Background
Guru.com is a freelancing website offering jobs to various freelancers. Although the design and layout of the website is good but still it’s not performing well in SERPs in comparison to the competitors like Upwork, PeoplePerHour, Freelancer etc.
I have gone through 06 different keywords and 3 different competitors and based on that I have prepared my recommendations. This is completely a manual SEO analysis and it’s majorly based on the keywords and competitors.
Keywords
SEO Jobs
App Development Jobs
App Development Projects
PHP Developers
Data Entry Services
3D Designers
Competitors
UpWork.com
Freelancer.com
PeoplePerHour.com
For each keyword, I have analyzed multiple competitors to develop some general conclusions about what it will take from a SEO perspective to gain organic strength against the competitors.
Competitive Analysis
I analyzed 06 targeted keywords for Guru.com. As we can see that Guru.com has an average authority score even though they are ranking on page 1 for some of these keywords.
I see enough strength that isn’t being leveraged. As per my analysis, I think that Guru.com site should respond quickly to an organic SEO infusion (High Quality, In-Depth content and Backlink Strategy).
I see opportunities to increase the depth of content. Currently, the average page one word depth is ~2000 words. For Guru.com to compete for this bundle of search results, I recommend adding the high quality, in-depth and intent targeted content of ~1300 to ~1600 words.
Of course word count is only a single element in a content strategy but it’s also the most quantifiable in an effort to understand the challenge of getting to page one.
Visual Page Comparison
Search Query – SEO Freelancers
2nd Position Ranking Page URL – https://www.upwork.com/hire/seo-experts/
Content Type: BTF Content
Word Count – 1693 Words
Page Authority Score – 59
Backlinks – 109
5th Position Ranking Page URL – https://www.freelancer.com/hire/seo/
Content Type: BTF Content
Word Count – 580 Words
Page Authority Score – 34
Backlinks – 40
8th Position Ranking Page URL – https://www.guru.com/d/freelancers/skill/seo/
Content Type: None
Word Count – None
Page Authority Score – 0
Backlinks – 2
SEO Analysis Result
As we can see the stats above, our prospect’s ranking page is not up to the mark in comparison to the competitors pages authority, backlinks and content.
My recommendation for Guru.com is to add the ATF/BTF content on most of the targeted pages and focus on creating the quality backlinks. Both the things are going to improve the page authority, user engagement, ranking, traffic and conversion.
Guru.com can also introduce a section called “How to Guide” at the bottom of every targeted page, which they would like to rank on the targeted keywords. This “How to Guide” section should have in-depth content about the theme of the page, explaining the details, benefits, requirements, experience etc.
Guru.com could also experience the benefits of “Google Answer Box”, if it has the “How to Guide” section on the targeted pages.
Other Scenarios
Scenario 1
While the page https://www.guru.com/d/freelancers/skill/seo/ is ranking #8; but if Guru.com actually wants to rank the new landing page https://www.guru.com/m/hire/freelancers/search-engine-optimization-(seo)/ which also has a lot of content on it. So how do we get this page to rank?
Solution
My recommendations for the Page A https://www.guru.com/m/hire/freelancers/search-engine-optimization-(seo)/ to replace and rank better in comparison to current ranking Page B https://www.guru.com/d/freelancers/skill/seo/ which is canonicalized with the page https://www.guru.com/d/freelancers/skill/search-engine-optimization-(seo)/.
Let’s 1st compare both the Pages A Vs B
Page B is a search page and Guru.com might be facing website’s structural limitations to add the additional content on the search pages. Just a thought. It’s an old search page and has some backlinks and authority. Similar search pages are:
https://www.guru.com/d/freelancers/skill/search-engine-optimization/
https://www.guru.com/d/freelancers/skill/seo—digital-marketing/
https://www.guru.com/d/freelancers/skill/seo-expert/
https://www.guru.com/d/freelancers/skill/seo-freelancer/ etc.
Whereas Page A is a custom page designed specifically to target SEO freelancers. It’s a new page and doesn’t have much visibility due to lack of promotion.
