Some Advice Please

[fredd66]

Hello All at BHW,

First off apologies for the intrusion on this great forum, 6 months ago I knew nothing about web development and seo. Truth is I'm an ex uber driver that is trying to go his own way.

I would like some advice in regards to seo, as things are not going very well at all.

I built a site for my small business, however I think my site is sandboxed, it is indexed but not ranking for any keywords at all, Ahrefs tells me it is an easy keyword.

I have an exact match domain name, key word is actually three different words, if I type "thisismykeyword" in to google, my site is on the first page, if I type "this is my keyword" my site is no where to be seen.

I am unsure if this is due to not having enough backlinks with anchor text written as "this is my keyword" or if there is an algorithmic penalty, there are no manual penalties.

The first thing I did is submit my site to local online newspaper business directories for local seo, but I now think this was a mistake. I also made lots of social media profiles etc, and a youtube video as well.

Using Ahrefs to checkout the competition, my competitors have very few referring domains and backlinks, and their websites are actually awful, its very frustrating they are on the first page.

Presently I have spent hundreds on Google Ads, for very little return and this cant go on, I have lots clicks but no sales, I will have to turn the ads off soon, but then I will have zero traffic to my site as Google are not showing my site at all. The site has been live for around two months, at first it did show on page 13 (which is useless) for its keyword, but now nothing.

However on other search engines, it shows on page 2 on Bing, and first page on Duck Duck Go and Yandex, but nobody uses these search engines.

However I dont want to give up just yet, so I would really appreciate some advice from you guys here, as I beleive I may still have some options and be able to salvage something.

Whilst using Ahrefs, I came across a domain that is parked at sedo, it expired 3 weeks ago and for some reason its twice as expensive on go daddy, but the niche (seems it a micro niche) is the exact same, has some decent back links, and the anchor text is the exact same as my keyword.

So my options would be, hopefully win the auction, then
a) build a new site on this domain
b) restore from wayback and then link it to my site with some keywords
c) rebuild it then 301 it
d) 301 from registrar

This would be to just get it showing in serps again.

I also found some fully expired domains, that are not indexed any more, none of them have a high DA but some of the links are still active, like before the niche is the same and anchor text is an exact match, a possible option would be to buy them, recreate from wayback and then 301 them, or build wordpress blogs on them with a few links pointing to my money site with the my keyword as anchor text. In effect make them a mini pbn.

There is also a 3rd domain that is not in the same niche, anchor text does not match but has some good links and a decent DA, would it be wise to re purpose this domain ?

Any and all advice would be appreciated, sorry for the long post.

 

[SirLouen]

I have lots clicks but no sales,

This is a very bad signal. First of all you should understand the basics of CPA. A lot of people around in this forum, recommend using Adwords as an "intent" accelerator, which could be pretty useful, because if, for example, for certain keyword, you are getting enough traffic, but no conversion, this could be, a big bounce rate, that will highly penalty your site over the time in organic ranks

So first of all, spend some time thinking if your site matches adequately the search intent behind that keyword. Ask some people around you: "if you search for -my-key-words- and see my site, will you go back, or would you stay (and/or) buy?"

Another "trick": put your keyword in the search, and see what type of results are there. See if they are similar to yours or not. If not, then you are not targeting the adequate keyword.

 

[fredd66]

This is a very bad signal. First of all you should understand the basics of CPA. A lot of people around in this forum, recommend using Adwords as an "intent" accelerator, which could be pretty useful, because if, for example, for certain keyword, you are getting enough traffic, but no conversion, this could be, a big bounce rate, that will highly penalty your site over the time in organic ranks

So first of all, spend some time thinking if your site matches adequately the search intent behind that keyword. Ask some people around you: "if you search for -my-key-words- and see my site, will you go back, or would you stay (and/or) buy?"

Another "trick": put your keyword in the search, and see what type of results are there. See if they are similar to yours or not. If not, then you are not targeting the adequate keyword.

Thank you very much for reply, the keyword for the ads works as expected, im selling a service rather than a product, it could be people just want the cheapest, everybody I've asked liked my site saying it looks much more professional than my competitors, I can honestly say some of the sites ranking higher are absolutely awful (not being biased).

My site just wont show up for keywords with out the ad, I have made sure not to stuff the keywords every where etc, but still no luck.

 

[SirLouen]

it could be people just want the cheapest

Conversion is not about looks. It's about satisfying the intent (or persuading to satisfy a new intent, which only reserved for top marketing pros)

Imagine this:
I want to buy an online speech therapist service because I want to learn to speak the right way.
So I go to google and search "speech therapists online" and I see your ad, because you are a speech therapist

You have a great site, good looking, you explain your services, and you have a button for conversion [ want more info? ]

I'm looking for a speech therapist and you site is highly satisfying, why will I not want more info? Technically your conversion rate should be 100%. That simple. 100% of the people that enter your site, should click on want more info.

Maybe you can say: I put the price before the conversion button, and people run away because it's too expensive.
Ok, try lowering down the price, to see if it's the price. Create a A/B landing page. In one you offer the service for $30/hour and in the other for $50/hour and you see which converts better

Do you see how you should be reasoning about this topic?

If you cannot lower down the price to do a A/B testing, then you should think that your service is not worthy. Sometimes a lot of people even sell without profits, just to check this. Better the sooner than the later.

Also, believe it or not, a great website is not as great as you think. Sometimes people feel confused to understand if the site adequately satisfy the intent.

So if you have this problem, put yourself in the worst scenario. Think that everything is full shit, and you have to change a lot of things by thoroughly testing. Or maybe your keywords are not the best. You have to truly think, if in case a user is typing them, your service is clearly what they are looking for.

It doesn't make sense to target "speech therapy" if you offer "online speech therapy services". Because "speech therapy" is a broad topic, where users, might be looking 80% for information about this. So just by targeting that keyword, you should assume that 4 out of 5 users will be clicking and bouncing back straight away without reading a full sentence of your site.

Also you have to take into consideration that for example if the CPC of "speech therapy" is $0.5 and the CPC of "speech therapists online" is $4 then maybe you should try "speech therapy" despite of having a lower conversion rate, because it's 8 times cheaper which means, you have a margin of a 16% bounce rate before equating both keywords.

As I said, CPA is a world by itself. I don't think I could put you all the possible scenarios for such a broad question, but I hope you find some insights to start working your way through.