Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks for your most interesting response!!!

From what you are saying the greatest payoff will be in developing new content on an ongoing basis.

A few questions:

-I also have hundreds of product pages in the form of buildings and listings containing  50 and 300 words. Many of them don't have text links to other pages.  You think I am best off just editing/adding a paragraph or so and inserting text links to other pages on the site? From your post I am unclear if you are adding the links in some sort of automated way. In any case, sounds less traumatic than a total re-write.

-Are you using posts on social media (Google+, Facebook, Twitter) to exclusively promote your site or are you engaging in any link building?

From what you are saying (as well as other opinions) I guess I need to stop thinking of gaming the system and more in terms of creating very useful content.

Alan

YES, IT IS A LOT OF MONEY. $12,000 for reports, maybe $4,000 for wireframes and designs and another $11,000 for coding modifications.

I used to own a website that was struggling to maintain rank but generating enough leads to earn a good living. Now I can go feed the pigeons in Central Park. After this immense effort, following every suggestions, buying report after report, ranking is down, traffic is down, lead generation is non existent.

I would be generous if I described this so called SEO company  as charlatans, imposters and clowns. When the real drop occurred after their Voodoo last spring, and I had the temerity to complain, they could only respond that I had not spent enough money and that there had been a recent Penguin update (the drop in traffic was a gradual slope occurring since they started their "magic" and did not correspond with the May 20th algorithym update. But I guess I have no recourse against these criminals. They got the maximum advertising budget out of me, collapsed my business and can now move onto their next victim.

Now, back to my original question, how I build links to worthy content? The number of sites linking to us is so low that if that number can be increased somewhat perhaps it will have a tangible effect.

Thanks, Alan

Hi Bruce:

Also, I have found that pages that I have re-written, that provide quite useful information do not attract links (such as http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/how-long-does-leasing-process-take).

How can I go about attracting links for such pages?

Is it far to say that since the site has so few links, that attracting a few quality links should have a noticeable effect on Domain Rank?

Thanks, Alan

Hi Frank:

Thanks so much for your help!!! There is nothing tougher than writing copy that converts.

Based on your suggestions I have adjusted both forms, trying to keep them as brief as possible. Do you think this is an improvement?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FORM #1

Don’t waste your time searching listings. (watch icon)

Receive a hand curated list of properties prepared by one of our experts.

Yes            No

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FORM #2

Did you know we can provide you with access to off-market listings?

Learn about these exceptional, hidden gems before they are gone!

Tell me now about off market listings.                   Yes            No

Hi Bruce:

Thanks for the response. Our bounce rate has held steady in the 68-72% range in the last year. So has the click thru rate, ranging between 2.59 and 2.31 per visit.

Our site consists of the following types of pages

-330 Listing pages. 200 are set to no-index, follow. Only about 50 have more than 300 words. 
-150 Building pages. About 140 have about 250-300 words. 
-35 Blog pages. Only four entries written this year. 
-Another 60-75 static pages (neighborhood, types of space, about us, services).

How much of this do we need to rewrite to get an improvement in Domain Authority? Obviously re-writing hundreds of pages is a huge task.

Also, once these pages are promoted do we need to promote them to get links? Or will those links develop naturally if the content is of high quality?

Am I correct in assuming that a site with a Domain Authority of 21 is not going to have the potential to rank well? Being that the Domain Authority is pretty bad, how difficult would it be to get it back to say 30-33?

Thanks, Alan

My commercial real estate web site has about the worst conversion form ever designed (http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/visitor-details). The form appears whenever a visitor does a property search. If they do not release their phone number and email address they don't get results. The form only gets completed 25% of the time and often the contact details are wrong. The visitors either exit the site at that page or go to the listing or neighborhood pages to view listings without doing a filtered search.

In an attempt to increase conversions we are softening the form and not making completion mandatory. After entering an inquiry the visitor will be shown three property listings before the form pops up, The idea being that once they have seen product they will be more inclined to release contact info. Also, the form will appear once they have viewed three listings anywhere on the site, not just for search results.  Unlike the existing conversion form (http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/visitor-details) we are trying to keep the text very concise. The new form will be Java script rather than a URL.

