It's all testing and I really feel now like I'm in a maze just randomly testing routes and trying to stick to best practice but doing it blindly.  I audit my competition every time I do a search.  Sometimes I just don't know.  The auditing tools all come up with different ideas and they are less and less reliable as google is taking these giant leaps.  But that's the point.  If we were able to work it out then the whole thing would fall apart.

One thing that has had a HUGE effect is all the DCMA's i've been putting in and disavowing dodgy domains.  I really don't think google is as good at ignoring them as they say they are.

I've experimented with Ad Words (appearing first on all the mobile searches as a sort of branding exercise) but i'm not sure that's helped with CTR like the research suggests.

Sometimes I want to pay some pure genius to look at it for me and run a really comprehensive report but I know I'm just going to pay for a crappy SEM Rush branded PDF report or a something straight from an SEO SAAS product.  I need someone with a brain to look at it for me.  I feel like i'm at the limit of what I'm actually mentally capable of and it's frustrating me.

I also think that it's sometimes not me moving the needle but the whims of google.  Search console is showing some really strange results with demand like some days there'll be 3x the impressions but I don't see any featured snippets or reasons.

Im sorry - i'm ranting at you.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Ed,

I know just how you're feeling about this, and sometimes, you can be so deep in the weeds of a project, you can begin to feel a bit lost. I think this happens to everybody now and again.

Yes, remove that review schema from the homepage. It could possibly be a spam signal. Not 100% positive about that, but I think it may be so.

Another suggestion: I know that rankings are important. I get that. But I've had clients in the past who overemphasized this beyond what was reasonable, narrowing their focus so that they lost sight of the bottom line: conversions. Yes, you have to have visibility to earn conversions, but it could be that you need to turn down the dial on the rankings focus for a bit and see how well the current rankings you have are converting to appointment bookings, or some other valued metric. Could there be usability improvements made that could take the same amount of traffic you're getting right now and increase the phone calls it is yielding, or the time spent on the site, or the links your content is earning? Maybe focus on that for a bit, and then come back to the rankings picture.

Hiring an expert for some consulting might also be a bright idea, if you hire someone truly qualified. I'm thinking along the lines of a Joy Hawkins, here ... not just a run-of-the-mill Local SEO. A true expert will often notice things a brand is overlooking, and from what they notice, a picture emerges of what is and isn't possible for the business. That can be very valuable.

Wishing you best of luck!

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

She certainly fits the genius bill for sure.  That's funny because my PPC guy was saying there's loads of CRO opportunities.  You're right - I'm becoming obsessed.  All this gamification of apps is making me crazy.  Seeing just a 5% drop in traffic will ruin my day and we could have converted £25,000 of new patients lol.  I'm not even kidding either. I'm getting bummed out by stupid stuff.

Who was it who said you cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.  I think it's time to bin the dashboards for a week and come up with some new thinking.

Thanks for your advice. I'm also gonna hit Joy up at Sterling.  Even her lowliest agency tea-boy could probably move the needle for our site.

[MiriamEllis]

Sounds like a good plan, Ed!