Since putting the new site live about six days ago, we seem to have lost our favour with Google. Is there anything obvious that killing our Google love?
Thank you for any help.
Check to see if there’s anything you didn’t transfer over to the new site, or maybe you changed your keywords or didn’t do the same SEO as was on the old site. For sure nothing in BSS’s site would do anything to hurt your Google status. I’m guessing something isn’t the same as before for SEO, also be sure to re-upload your sitemap for the new site too.
Your old site had pages that had been indexed by Google that now result in 404 page errors. This is certainly part of the problem. Example…
https://www.guttergeeks.co.nz/how-we-quote-for-gutter-cleaning.php
https://www.guttergeeks.co.nz/faq.php
You should use Google’s search console to remove these non-existent URLs and re-submit all your current URLs, along with an updated site map.
Looking over your old website on archive.org, it appears your old site had quite a bit more content. You had more text, many photos, a video, quite a few quotes, an about us page with more text, plus links to your external reviews. In the process of modernizing and streamlining your site, you’ve removed a great deal of content, and in SEO, content is king.
You’re still missing canonical tags on your pages. You also have only one backlink.
Additionally, there are a few minor errors when I checked the site in Lighthouse (although they are probably not egregious enough to be giving you a big SEO hit.)
What may also be hurting your search are your keywords. Your highest density long-tail keywords are relatively meaningless, and not things people would search for. And even they aren’t showing up in your title, description and heading tags.
The most prominent keywords that people would search for should appear in your page title, your page description, your headings (especially H1) and your body copy. As you can see, your prominent keywords are words like “quote”, “request”, “email” and your phone number. People looking to have their gutters cleaned aren’t going to type these words into Google. They’re going to type in things like, “gutter cleaning near me” or “spouting cleaning”, or “gutter cleaners in Auckland” etc…
2 word phrases…
| Keyword | Found in | Repeats | Density | Prominence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| a quote | 8 | 2.46% | 72.68% | |
| request a | 6 | 1.84% | 72.07% | |
| north shore | TD | 5 | 1.54% | 65.07% |
| info guttergeeks.co.nz | 5 | 1.54% | 69.68% | |
| email info | 5 | 1.54% | 69.83% |
3 word phrases…
| Keyword | Found in | Repeats | Density | Prominence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| request a quote | 6 | 2.76% | 71.92% | |
| email info guttergeeks.co.nz | 5 | 2.30% | 69.68% | |
| or email info | 4 | 1.84% | 63.02% | |
| 027-333-5444 or email | 4 | 1.84% | 63.17% | |
| phone 027-333-5444 or | 4 | 1.84% | 63.33% |
4 word phrases…
| Keyword | Found in | Repeats | Density | Prominence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| or email info guttergeeks.co.nz | 4 | 2.46% | 62.86% | |
| 027-333-5444 or email info | 4 | 2.46% | 63.02% | |
| phone 027-333-5444 or email | 4 | 2.46% | 63.17% | |
| or phone 027-333-5444 or | 4 | 2.46% | 63.33% | |
| quote or phone 027-333-5444 | 4 | 2.46% | 63.48% | |
| a quote or phone | 4 | 2.46% | 63.63% | |
| request a quote or | 4 | 2.46% | 63.79% |
In building a website, you have to balance the design, performance and marketing messages with the content and keywords. You need to keep the SEO ranking factors in mind from the get-go, weaving your keywords into the page structure so that Google sees your site as the answer to what people are searching for. You have to think about your website as the answer to a person’s problem. Put yourself in your client’s shoes. What questions would people with clogged gutters type into Google when they want to solve their problem? Then structure your website so it has the answer(s) to those questions.
I’m not an SEO expert. I don’t do SEO for a living, but over the years (mostly through trial and error), I’ve learned how to do my on-page SEO in such a way as to get most of my client’s sites to rank in the top 3 in their specific towns or regions.
Of course, on-page SEO is only one third of the equation. You also need to have robust social media development, and many backlinks with authority. But it starts with doing your on-page correctly.
There are some free (and many paid) tools you can use to analyze your site to find your SEO errors and correct them. Chrome’s Lighthouse is one. I use the SEOquake plug-in for Chrome, and Google’s Search Console is crucial for getting your site indexed properly by Google.
Hope this stuff helps you.
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A big thank you from me. I’ll follow up with all that today.