Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Firstly there is not enough shared information.

That said we manage several large sites and there are times were they are static and there are dips, but seasonal factors are huge for most large sites, from education to health insurance. So have you accounted for seasonal factors? Also the traffic growth is exponential at the start and from an outside point of view it seems that the landing page experience is not strong enough or not answering the searchers queries.

I would do a deep dive into onsite behavioral analytics and see how long they are staying on, and where dropping off. In short look for pogo sticking.

Hope that assists.

There is methodology to linking, however it usually flows naturally from the website structure. The below link is a great article that may assist - old, but still v relevant today.

http://www.bruceclay.com/seo/silo.htm

Also check out the thewhitecompany.com - they do an awesome job and offer a great template.

Hope that assists.

Yes, we use freelancers for specific tasks.  There are 1000's of great people out there, much better qualified than you  think...  We use freelancer.com, elance etc.

That said the first and safest place we have found and start looking is stay at home parents (usually mum's). Start in your own backyard.. they often only want to work 1-2 days a week and at their convenience.  But they deliver in spades, over qualified, better contacts than you... etc etc.. and in expensive ...

Hope that assists.

I have similar sites I have reviewed.  It comes down to the - exact marching url.  Plus the space has to be not overly competitive. No doubt there is 600 other factors but the dominant standout is the url. Ironically once there tough to dislodge, unless the site dislodging is 10 x 's better - cannot be just twice as good... .

Firstly have you limited the scope of the search to the relevant country?

When you say views, assuming impressions. If so we see it is as not usual...  the correlation between the two can be limited for some pages. I find it relatively good for queries.  Over the 90 days it is usually shows more consistency and a more realistic correlation. I have an issue that my CTR was 3% for a client on page 1 for a keyword getting a 300 clicks a month - then the keyword drops to page 2, CTR goes to 10% but gets 20 clicks. ie the CTR goes up but clicks goes down....

I personally use clicks as my measurement on WMT's and the other three as "helpers" to try and identify what is happening.

Not sure if that assists but hope it does.

In short it pops up as it is based on search preferences.  The algorithm behind it is complicated however primarily it is based on search history and data or inputs you (or someone else) has made into your safari  search preferences pane.

If using Chrome - and undertaking keyword research it is a important method into collating keywords.  The suggestions are usually in some form of popularity...

Hope that assists

Ellie

Very difficult without the url.  The site structure is very important.  Assuming it is a new site, so no pages have been penalized, i will make an educated guess and go with page authority. The site structure and paradigm you set up is integral to success. There is a great article by Bruce Clay and though aged it is still current today so in any redesign i Would have an eye to bruce's suggestions.  http://www.bruceclay.com/seo/silo.htm

I would try and identify the key issues before a re-build, rather than hope the rebuild will just fix the problem. See  https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015 for more info.

Hope that assists.

It is a matter of personal choice. AirBnB use auto play/ambient video. I personally love it.  So there are ways to address the slow loading, however it is problematic. I personally steer clear of videos on the landing page above the fold as I have not seen an instance where it assists in customer conversions. In fact video has been a negative in my experience, specifically on eCommerce sites.

So back to your question I would get customer feedback, but if wanted to try video I would still look at a placeholder or a short 7-8 second piece to liven the page. Also if the user doesn’t see the images and videos as they are below the fold again use placeholders and detail so the images and videos only load once the user scrolls down and when actually needed.

Hope that assists.

Jacob

Had a quick look, besides the fact few good looking people get married in Brooklyn the site looks v good. Checked on some metrics, got a few nice backlinks and loading speed for the home page was excellent. The sites does have a couple of broken links. Though as Logan states you are over optimizing some pages, especially the blogs ie each title has in it Brooklyn wedding photographer - when not relevant to the post. Plus most of your Titles are too long, try and stick within 512 pixels. I am also not a fan of having more than one H1. That I find can confuse google. I would suggest fix the multiple H1's asap. Also most of your images have no alt text which given it is a site of pictures I would resolve asap.  So that makes your pages look very thin on content. All that said I am like you a little surprised not ranking at all. One thing noticeable is it does not appear you have any strong domains linking with relevant anchor text.  It is a small factor but we have found can be important on niche sites.

I suggest working through the moz technical - if I cant find a solution, have to go back to basics. https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015

Hope that assists.

Also remember the basis for it. The underlying principle is it can help the visually impaired read your site and understand what it is about.

Brodie has identified the issue - it is splitting available resources. The work that goes into one domain is huge. If you have two domains - then you are doubling the work.

