100's of Page 1 Rankings Already - How To Better Optimize The Home Page?

[Ryan77]

Hi.

I've recently taken over SEO and digital marketing for my new local client Emergency Plumbers on call 24/7 | Plumber.ca

They already have hundreds of first page rankings on Google and Bing which is great and I don't want to mess with that. Including top spot on page one in Google.ca for their primary service:

emergency plumbers toronto
emergency toronto plumbers
emergency toronto plumbing
emergency plumbing toronto

Yet, their home page is currently optimized in the Yoast metadata fields for 'Toronto plumbers' as is another landing page 'Toronto plumbers'.

The landing page Toronto Plumbers - 24/7 Emergency Plumbers (416) 433-1111 has far more page one rankings than the home page including all of the page one rankings mentioned above. I believe this is mostly due to better keyword targeting and more content. I've recently added local schema data to the Home page. And now I am considering how to better optimize the home page in order for it to gain more traffic while not messing with their current rankings otherwise.

The two keywords in consideration for the new focus of the Home page are 'Toronto plumbing' and 'Emergency Toronto plumbers'.

My thoughts are that adding the word 'emergency' to the currently optimized 'Toronto plumbers' is the easiest thing to do without having to alter text on the page and therefore possibly it's context from a search engine perspective. Also to add more content to substantiate this new keyword focus. Even though it is all semantically related. As it's already in the H1 tag.

Someone else believes this may be perceived as an overlapping between the two pages causing confusion for the search engines. And very well may be the case. Yet, in my opinion, this may already be the case because of the current metadata.

So if I may ask anyone else's opinion to help confirm my best course of action to ensure we keep the current rankings, while best optimizing the Home page for greater rankings that would be great.

Any other suggestions as to how to improve the site are appreciated. There is already a redesign in the works to get the site into a more modern, fluid, full-width style theme.

Thank you,
Ryan Arnfinson

 

[Ryan77]

To keep you posted. Today, I updated the Toronto Plumbers On Call 24/7 | Plumber.ca (416) 433.1111 home page for the new keyword focus: 'Toronto plumbing'. I substantiated this focus keyword change with about 600 words of new SEO content and updated the schema to Toronto plumbing from Toronto plumbers.

This was a challenging call SEO-wise so I can understand the lack of responses in the thread. Though I would like to let you know how everything works out so hopefully someone can learn from a similar situation in the future.

Thanks,
Ryan

 

[Eric Rohrback]

My question after reading your two posts is how you plan on differentiating the two pages, since they're both promoting something very similar - emergency plumbers in Toronto.

One thing I will note is the insanely spammy anchor text in the links pointing to the site. I recommend keeping a close eye on that. Without digging far in at all, I can see there are a good amount of gambling and pharm link anchors pointing to the site, so that doesn't look good. That's another thing you should look into a little more for this client.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hey Ryan,

I know these guys from the dozens of fake GMB listings they created a couple years ago. I believe all of them have now been removed. I don't know if it was a shady company they were working with prior but I thought I'd warn you that whatever tactics they were using weren't very white-hat. You might want to check for bad backlinks as well to make sure they don't get hit by Penguin (if it ever refreshes). I often find that companies that do one tactic are more likely to do the other as well.

I would avoid making major changes to the homepage if they're already ranking well. I have learned many times with SEO that you shouldn't fix what's not broken. Instead of changing the homepage I would look at adding more content and optimizing for long-tailed keywords that way.

Is this site a directory or is it an actual plumbing chain? It was very unclear when I tried to hire them to fix a plumbing issue years ago.

 

[Ryan77]

Hi, Eric.

I appreciate your response.

I've differentiated the two pages with a new contextual focus for the home page. It's all semantically similar though the 'Toronto plumbing' keyword gets 10x the local searches that 'emergency Toronto plumbing' does. The new H1 home page H1 tag includes 'Toronto Plumbing' as does the majority of the content focus for the rest of the page. While the Toronto landing page already ranks for 'emergency plumbers Toronto' so felt it was best not to touch this at all.

