SEO Advice

Russinating

Russinating

Russinating

Soldato
Joined
27 Dec 2005
Posts
17,296
Location
Bristol
One of our companies does ok for SEO. We get a lot of our work through organic searches but it could be better, especially for less specific or national searches. I do it all myself and was hoping for someone to perhaps point out some elements I've missed or overlooked. Especially as I'm aware we may be ok now but we could get overtaken.

The domain is idoweddingfilms.co.uk and key search phrases are wedding video, wedding videographer/videography (which from Adwords I believe Google judges to be the same), and wedding films. And locally each with 'Bristol' appended (though about 90% of our work is outside of Bristol).

We rank highly when Bristol is there but very low/non existent when not. Any pointers appreciated!
 
How far outside of Bristol do you work?
I would be tempted to focus on including the bristol keyword because the county is a big place and i expect 90% of people who find your site without a location keyword are going to be outwith your operational area anyway.
Maybe include a few nearby places where you also work but i wouldn't put to much effort into a generic country-wide search.
 
Sorry, maybe my OP wasn't clear on that front. We're one of the UK's leading companies so we go all over (though generally within 3 hours of Bristol). Most of our work is in London and the home counties, with the rest split all over from Exeter to Leicester and Cardiff and everywhere in between. We also cover overseas and have shot in Cyprus, France and Austria.

Hence my displeasure in us ranking quite badly for anything without Bristol, apart from a few random ones like being #5 for 'best wedding videographer'.
 
Haha, I didnt actually look at the site before, I thought the URL was "I do wedding films" rather than "IDO wedding films" and got the impression of a one-man-band :p

SEO looks fairly good to me. You have all the right meta tags, titles, etc where they should be. The meta descriptions are a little too long i think?
Code: 
<meta name="description" content="We are award-winning wedding videographers based in Bristol and covering most of the UK. Offering high definition wedding videos, we provide contemporary and stylish wedding films that will last forever.">
I think google will truncate anything over 160 characters. What platform are you using to build the site? There's probably tools available to help you check that you have the correct info. I use Yoast SEO plugin for wordpress which shows a preview of what your page will look like in a search result which is really helpful.
I would also consider rewording that description - do people really search for "videographer"? Can you see what the search terms were that people used who come to your site from google? Maybe it is used.
I would want more focus on the 'high definition' and things like that which people will actually search for. Nobody is going to use the term "that will last forever" when searching. You dont want it to be just a list of keywords, but you dont want it to be full of 'meaningless' stuff either.


There also seems to be a lot switching between the terms "wedding video" and "wedding film".
You dont need your whole site to match both of these search terms, focus one page on each term.

Remember to log out of google or use an incognito window for checking your ranking, it will automatically rank local results higher so it may not be the same for other people (but dont panic, you show as #1 for "wedding video bristol" to me)
 
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Thanks for your two pence touch. Not quite a one-man band, two :p.

Noted on the descriptions. I just use Notepad++ so no fancy wizardry to check anything.

And yes, videographer/videography are the two main keywords really. Any directory would list our services in that category and that's the general term used to describe our service. "wedding video" is actually more relevant to the final product, akin to wedding photographer/wedding photos.

Noted on video/film. I should scrap film entirely really, it's mainly used for the more descriptive pieces rather than SEO, and of course to compliment our actual name.

And yep, I use incognito for checking everything. Though 'wedding video' shows top for me, potentially because my IP is local. Could you check https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wedding+video? And for future do you know of any reliable rank checkers? Every one I use seems to give a different result.
 
Russinating said:
Thanks for your two pence touch. Not quite a one-man band, two :p.

Noted on the descriptions. I just use Notepad++ so no fancy wizardry to check anything.

And yes, videographer/videography are the two main keywords really. Any directory would list our services in that category and that's the general term used to describe our service. "wedding video" is actually more relevant to the final product, akin to wedding photographer/wedding photos.

Noted on video/film. I should scrap film entirely really, it's mainly used for the more descriptive pieces rather than SEO, and of course to compliment our actual name.