Can anyone  offer some ideas on how to make the text of these new forms more enticing? The forms are listed below. We will probably show the first one after the visitor views 3 listings and the variation of it after the visitor views another 3 listings.

** FORM #1**

Quit wasting time searching for listings. (watch icon)

Call me to discuss available space.                       Yes            No

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  FORM #2

Don’t search for listings, we will do it for you. We have off market listings that no one knows about.

Contact us now about off market listings.                   Yes            No

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks, Alan

My Domain Authority has tumbled in the last six months from 28 to 21.

Search traffic has dropped from about 4,500 per month to 3,000 per month with most of the drop being in the more competitive terms. Lead generation is off by about 70%.

This is after spending $12,000 on "optimization" with a MOZ recommended SEO firm and spending another $17,000 implementing their suggestions.

My real estate brokerage firm has completed some press worthy deals in the last month. If I can get these deals mentioned in a reputable newspaper like The New York Times (or other real estate publications like NY Observer, Real Estate Weekly) will this help domain authority?

If my domain authority is this low, how difficult is it to move it higher?

Before reaching out to these publications, should I create a blog post about these transactions on my website?

Any suggestions as to how I can improve domain authority? My URL is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com.

I should add that my SEO firm had about 30 toxic links removed and filed a disavow for about another 80 links. MOZ is only showing about 25 domains linking to our site. I suspect not enough to get us to rank.

Thanks, Alan

Hi Dennis:

The pages that display these search results are set to no-index, no-follow. They do not get indexed by Google in search results, just somehow register as about 200 links in internal links in Google Webmaster Tools.

How would I get these removed as links if they are no getting indexed by Google as pages? If I did get them removed is there a way of getting these links from being re-indexed?

I have attached an image of what these internal links look like in Google Webmaster Tools.

Thanks, Alan

EjzuzEK

I see your point. However, It would be useful to see what potential customers are seeking even if we don't reach out to them directly as that could be sensitive. I

But I do wonder is some sort of plugin exists to capture this information.

Thanks, Alan

Greeting MOZ Community:

Our site is hosted on a virtual private server. Apparently there are dozens of other web sites hosted on the same server. The performance is usually pretty fast, with the site downloading in 1-3 seconds. However, a few times per month, the performance slows down, to say 5-6 seconds. Please see the attached image.

I suspect this may have something to do with the other web sites on the server.

Currently we pay about $60/month. A dedicated server would cost about $120/month. Would site performance be more consistent on a dedicated server? Could we enjoy potential SEO benefits by having our own server, i.e. could we rank slightly higher if the speed was more consistent and the performance slightly faster?

Thanks, Alan

6D7kK61

Greetings MOZ Community:

Visitors frequently start to enter contact information in the forms on our website, but then chicken out and don't hit the submit button. I noticed this watching the recordings of visitor web site visits using Mouse Flow.

Is there a Wordpress Plugin that would allow us to capture data entered in forms, where the visitor does not finally hit the "submit" button? Obviously this would be very, very valuable as this scenario occurs in one out of three or four instances.

Thanks!!!
Alan

Greetings MOZ Community:

When visitors enter real estate search parameters in our commercial real estate web site, the parameters are somehow getting indexed as internal links in Google Webmaster Tools. About half are 700 internal links are derived from these dynamic URLs.

It seems to me that these dynamic alphanumeric URL links would dilute the value of the remaining static links.

Are the dynamic URLs a major issue? Are they high priority to remove?

The dynamic URLs look like this:

/listings/search?fsrepw-search-neighborhood%5B%5D=m_0&fsrepw-search-sq-ft%5B%5D=1&fsrepw-search-price-range%5B%5D=4&fsrepw-search-type-of-space%5B%5D=0&fsrepw-search-lease-type=1

These URLs do not show up when a  SITE: URL search is done on Google!

Hi Moosa:

Actually we were hit by Penguin in April 2012, and then by Panda 4.0 (for thin content) in late May of this year.

Regarding the Penguin issue, we identified bad links, requested removal and filed a disavow with Google listing the domains that refused to remove links. We are also re-writing as much content as possible. In terms of creating links, I have been instructed that the best way to do so is to create high quality onsite content that others will link to. So I am hoping we are on the right track.

But getting back to my original question, I don't know why the home page has been punished disproportionately.