I've also noticed those links from a prior SEO effort which are unfortunate. At the moment I'm attempting to dilute them through link building efforts. I'll look into getting any disavowed, if possible, moving forward. In my analysis, none of them are toxic but certainly non-relevant nonetheless.

I welcome any further input you may have at all.

Thanks,
Ryan

 

[Eric Rohrback]

I disagree on the toxic links:



Unless those links have fallen off or have already been removed, that anchor cloud looks awful.

On a related note, what are you doing as far as link building for plumbers? That would be a great thread to start, since plumbing isn't exactly the most glamorous of industries lol. It would be great to hear what you're doing to put these guys on the right path.

 

[Ryan77]

Hi, Joy.

Thanks for your feedback.

Plumber.ca is most definitely a legitimate plumbing company with plumbers in many local areas. I've done my best recently to help make it clear that it is a service based company with the new content on the home page, and in a FAQ.

And such GMB listings are rampant in many local industries, I suppose because it's difficult for service businesses to have a presence outside their local region in GMB. As it happens, perhaps the biggest company in the Canadian plumbing industry does this and I am documenting their GMB somewhat out of curiosity to learn more about how they get away with it. They seem to have a mix of virtual, residential, and post office addresses.

As for the Home page SEO, I appreciate that though as I've mentioned it is the Toronto landing page which is currently ranking well not the home page, so after considering it all this new 'Toronto Plumbing' home page keyword focus was the least risk without messing with anything that is already working regarding the contextual, semantic, keyword focus adjustment of the home page.

Thank you,
Ryan

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hi, Joy.

Thanks for your feedback.

Plumber.ca is most definitely a legitimate plumbing company with plumbers in many local areas. I've done my best recently to help make it clear that it is a service based company with the new content on the home page, and in a FAQ.

And such GMB listings are rampant in many local industries, I suppose because it's difficult for service businesses to have a presence outside their local region in GMB. As it happens, perhaps the biggest company in the Canadian plumbing industry does this and I am documenting their GMB somewhat out of curiosity to learn more about how they get away with it. They seem to have a mix of virtual, residential, and post office addresses.

As for the Home page SEO, I appreciate that though as I've mentioned it is the Toronto landing page which is currently ranking well not the home page, so after considering it all this new 'Toronto Plumbing' home page keyword focus was the least risk without messing with anything that is already working regarding the contextual, semantic, keyword focus adjustment of the home page.

Thank you,
Ryan

Ryan,

Yeah I would definitely make that more apparent on the website. I remember seeing it and with no details about the company, no photos of any employees or offices, no awards etc. I just assumed it was a lead-gen site.

 

[Ryan77]

Hi, Eric.

I was referring to toxic backlinks from deceptive sites which don't appear to be the case though I certainly understand what you're saying. It doesn't look good.

So I've just attempted to contact the owner of one site with most of these links but there is no direct contact form. Nothing on Whois, and no direct link to social media profiles at all on this blog.

Any tips for ways to find the owner of sites with spammy links?

I'll gladly consider starting a thread in regards to our local plumbing SEO moving forward. I'm focused on results at the moment.

I appreciate your time and communication.

Thank you,
Ryan

 

[Local Web Strategies]

Personally, I would rather that my city/service pages rank better than my homepage. On my local sites, I make sure to have a contact form and phone number visible on all pages so no matter how they arrive at the site, there is still a way to capture the lead.

I wouldn't worry too much about the homepage not ranking and keep the focus on the city/service pages. Just my opinion.

 

[Ryan77]

Hi.

I respect your opinion. This certainly makes good sense and is currently the case. The local phone numbers are prominent on each local page, however, I've been told that because more than 95% of prospects contacting the company are for emergency situations not to worry about the contact form for lead generation purposes for this particular trade. Thanks for your feedback.

Take care,
Ryan

 

[Local Web Strategies]

Absolutely, whatever make the most sense for the client's needs! Either way, as long as those pages are optimized to rank for their keywords, I'd say the homepage is fine.