Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I will not comment on the directories discussion as the boys have canvassed it well.

On link building the first suggestion or step I recommend is to capture the first 75 URL's that appear in the SERP for the most important keyword you are targeting.  Then strategize how to get a link to each of the URL's - yes some are competitors so they are no good.  Many are not competitors.  Links from these pages have high SEO value. Be relentless in pursuit of these websites for backlinks.

After I have maximised my efforts on the aforesaid I then look elsewhere.

Good luck, let me know if you need any help.

Are you familiar with Hummingbird?  It sounds like it is applicable. As they are a competitor they are likely using synonyms to rank for those keywords.

Below are some articles on them.

https://moz.com/blog/hummingbird-unleashed

http://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-172816

The balance to understand fully needs a competitive analysis. Likely backlinks and the anchor text. But it is hard to guess from this afar. That said to answer as best can, I will go hummingbird & backlinks.

The word Arvixe - would not be highly competitive - so need to use that 3 times. Coupons is competitive.

The below is the title that appears if I google Arvixe

Web Hosting | Shared Hosting | Website Hosting by Arvixe

Are you changing the Title to the home page or is it a new page? The Coupon page? The most common search term according to Semrush is "Arvixe Coupon".  The above suggestions appear to be targeting 3 different topics rather than one broadly, like your current title.  Need some more info on what page you are targeting and why - otherwise could be leading you down the garden path.

Firstly when you say your site was hit by a google update, what was the date/time of the decrease? and how much of a decrease?  The below link may assist.

It is important to know which update has effected your site.  But as importantly you need to verify it has actually been hit. As it will depend on what "rules" you have breached to what actions you take.

If I was you I would first work out where you sit on the penalty scale and what needs to be done before approaching anyone. Be appropriately armed with the right information.

https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

I like this one - but a personal choice.

http://beginnersbook.com/2012/11/lsi-keywords-for-better-ranking/

You are always right... so I got confused!  All good...

Here is a blog post with the same question, or close.

http://moz.com/community/q/linking-between-your-own-websites-yay-or-nay

Hope it helps, ask if need any clarification.

Patrick

The company I work for specializes in CTR on search results - we run complex experiments on them ie 30-40 today alone. There is a difference between pipes and hyphens on CTR.  It is small but it is statistically significant. Sure it is irrelevant to most but for big boys chasing keywords like "car insurance" etc it is vital as each click is has such high cost in competitive spaces.

Matt Cutts noted the CTR factor between them as well. I do not believe it makes any difference on SEO except in so far as it uses more pixels.  So maybe we agree, but a clean tidy looking title that looks professional to the customer does have an impact on CTR.

Ok, well that would not keep me up at night!

• The link below is a formal strategy to use to review your site, and why not indexed.:-

  https://moz.com/ugc/8-reasons-why-your-site-might-not-get-indexed

  Work through the points let get the site indexed!

We do alot of experiments for clients on the difference between pipes, colons and hyphens.

99 out of 100 the pipe is the preferred separator.  Generally the pipe is best for both SEO and Clickability.   This is as the pipe also uses less pixels. Recommend as follows:-

Most Important Key Word | Second Keyword | Brandname ( no more than 512 pixels in length or otherwise it truncates).

If you detail a couple of options I can probably tell you what is likely best.

Sorry I wanted to find something more formal, this link below is a better strategy or more formal to use to review your site, than my comments above.:-

https://moz.com/ugc/8-reasons-why-your-site-might-not-get-indexed

Lets get the site indexed!

Ok, then you need to start at the top.

Starting where I would start. ..  Have you checked your robot.txt file?

https://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt - cross-check no disallow etc.

2. Have you checked google webmaster? - to make sure the old site map is not providing the road map for google.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/183669?hl=en&topic=8476&ctx=topic

Check them out and then revert.  Is that ok?

Max

There is no science to what about I am to tell you. Or I have not seen it. It is my personal observation.  I think that the better quality the content is written, the better english and the more your site is updated - the better you rank. If you regularly add pages with good quality content you get improved rankings. Simple as that.

