Need Help: Trouble With Website

[BWrightTLM]

Hey all,

I have a client who I have been having the WORST time getting traffic and ranked for relevant keywords. I've tried so many things and have yet to see much progress after about 9 months.

Anything you notice right on the surface that I am doing wrong or missing? All advice is greatly appreciated!

Site is mgmcdallas.com

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Ben, thanks for posting.

Only have time for a quick peak and checked the 2 things I look at 1st that could cause a ranking penalty.

1) No dupes that I can find so that's good.

2) G+ L description could be a problem. In that short description the business name is repeated 4 times! That's excessive. Google already knows the name so should not keep repeating.

The word moving is repeated 9 times. That's a 6.5% keyword density which I believe can trip a filter. I know for sure that repeating city more than twice can and I believe excessive KW rep can too and is seen by the algo as spammy.

The description is not a ranking factor so stuffing keywords there does not help and can potentially hurt.

3) Another obvious problem to me is they are based in Dallas, but the site is optimized for Waxahachie TX. In the pack you'll typically only rank in the city your address is in so should be optimized for Dallas I would think BUT I realize that's going to be very competitive.

But if you search for: moving company waxahachie tx Google only shows a 2 pack because it's such a small area. And they are both located right in waxahachie tx

Sorry no time for a deep dive. Just a few observations.

Hopefully other pros will weigh in with more.

 

[Laustin1878]

Start here

Site looks nice, what theme is that? I only saw 3 inbound links to the site. Basically, the site has little authority. Earn some quality inbound links and I'm sure you'll see an improvement.

 

[BWrightTLM]

Thanks for the tips Linda and Laustin. I will definitely take into account your recommendations. I'll let you know how it fares.

Laustin, it's a custom built Wordpress theme we built. Thanks for the compliment.

 

[Laustin1878]

Very nice. Very clean and not overcrowded with info.

Start pumping out that content on the blog. Give Google a reason to come back to the website and more ways for visitors to find it.

 

[Joe Mink]

Hey Ben,
I second all that has been said by everyone here. I noticed that you have those location pages for Dallas, Highland Park and Waxahachie. I think you have the right idea there although perhaps a bit over optimized with regard to keyword density on some of your core service keywords.
If you haven't already take a look at Phil Rozek's 16 Ways to Create Unique ?Local? Content for Cities Where You Want to Rank | LocalVisibilitySystem.com and do a search here in the forum for creating these type of pages.

Best of luck!

Joe

 

[BWrightTLM]

Thanks again for the recommendations. I have implemented a few changes.

I realized something REALLYY weird with this site a couple weeks ago.

As you saw, the business has a Dallas, TX address and really only services the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area.

They recently started getting some of referral traffic from yelp.com/biz_redir. Weirdly, they've also been getting more sales calls and more salespeople filling out their contact form.

Take January for example, they had 164 sessions and 119 of those were from this yelp referral. They DON'T advertise with Yelp, or get traffic from Yelp anywhere in Texas. You can see from below screenshot that they are all coming from California.



I've had our SEO and developer look into and we can't figure out what's happening. Any thoughts?

 

[BWrightTLM]

Bump. Hoping to see if anyone saw my last reply on this post. Any ideas? We still have not figured out what is causing this.

 

[heckler]

Bump. Hoping to see if anyone saw my last reply on this post. Any ideas? We still have not figured out what is causing this.

What happens when you look at the platform (ex: Desktop, Tablet, Mobile) that those referrals from Yelp were on?

 

[BWrightTLM]

96% came from desktop. You can see screenshot attached.

 

[heckler]

I don't believe this is anything other than people simply clicking on the business URL on the Yelp page:

EDIT - just inspect the URL (your URL to the business) on your Yelp page. http://www.yelp.com/biz/mikes-gentle-moving-company-dallas-2

 

[BWrightTLM]

It simply just doesn't make sense to me though. I can understand that the traffic is someone clicking to their website from Yelp, BUT why is it all coming somewhere on the other side of the country? I have quite a few moving company clients and have never had this happen... especially for someone who doesn't advertise with Yelp.

These people that are clicking to the website from Yelp and are located in California are not people looking for movers.

 

[heckler]

How can you be sure? I mean, California is the top state in terms of people moving from X state to Texas.

?\_(ツ)_/?

Why are Californians moving to Texas?

 

[Linda Buquet]

I'll throw out a wacky example of something I've been seeing lately.

Spammy locksmith competitors are setting up fake locations with KW stuffed names and for the website they are listing a REAL locksmith's Yelp page. Does not make sense to me but some of them are ranking high.

However I'm sure that's not the case here because why would they use someone's yelp page from a different state?

Then there is this: Mikes Gentle Moving Company, Lancaster, 214-739-4637 - 1015 W Pleasant Run Rd 75146, California - MIKES GENTLE MOVING COMPANY, United States - US Business Directory Has them listed in Lancaster CA. Wonder if there are more citations like that out there that are wrong and that's causing part of the problem?

That same address comes up on another Yelp page with Dallas as the city:
Mikes Gentle Moving Company | Yelp

Do they have 2 locations in Dallas? Or is one an old dead address?

 

[BWrightTLM]

Wow. That is crazy to see Linda about the page in Lancaster, CA. I have no idea where they got that information. It's only a guess of mine that the client used to use a different service that spread their information at this 1015 W Pleasant Run Rd address all over the place. It's really weird that it's in California though.

They don't have 2 locations in Dallas. It looks like this Pleasant Run address on Yelp is an old one as well.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Here's an old closed G+ L page at that address too: https://plus.google.com/u/0/local/united states/s/(214) 739-4637

 

[Linda Buquet]

How can you be sure? I mean, California is the top state in terms of people moving from X state to Texas.

?\_(ツ)_/?

Why are Californians moving to Texas?

LOL Bryan! You crack me up!

 

[BWrightTLM]

WOW. I just found something really crazy. So I was looking in Google Analytics for this site and went to "Acquisition >> Social >> Landing Pages" and saw this data below.

I see this sunset-movers.com site so I look it up. It's an almost exact replica of our site. This is the yelp referral traffic that I was talking about. But, I am wondering how this is bringing people to our website and why are they just a bunch of sales people?

Could all the traffic on sunset-movers.com be showing up as yelp referral traffic for mgmcdallas.com?

How can I make them take down this site that they copied from us?

I see that the whois data is private but the site is registered and hosted at Godaddy.

Here is their yelp profile, too.

 

[BWrightTLM]

Someone basically copied all of our code (including analytics) and made themselves a site of their own.

 

[heckler]

Someone basically copied all of our code (including analytics) and made themselves a site of their own.

abuse@godaddy.com

Seems like a pretty classic black-hat affiliate marketing technique you've stumbled across. Are they using a 1:1 of your content as well? The little blurb from the business owner is definitely duplicated as it mentioned MGMC.

I called the number on the site, no introduction just an man with a thick Middle-Eastern accent asking where I'm trying to move. I said "Texas" and he gave me this number (because they only do local moves) 213-308-2255.