Now coming to the query, how to rank Page A and Replace Page B in Google SERP. Below are my recommendations:
Improve the internal linking of Page A
- Link Page A from the Home Page
- Link Page A from Freelancer Skills Directory Page.
- Link Page A from the blog posts – Write and Publish blog posts related to SEO services and link the Page A from those blog posts as a reference. It will help to improve the internal linking of Page A.
Fix the onpage issues
- 301 Redirect issue: Logo of the site is having a redirect link from https://www.guru.com/index.aspx?Ref=login.aspx to https://www.guru.com/?Ref=login.aspx. I would recommend using https://www.guru.com/?Ref=login.aspx in the logo as a link in place of redirection.
- Two pages https://www.guru.com/m/hire/freelancers/on-page-seo/ and https://www.guru.com/m/hire/freelancers/off-page-seo/ are linked with a 301 redirect. Replace the links with the redirected pages.
- 404 Link issue: Page A has a 404 link https://www.guru.com/d/freelancers/skill/ on a CTA button. Replace it with the right link.
- Keyword Research and Infusion: Redo the keyword research and based on the final targeted keywords, modify the meta title and description. Also, use the targeted keywords in the available content copy.
Speed Up the Page A
The search engines like Google are very much focused on the page speed as it improves the user experience. We need to fix a few speed issues to improve the performance. Most details could be explored here.
Implement Schema Markup
Define the page property with the help of schema markup like name, provider, additionalType, serviceType, areaServed, serviceOutput, description, url, image, logo, offers etc.
SEO Offpage & Social Activities
- Consider sharing the page on different social media platforms.
- Use the offpage techniques like Guest Blogging, Forum Discussion, Q&A Participation, Infographics, Social Bookmarking, Article and Press Release submission etc to improve the page authority.
I am sure, if we will do the above right, we can surely rank Page A at a higher position in Google SERP.
Notes
- We can’t redirect (301) the search pages to the custom page because we need both the pages. Else it was quite easy to replace 🙂
- The other thing, which is important to consider that we can’t replace all the search pages in SERPs with just one custom designed page. And we can’t create different custom pages on a similar page theme as well, as it’s going to create the duplicate pages problem.
- So, once we will start optimizing and promoting Page A, it’s going to replace only the search pages for the queries which we will target and promote for Page A.
Another thing to consider, although it’s not a part of the query 🙂
After visiting the Guru.com site, I get to see that on their social profiles, they are not using the constant site link, which should be https://www.guru.com/. Which is not good from a branding prospective.
When we talk about BRAND, few things should be constant like:
Company Logo
Company Name Pattern
Company Website URL Pattern
Social Profile and Cover Images
Social Profile’s Bio
Email Signature Pattern etc.
Scenario 2
If Guru.com will create thousands of custom skill pages and would like to replace the search pages with new custom skill pages then what’s the best way to rank thousands of custom skill pages quickly?
Solution
Need too much man power efforts to accomplish the following:
- Improve your on-site SEO.
- Keyword research, targeting & placement based on the page.
- Technical pain points analysis and fixing.
- Improve internal linking and site structure.
- High quality content writing & placement based on the targeted keywords.
- Build backlinks to your site.
- Share pages on social media.
- Track and monitor your results.
Quick way to improve ranking with less efforts are required the following:
- Improve CTR
- Create interesting, clickable, easy to read meta titles and descriptions.
- Add schema markup elements to improve your search listing.
- Make urls descriptive.
- Improve page speed.
- Introduce User Generated Content
- Launch a contest for the users and ask them a few questions. Publish the best one in the site pages and reward them.
- Run the contest once in a week.
- Introduce website pages as power pages
Have a Control Group For Testing
Control group – this group will only have live pages and didn’t leverage any promotional or SEO tactics. Having a control group allows us to compare how specific tactics affect rankings.
Thanks
D. K. Tripathi
SEO and Digital Marketing Specialist
Dharam
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