Why is the Google ranking awful?

Danger781

Hey all,

A couple of months ago I put together this website for my uncles tarmacadam business: http://twomeytarmac.ie/

It was done using a WordPress theme, with the assistance of the Yoast SEO plugin. I tried to focus my SEO for the keywords "tarmacadam contractor cork", but when I search for this in Google they appear on page 3. This doesn't make any sense to me as there is some fairly irrelevant results appearing on page 1 and 2.

I was thinking it may be down to simply not having enough text on the page but I don't know what else to add without adding text for the sake of adding text.

Can anyone explain what I'm doing wrong?

Edit: I might add when I first registered the domain name it was a self-coded, self-designed website which looked awful. I then decided to install WordPress for ease of management and better SEO. It has not helped as we are on the same position in Google.

Talisman

From a speed perspective it's shockingly slow. WebPagetest reports it as taking over 6 seconds.

Have you used Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools?

Add the business to Google Maps to improve local SEO.

The website is an island, I had a quick look and didn't see a single external link.

Sleeper12

Keywords are important. A keyword in the title page is a big help. Google look at lots of different things. Backlinks from quality sites are important & the link on this page will help.

zig

There are 100s of reasons why your ranking is bad and it'll take quite a bit of learning , changing, adjusting to start making improvements. Its worth noting that there are people out there who charge 100s and often 1000s a month to improve rankings.

But here are some things you can have a think about yourself (I havent looked at your site btw so apologies if you've already covered some of these)

1. Are Meta titles and descriptions there?
2. Are you pushing traffic back to the site by other means? (e.g. social media, promos etc)
3. Is your site mobile friendly?
4. Is it fast?
5. How old is the domain? Google likes older domains.
6. Are you getting your message across clearly and successfully getting people to where you want them on the site? E.g. if you have many people landing on the homepage and then leaving then Google sees this as having a high bounce rate.
7. 7. Have you a nice balance of keywords throughout the site?
8. Have you internal links running through the site?
9. Have you a blog? With Call to actions within the blog?
10. Most importantly, how long have you been waiting, your rankings don't improve overnight , it can takes weeks or months. Its a slow process of constantly trying to knock off the people above you by firstly trying to see what theyre doing, but then you do it better.
11. Have you considered using adwords? This can often help bump traffic and as a result your rankings should improve.

In fairness to Google, they may have secret algorithms and there may be some tricks that people "in the know" could do but they are not that mysterious overall. What Google wants to see that you are delivering nicely exactly what people are looking for. And delivering consistently with search terms, and it wants to see that you're looking after your site, that its fast, up to date, mobile friendly etc.

BrokenArrows

Danger781 wrote: »

Hey all,

A couple of months ago I put together this website for my uncles tarmacadam business: http://twomeytarmac.ie/

It was done using a WordPress theme, with the assistance of the Yoast SEO plugin. I tried to focus my SEO for the keywords "tarmacadam contractor cork", but when I search for this in Google they appear on page 3. This doesn't make any sense to me as there is some fairly irrelevant results appearing on page 1 and 2.

I was thinking it may be down to simply not having enough text on the page but I don't know what else to add without adding text for the sake of adding text.

Can anyone explain what I'm doing wrong?

Edit: I might add when I first registered the domain name it was a self-coded, self-designed website which looked awful. I then decided to install WordPress for ease of management and better SEO. It has not helped as we are on the same position in Google.

You're up to page 2 already after this post!

One of the big things is having links to your site from other quality sites. That doesn't mean spamming other places with your URL.

If you type Twomey Tarmac into Google you have it advertised in many places. Try and get the URL added to these.

daymobrew

I would like some more photos on the home page. A hero image would be nice.

A page on "how we work" (ie the process of site survey, digging out, lay hardcore etc) to explain the job to the lay person might keep people on your site longer and give you more content to do SEO work with.


Quick question: Is the "your" a typo? Should it be "you" (it reads okay both ways)

Best of all, since we are a local tarmacadam contractor we can offer competitive pricing to ensure your value for money!

With reference to it being slow, it looks like you disabled the image slider and featured sections on the home page. When the image slider is disabled the theme code still loads the slider JS files.
I've submitted a support request, with patch, to the theme developer:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/do-not-load-slider-js-unless-slider-enabled?replies=1#post-8622665

Aswerty

daymobrew wrote: »

I would like some more photos on the home page. A hero image would be nice.

While nothing to do with SEO, I have to agree. The home page looks like an about page instead of a landing page without a nice leading image.

Other than that I think other posters have summed up the SEO side of things pretty well.

EIREHotspur

Why are websites rankings so bad in Google when they make loads of money from Google Adwords??

Hmmmmmmm......

Sleeper12

EIREHotspur wrote:

Why are websites rankings so bad in Google when they make loads of money from Google Adwords??

Clicks from ad words doesn't improve your rankings. Visits from ad words are ignored when they work out your rankings. It's a good thing too. Otherwise a large company can just buy their way to number one

Danger781

Hey all, forgot completely about this thread apologies

I'm reading through your suggestions now, much appreciated. As one of the posters above said, the site is up to page 2 now after this boards post. Mad, I didn't realise it would have such an effect. I'm at work so can't log into WordPress at the moment but I'll take a look over the coming days.

Once again, much appreciated!

Laynecapital

In according to me the favorite SEO strategies for ranking on top of Google are:-

1. Select the most relevant Keywords
2. Look what competitors are doing
3. Create a quality content that is linkable and sharable
4. Optimize title and met tags
5. Optimize headings and subheadings
6. Forum Posting
7. Link Building
8. Article Submission
9. Blog Posting
10. Press Release etc.