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Can I ask why you chose to change the URLs?
If everything else is still the same, I'd image that you should see your results come back. I'm sure you had a process in place for handling changing all of the internal links? I wonder about this since you have so many pages and now the URLs are different.
You would definitely get a lot of tools with HubSpot, not to mention you could potentially add their product to your services. I've worked with Act-On, a product very similar to HubSpot, and I think you will find that you will spend a lot of time upfront learning and setting up the system.
I don't think that this type of system is a solution to your 'no time' problem. I'm not saying that you shouldn't give HubSpot a try, but you won't find yourself any less busy, and there won't be any less fires to put out.
It may help you appear more polished and professional, but there is a huge investment there where you could get the these results for potentially less of an investment by hiring someone to design your templates and help you implement systems.
Hi Brad, I think you are right on with your instinct. You are, after all, a consumer as well.
While it may not in fact hurt your rankings online to use the same photo for all locations, I would suggest that the end-user would appreciate the opportunity to see location-specific images. That is what they are there for.
However, if you do have the 10 photos, you could offer these up to what I assume are either your partners, franchisors, or licensees as a benefit while making the suggestion that they also get their own images.
This is kind of a vague question as we really have no idea about further details of your site. It's not bad to have keyword anchor text for internal links, but that is a general statement. Other details to consider would be how many links you have on a page, what the anchor text is pointing to, what the content of the page is, etc.
If your links are pointing to the pages for your various offers, and those links state what the page is about, then you should be fine. The biggest question you should focus on is does your content serve the reader, or are you performing these tactics solely for ranking? Focus on providing value to your reader/customer, and you should be fine.
Hi Wouter,
I think you might be mistaken on what is actually happening with Google plus. It doesn't matter which account you use. What is being discussed is when someone is logged into G+ or their gmail account, the search results give bias towards sites plus'ed by the user and people the user has circled. Essentially, the idea is that if you or a friend have plus'ed something (essentially saying that it is valuable), then you will probably like that search result.
For example, you are logged into Google with whatever account is associated with your Google plus. I am in one of your circles and have given a plus to a certain website. When you search for something related to that website, it will likely show up in your results since you are logged in, but might not have shown up if you weren't logged in. Since I, who am in your circle, have plus'ed a page or site, it follows that we are friends and you may find it useful too.
So, if you can increase the number of people in your market who have plus'ed your page, content, and/or site, the likely hood of other people in your market (eg. their friends) seeing you in search results increases.
Hi Karl,
I second Dany's advice. Additionally, and while it doesn't give you the direct data you are asking for, you can use Google Analytics Flow Reports to get a better idea of what your readers are looking for. Since you had mentioned conversions, this type of data will give you insights beyond just click numbers, and help you optimize the most sought after content.
-Josh
I think if you are looking entirely just to rank you will have to look at the competition in the space. Be sure to consider quality of the content just as much, if not more, than the quantity of the content.
Additionally, you should be focusing on creating content that serves your target audience. Can you produce enough valuable content to serve the market as an authority? Or, will people find your site and go elsewhere to find what they are looking for?
You should also focus on creating your content for multiple readership paths, i.e. - headings, subheadings, images, and links. Not only does this provide value to your audience, but will help in your rankings as well, contributing again to the quality rather than the necessary quantity.
Have you gone through your site to make sure that there are no longer any links to the old 404 pages? You probably don't need to worry about external links pointing in, since those pages are now redirecting, but I think it would be best practice to correct all of your internal links.
Dylan made a good suggestion. I'd just add to make sure that if you do noindex your tag and/or category pages, do a noindex/follow. This will ensure that the bots can find your content, but you aren't competing with your own content in the search engines.
Hi Mark,
A lot of sites use product descriptions either provided by the distributor or found on large e-commerce sites, like Amazon. However, this doesn't necessarily help you stand out.
You could leave the common description you have so far and then expand a little further using your own content. I'd definitely take Takeshi's advice on making some standard copy for certain categories with lots of products.
The confusion potentially comes from the citations associated on the various accounts. You didn't mention phone number, but I am assuming that is the same for both businesses as well.
Having two separate sites, since they are focused on different segments makes sense. However, every detail should be treated as these being separate businesses if they are going to be represented as such.
When you talk about their rankings, are you talking about website rankings or local places rankings?
What is the purpose of the wedding site? Is it a single landing page or a full-on information rich site with multiple pages?
Also, you say that they are sharing a blog, how is this set up?
I agree with Miriam, without further details, it is really hard to say what is going on. However, depending on where you are actually searching from does factor into the results as well as the website associated with the listing. Additionally, the number of citations a location has and how well those citations match up, meaning name, address, and phone are all exactly the same, can influence local listing rankings as well.
Whether or not the competitor has claimed their listing isn't really a huge factor in determining rankings. The fact that your competitors website outranks yours is an indication as to why those local listings may appear to be more relevant to the search, and therefore rank higher, than yours.
Maybe this is a little beyond my knowledge, but why would a PPC ad be designed to have a high bounce rate? How does that help get more leads? I get that it would probably be much higher than an organic result bounce rate. And, that it doesn't effect the SEO of the rest of the site.
My comment about optimization of the ad was in regards to the fact that if an ad has a high bounce rate, wouldn't that mean that it is potentially not converting well? So, the traffic arriving to the landing page is not seeing the offer as a fit for what they are searching for.
Chris,
I think all of the previous advice is great in regards to your bounce rate. David makes a good point regarding search engines measuring bounce in organic listings by a searcher returning to the search results, and not with analytics data.
I'd be interested in knowing what happened to your traffic when you still had the navigation on the page. Were the searching your site for more information on your company? Checking out your blog? Where were they going on your site?
Also, if you are experiencing a high bounce rate, this could be an indicator that your ad is not optimized. Which is essentially costing you money.
I think there is still a ton of value. Even if the links aren't valuable, I'd still look into the value of your company being mentioned in a release and the traffic generated to your site.
If you focus on providing some value and an interesting story, you may be able to generate a good amount of traffic to your site. From here, you should have a method for capturing visitors and getting them to engage you, both on your blog and in social media.
However, if you are looking at it as purely a method of gaining links, it has lost the value that it once held.
I'd suggest starting with a whole new domain or using the unused one. If he has had penalties that lost him rankings then you are starting from scratch, or worse, by trying to fix the rankings for his current domain anyways. This way you avoid losing that first place position, which I am almost certain will happen for a period of time once you make the switch.
If you start a whole new site, he can maintain that first place ranking until the new site takes its place.
Like Andy mentioned, he could also run some PPC ads at the same time. Which he could be doing on Bing and Google to alleviate some of the lost traffic anyways.
Three sites you could try are:trafficestimate .com
websitetrafficspy .com
statshow .com
(delete the space in the URL of course). These are of course are only estimates of traffic. You can see by looking at moz.com, for example, on each site that you have a range of ~23,000,000 to ~48,000,000 monthly visitors.
Hi Erick,
I did a quick search and came across this article:
So, if you weren't previously penalized, then the new update may have caught you. If you consider that Google's mission is (other than world domination) to deliver quality content to it's users then this type of penalty makes sense.
I'd say it was a good idea to move some of your ads down, and maybe even remove a few of them all together if you have too many on the page.
Hi Megan,
As long as you have made all of the appropriate changes, you should be fine. The drop is probably due to the change, but you should see the rankings recover. I think you can expect some shuffling to occur when changes like these are made.
It's a little hard to tell not being able to look at the site in question, but I'm wondering if the redirects are somehow creating a loop causing it to appear like more pages with more links? Just an idea.