Thanks, Alan

Interesting question.

The "Home" was removed from the top menu in June. Now the logo on the upper left of the header on every page still links to the home page. But is this sufficient? Did we kill valuable links by removing the "Home" item in the top menu?

The body text in the hundreds of pages does not have may links. Would it be useful to add text links on those pages back to the home page?

Thanks, Alan

Thanks, Searchbuzz!!!

That is interesting!!

We have focused updating the user interface and have done so about 6 times this year. As a result we have reduced the amount of new content (blog posts, updates of static pages).

So if I now focus on upgrading and adding content, this should result in a bounce up??

Thanks,
Alan

Hi SilverDoor:

Thanks for your feedback!!

In April an SEO firm requested removal of links from 120 low quality domains. Some voluntarily removed links and we filed a disavow with Google for the rest.

We have not looked at internal link structure. In fact the site does not use many text links.

Would it make sense to create text links when relevant from other URLs and point them to home page?

Content on the home page could be improved and I intend to rewrite it.

In your experience, what is the normal percentage of new organic inquiries that the home page should generate? 5%, 10%??? That will at least provide some guideline on what is normal.

Thanks,

Alan

Greetings MOZ Community:

My firm operates www.nyc-officespace-leader.com, a commercial real estate brokerage in New York City.

Prior to the first Penguin update in April 2012, our home page used to receive about 10% or 600 of total organic visits. After the first Penguin was launched by Google organic traffic to the home dropped to maybe 5% or 200 visits per month.

Since May of this year, it appears we have been penalized by Penguin 4.0 and are attempting to recover. Now our home page only generates about 140 organic visits per month, or less than 4% of organic traffic.

Our home enjoyed  good conversion rate, so this drop in traffic is a real loss.

Does this very low level of traffic to the home page indicate something abnormal? Dropping from 10% to less than 4% is a major decline. Should we take specific steps regarding the home page like enhancing the content?

Thanks, Alan

Hi Daniel:

You are correct other factors are probably contributing to the drop. The 175 extra URLs are  a contributing factor.  Our site contains 310 property listing pages of which 250 have a few sentences. It appears we were penalized by Panda 4.0 in May, which apparently targets thin content.

To reverse the penalty we intend to take the following steps:

-Set all listing pages with thin content pages to "No-Index, Follow"
-Somehow remove the 175 URLs that have magically appeared in June. Either set as "no-index, follow", "no-index, no-follow" canonicalize or somehow delete use robot text. My concern is that these 175 extra URLs could be construed as thin content and could be aggravating the Panda penalty.
-Enhance content on 30-40 critical pages.

Does this seem reasonable?

Thanks, Alan

It appears that Google Webmaster Tools is listing about 120 blog archives URLs in Google Index>Index Status that should not be listed. Our site map contains 650 pages, but Google shows 860.

Pages like:

<colgroup><col width="464"></colgroup>
| http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/category/manhattan-office-space |

With Titles Like:

<colgroup><col width="454"></colgroup>
| Manhattan Office Space Archives - Metro Manhattan Office Space |

Are listed when in the Rogerbot crawl report for the site.

How can we remove such pages from Google Webmaster Tools, Index Status? Our site map shows about 650 pages, yet Google show these extra pages. We would prefer that they not be indexed.

Note that these pages do not appear when we run  a site:www.nyc-officespace-leader.com search.

The site has suffered a drop in ranking since May and we feel it prudent to keep Google from indexing useless URLs. Before May 650 pages showed on the Webmaster Tools Index status, and suddenly in early June when we upgraded the site the index grew by about 175 pages. I suspect the 120 blog archives URLs may have something to do with it. How can we get them removed?

Can we set them to "No-Index", or should the robot text be used to remove them? Or can some type of removal request be made to Google?

My developers have been struggling with this issue since early June. The bloat on the site is about 175 URLs not on the site map. Is there any go to authority on this issue (it is apparently rather complicated) that can provide a definitive answer?

Thanks!!
Alan

Hi Don:

This is most helpful, thanks!!! I will have my developers remove this :2082 page as soon as possible.

My site does not use an SSL certificate that I know of. Should it be? No transactions are processed on the site.

Would it be an SEO plus to incorporate an SSL certificate?

Thanks, Alan