Why Did My Site Go Limp On Me?

[dfhytrwy]

One of my clients was once in the #1 position for "Philadelphia interior designer" and other related terms, but her site has dropped significantly.  Still it is on the first page, but far from its former glory.

http://www.interiorsbydonnahoffman.com is the site.

What really confuses me is why in her home turf search of "Bucks County Interior Designer" a competitor, http://www.miriamansellinteriors.com, is above her in the SERPS.  According to OSE her competitor has a PA of 32 vs my client's 39.  My client has 35 Linking Root Domains (and some of high quality) compared to just 11 for the competition.   In all aspects her competitor looks weaker and less relevant to me.

Her site has been weak in the SERPs since May/June.

We are redesigning her site- she has a high bounce rate compared to my other interior design clients, something like 55%.

Any insights from y'all?

[LesleyPaone]

Please don't be offended by this.

Honestly looking at the site I see no effort put into onsite SEO.

• h1 text is mostly her name (if people knew about her they more than likely would not search for her, make it more general)
• Page speed is average, it could be a lot better.
• No title tags
• Too much good text as images
• Missing a few key alt tags
• Your h2 elements are blank, which to me is a spammy red flag.

It honestly looks like a spammy site to me. You have a lot of text included after the copyright, which I am assuming you are using for ranking. Which in my mind amounts to no more than just putting a big list of keywords at the end of the page.

I am a firm believer in onsite first and off site next. You have a lot of on site work to do.

[dfhytrwy]

No offense taken.  I agree with you that this site is in a sorry state.  Thanks for reminding me what I am dealing with.  Unfortunately I inherited this poorly made website and until we launch her new one it is what I must work with.

I never thought of how the text below the footer could hurt her, although it is obvious now that you mention it.   Again, it is an inherited tactic.

My only question on your feedback is about the title tags.  They are clearly there: "Philadelphia Interior Designer | Bucks County Interior Design" so what are you referring to?

Thanks so much for your time, Lesley.

Do you notice any off-site red flags/issues?

[dfhytrwy]

I didn't realize that by marking your answer as "good" that it was going to show as "answered" on the main thread.  Whoops.  I am still hoping for some more feedback on the off-site part.

[RickyShockley]

Completely agree that on-site is needed, however, i'm not sure HOW much good it would do for that keyword phrase.

You are competing against one site for that term that you are extremely unlikely to outrank due to high DA/PA (2 SERP listings for houzz.com)

That being said you are competing with ashlimizell.com and down2earthdesign.com for the spot just ahead of the local listings (which may be hard to rank for due to the fact you are not actually located in Philly) and I think the on-site changes should take care of winning over that #3 ranking!

I also agree, kill the linked footer text. The anchor text doesn't really even match the corresponding page (ie interior design bucks county links to about page)

Also check out the Moz 2013 ranking factors for other areas that could help you get a boost in the SERPS! http://moz.com/rand/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/rank-factors-pie-2013lrg.gif

[dfhytrwy]

Thanks for that Ricky.