And yep, I use incognito for checking everything. Though 'wedding video' shows top for me, potentially because my IP is local. Could you check https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wedding+video? And for future do you know of any reliable rank checkers? Every one I use seems to give a different result.
Click to expand...

Just checked that search for you and you're the 1st result on page 5 (Staffordshire based).

As for how to improve as 'touch' said, work on one term you aren't ranking well on (wedding video) make a post for this term, or a page like "why choose us for your wedding video" or "what makes a good wedding video" and try to get a few sites to link to you with the anchor text being "wedding video".

Good content and natural links from other sites is the only way really.

SEO is a pain in the ****

I work in an area that any search term we are associated with gets no traffic.

*EDIT*

Just seen you've got a separate url for the mobile site -> http://mobile.idoweddingfilms.co.uk/ look at putting together a responsive theme. Might not help your SEO much but it's well worth doing.
 
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Yeah I did trial a responsive site but it just didn't work very well for the content and in the end I opted for a subdomain. For example we have quite a lot of text on our home page which works on a desktop but it meant our video was quite a scroll down (or visa versa, it looked like it was just a video and no explanation of who we are).

Our other sites use responsive designs and they work much better.
 
Russinating said:
One of our companies does ok for SEO. We get a lot of our work through organic searches but it could be better, especially for less specific or national searches. I do it all myself and was hoping for someone to perhaps point out some elements I've missed or overlooked. Especially as I'm aware we may be ok now but we could get overtaken.

The domain is idoweddingfilms.co.uk and key search phrases are wedding video, wedding videographer/videography (which from Adwords I believe Google judges to be the same), and wedding films. And locally each with 'Bristol' appended (though about 90% of our work is outside of Bristol).

We rank highly when Bristol is there but very low/non existent when not. Any pointers appreciated!
Click to expand...

Instead of SEO, attempt to go viral with a YouTube video. Make a funny video about how badly weddings can go wrong, with a tagline something like "Even if your wedding doesn't go well, at least you'll have a great video".

Humour is critical. You need a variety of short funny clips, e.g. groom stranded somewhere and bride at altar, reception marquee blowing away, bride getting spattered in mud by passing car etc etc

Rgds
 
Russinating said:
One of our companies does ok for SEO. We get a lot of our work through organic searches but it could be better, especially for less specific or national searches. I do it all myself and was hoping for someone to perhaps point out some elements I've missed or overlooked. Especially as I'm aware we may be ok now but we could get overtaken.

The domain is idoweddingfilms.co.uk and key search phrases are wedding video, wedding videographer/videography (which from Adwords I believe Google judges to be the same), and wedding films. And locally each with 'Bristol' appended (though about 90% of our work is outside of Bristol).

We rank highly when Bristol is there but very low/non existent when not. Any pointers appreciated!
Click to expand...

If you're looking to go in to other areas it would be worth getting a local page. For example mydomain.com/areaname - with having wedding in your domain name and an area name Google will greatly appreciate this!

Also if you are considering Google AdWords as well it will greatly help your Quality Score.

A quick one from a blog I read often.

"Include City/ST in your title tag.
Include City/ST in your H1 heading.
Include City/ST in your content.
Include City/ST in your alt text on images.. Including City/ST information can really help boost local relevancy.
Include City/ST in your URL."

Hope this helps!
 
Russinating said:
Thanks for your two pence touch. Not quite a one-man band, two :p.

Noted on the descriptions. I just use Notepad++ so no fancy wizardry to check anything.

And yes, videographer/videography are the two main keywords really. Any directory would list our services in that category and that's the general term used to describe our service. "wedding video" is actually more relevant to the final product, akin to wedding photographer/wedding photos.

Noted on video/film. I should scrap film entirely really, it's mainly used for the more descriptive pieces rather than SEO, and of course to compliment our actual name.

And yep, I use incognito for checking everything. Though 'wedding video' shows top for me, potentially because my IP is local. Could you check https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wedding+video? And for future do you know of any reliable rank checkers? Every one I use seems to give a different result.
Click to expand...

You appear middle of page 3 for me.
 
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