I have seen it on too many sites. As I said no science but it happens too often to sites I work on.

On dramatic changes to ranking - no such thing. That said if you can do it, and just by virtue you can by talking about it you can - you should do it.  I have no doubt it will improve your rankings. Every now and then - you get a big uplift but there is usually something incidental that also occurs, some above the line advertising works etc.

My belief is that you have the website perfect and ready to catch that "halo" or "ripple"  effect from the marketing campaign. If the site is not optimized the effects of the marketing campaign vanish and you are back to square 1.

Hope that helps. In short urging you do it, but no promises - but that is SEO!

Andy has created a cracking response.

I will add that recently 9 June 2015 there was an update on the mozscape calculator.  Alot of DA's dropped. SO unless you have seen a drop in rankings for keywords do not concern yourself. See link below that may assist on that issue.

http://moz.com/community/q/big-drop-in-domain-authority

Great email Andy!

Toby

There are two parts to optimizing titles and meta descriptions. Deal with the later first - Meta descriptions should firstly be optimized for clickability as they hold no significant SEO value.  So use your 156 characters to create a great CTA.

Titles however are a different beast as they hold significant SEO value. In creation of the perfect Title you need to weigh two competing factors - SEO -v- Clickability.

In the title SEO has the priority or should come first - hence identify the keywords chasing.  Then you work out the most clickable way to present those words. Here is a link to another post that answers your question. http://moz.com/community/q/how-should-be-a-perfect-seo-title-description-h1-and-h2

Moz has a snippet tool you can use. https://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool Before getting to that use Semrush or another keyword tool your prefer to identify the keywords you are chasing and than start playing with the snippet tool.

Let me know if you have any questions. If you create a title and a description - happy to review it for you.

Toby

A conundrum we face daily. Working through the long lists detailed above is arduous work and I will suggest a start.

If you have access do a site audit with moz or semrush. If access to moz review the moz trust score. After a site Audit you should have a better understanding of some technical issues but there are two factors that I address asap page speed. Just checked your on tools.pingdom and it was below 2 seconds which is excellent.

The second aspect which I suspect has high relevance is bounce rate.  I would imagine bounce rate could be a factor for your site from a quick look at the home page. I am not sure whether the site is a shop, info brochure on ear plugs etc. I did not see a CTA. So if your bounce rate is above say 50% I would be studying GA for behavior on the site. Work out what page customers are dropping off, and then dedicate your self to getting the customer to move to the next page.  Follow them all the way through to a conversion. If not enough traffic ask family or friends - though they can be brutal.

There are plenty of other items on your list - but understanding your customer and how they are interacting with your site is vital - and creating a deep connection with the right customer is integral to sustained success. If people have a good on site experience they will talk about your site and come back.

Ask away for clarity on any point.

You can see when google has indexed a site but typing in site:

for example "site:https://www.navisyachts.com"

Sometime it takes time, but you can force google to crawl your pages - in webmaster - crawl - fetch as google.

Quick response got to do some work! Hope this helps.

The boys above have detailed the more technical aspects - the common issue is the length of the title.  1 pixel over 512 pixels and the title truncates as you have described above.  I have seen it truncate as you have described from 487 pixels.

I tested your example and that is 580 pixels. XYZ Company: Primary Keyword in Ontario Canada - XYZ Company

Hence on your example to reduce the pixel width and also for a better CTR I also recommend you use the pipe | and not the hyphen -. Plus you may need to extract Canada etc.

So confirming have you checked the Title is 512 pixels or less?  If still truncating test 487 pixels to be safe. I built my own title tester given it is such a common issue so I could measure the pixels https://www.predikkta.com/products/free-serp-optimizer-tool.html

Hope it is as simple as outlined above.   I add it is worth getting right as it has a strong influence on CTR.

Yep, that is it.  Send them an email. Good luck with it.

partnerships@moz.com