Ie I use the house analogy. Two domains is like owning two houses, two sets of bills, travel between the two, everything different. You likely need different resources, to make it look and feel differently to some extent. If you keep everything on the same domain - it is like adding a new room to an existing house, so overall the bills are kept down. You can tidy up everything as you move around the one house.

So I always try and err on the side of caution, and try wherever possible to fit within a existing well maintained domain assuming there is a content and relevant nexus. However if the nexus is not there - then well you have no option.  As stated by Brodie it is a judgment call. The positive is you can always buy a new house later....  even if you start on your current domain. Also if you want to sidestep the decision all together - you can leave the decision to the money men - CFO and let them know they need to double the digital budget - and see what they say... with a brand new domain...

Good luck hope you have enough info to make the right decision.

Pre 2013 it was bad practice to have in excess of 100 links per page, google technical guideline.  Many SEO tools still use it as a warning bell. However Matt Cutts from google - I recall a few years ago - came out and categorically said it is NOT bad practice.  Have as many links as you like as long as it is natural and helps the customer.

What Matt did say is if it appears like spam, them google will penalize you accordingly. Here we go just found the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHG6BkmzDEM

So to be clear - if the links are needed and help the customer - I would not concern myself.  Watch the video, nothing better than going straight to the source.

Hope that assists

I think Egol covers it very well.

I would not be changing pages if at all possible. What I would be considering is how to get the benefit/value of traction of 2015 pages for 2016 events. There are several options.

But it could be a revamped page, a CTA which you can click on to go to 2016 page etc.  Also if no page up yet after every 2015 event, you could put on the page "the 2016 events details are not known yet, however leave your email and we will contact you with details of the new event etc" - that gives an opportunity to collate details. You know your business better than anyone, so likely better strategies but the underlying principles enunciated by Egol is the way to go.

Answer - 100% = originalsitename.com/landscaping. I am an evangelist on this topic with clients!

The nexus is there and I am not sure it is that far removed. People who are looking for training are looking to be educated on related areas.  I would not put much thought into the choices as the above is superior to a subdomain for ranking purposes generally.

I also suggest you have a read of this article  http://www.bruceclay.com/seo/silo.htm which may also facilitate higher rankings for the new pages when implemented.

We do it differently.

Have you done several mockups? have you taken those mockups to customers for direct feedback?  We recommend you start there...

After that there are plenty of tools to optimize and tweak the site, optimizely, crazy egg etc.

Hope that assists.

Logan

I agree with Logan - Go through Webmaster Tools page by page and see if you can identify some traffic trends.  It should not take too long. Click all four clicks, impressions, CTR and position. See what is happening on each page, then you can narrow it down by search term.

On WMT's I would also do a custom comparison for 90 days, ie 45 days each (compare).  Or from when you noticed the trend - comparing with when you were ranking lower - only hiccup is only goes back 90 days.

Also I suggest Semrush you get a free use for one hit - i would pop your URL into Semrush and see what the graph for organic keywords looks like.

It is a bit of a puzzle but start with some basics and see how you go. Hope that assists.

I concur with Logan - it is a risky business.

There is lots to review, so I am only making one suggestion which is contemporary to what i am seeing now. I would look more at how they are driving traffic.  Is it referral traffic from facebook, etc. Several of my clients have had big jumps in the last month if they have strong referral traffic from high domain locations.  I have seen no data on it, just a personal observation at this stage...

James

For a free report I would start with website.grader.com - a couple of screen grabs, Rand backed it a few weeks ago. For a very low cost report I would use semrush.com.

Hope that assists.

The customer has to come first.  So the landing page must resonant with the customer.

In the "body" as you say, I might not use it.  Hummingbird, has given us a variety of ways to make the point, without repetition. What I would do, if it is competitive space is do a keyword density check on the other sites that do rank.  And also write down why you think the top 4-5 sites rank for that keyword... quality backlinks, video, awesome landing page... Do a decent competitive analysis.

Then I would review where I stood in comparison. There is no silver bullet, just hard work.

You have limited resources so first need to focus on best opportunities.  I just do not know what they are.  Do you have an SSL, is you loading speed for your home page under 2 seconds... ? They are all considerations I would make... on top of a competitive analysis.  A starting point should be a site audit...    https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015

My view is make a list of to do's and just work through them... do it properly and it always works out...

James

SEO London, appears natural to me.  But that would be in the Title Tag, once. Your H1 is what I assume you are talking about? That could be Search Engine Optimization Experts, London, or skip the London. They dovetail.

It does matter what your competitors are up to. Old school, but you could do a keyword density analysis of the top 20 results and see if you can identify any trends.

Exact match is still powerful, but too many exact matches may lead to being penalized. So it has to be natural and inviting and better still answer the customer query.

Hope that assists.