SEO my RW8 Project: Any do this for $?

Does anyone offer a service where they will take a RW8 project file for an existing project file and go through and SEO the poopoo out of it?

Following out of interest. That said in my experience and understanding good SEO is often really about good content that matches that of what your audience seeks. So imho some more information would be needed. Perhaps share a link? More information on who your hoping finds your site etc. I am far from an expert but I have spent enough time wading the waters of SEO to believe that effective, and evolving, content is king. There are certainly some general rules one should follow but those are pretty easily checked off with some effort. I would caution you on anyone, or any service, that promises a magical SEO pill…getting content that aligns with the audience is the critical part (regardless of if it’s generated in RW8, Wordpress, or some bootstrap editor). I look forward to some input from others and hope to learn a bit.

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I’m looking for someone to do it the correct way.

www.Boxculvert.com

When someone searches for box culvert, I want to be at the top of the list.

Tagging a couple of people that I know might be able to help…

@LaPan @ryanbsmith @zeebe

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I’d second what @danhmill says 100 per cent, and I’d make every effort to ensure that the copy on the site is written for people, not search engines.

It’s quite old now and things have moved on, but I’ve always been struck by this piece, which includes some great advice.

“Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.”

http://powazek.com/posts/2090

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Excellent article. Thanks for sharing!

I realize I wasn’t very clear. I have written the content (for people). I want someone to go through and do the H1/H3, meta data stuff, alt image, etc. and hand me a properly done SEO project file. I am not looking for a content writer.

I own BoxCulvert.com but yet show up on the third page of google when I do a search for “box culvert”. I want to do everything possible (correctly and ethically) to improve that rank.

Understood. As part of the process though, I’d take another swing at that front page. To me it looks like there’s an awful lot of ‘box culvert’ in there that’s stopping the text from flowing. Just my opinion.

Rob

@aplnub as you may know your site shows up as the third listing when one searches for “box culvert installation” and around sixth when one searches for “box culvert information” and rather far (pages deep) when one searches for “box culvert costs.” I only point that out because I suspect that your site has little information on specific pricing or costs of box culverts, and quite a bit of info on the former search terms. I of course know nothing of your audience, box culverts, or what audience (search terms) you’re trying to drive to your site, but good rankings relevant to two initial terms above :+1: So that’s a big plus IMHO.

That said if your goal is to appear higher when only the term “Box Culvert” is searched you’ll also likely have to address some of your site structure and content (to some degree). It seems that some pretty big companies occupy that top slot when box culvert is searched. Google’s algorithms are complex and take many factors into account. The goal of the algorithm is to put the most accurate results in front of the user. Some additional efforts may be needed as well. It’s my understanding that things like a social media presence (especially those that Google has an interest in) and links to said platforms play an important role. Videos linked to YouTube channels etc., can also drive one up the rankings. Additionally, in your industry I suspect that links to other industry sites would yield credibility. I’m sure you get the point. Have a look at the sites that do appear in that coveted top slot, and when you find someone to do the work you may wish to the time to tweak some elements to more closely mirror those sites. Hope that helps and best of luck.

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One other bit that @robbeattie alluded to. The web crawlers are smart enough to know that you have big blocks of very detailed information. For lack of a better term long blocks of text that are not broken up or organized into manageable blocks for those seeking information. This may be what you have in mind by adding heads, sub-heads (and the associated tags). If so I think that would be a good idea. The crawlers will rank a site that is easier for the reader to understand higher than one that is not. Again best of luck.

Thanks @danhmill. This site is about box culvert in general and delivers all relevant information regarding the design, manufacture, uses, and installation of box culvert. I do have YouTube videos to link to and I have linked to several outside sites, though I could do a bit better in this regard.

There are big companies in front of me when searching “Box Culvert”. I knew I was doing well in other search terms such as you listed. I can work on the content to include more photos, video, pricing, and more and will do that over the coming weeks. The feedback from this post has pushed me that direction and I thank everyone for that.

I would like to have someone and go through the project file and do a SEO markup in RapidWeaver. I don’t expect miracles, but it would save me time, ensure it was done properly, and teach me how to approach other sites I maintain.

Here’s a few things I’d do for starters:

  1. Think of key phrases and words that, if used in search, would lead people to stumble across your site
  2. Intelligently incorporate these into your content - no key word stuffing, just well structured content.
  3. Use Header tags, not just H1 and H2, but plenty of H3 section headers to break up your content into logical structures
  4. Add Social Media links
  5. Sort out the canonical URL: https:// redirects to https://www but http is the other way around. Hence you currently have 2 instances of the same site which waters down the Google juice.
  6. Look for some credible and relevant inbound links if possible
  7. Make sure all images have alt-text

I’m not sure this would SEO the poopoo out of it :sweat_smile: but would make a good start. Happy to help if required - PM me.

@manofdogz Thank you for the reply. Here is my .htaccess file. Does this address #5 on your list? If not, what am I missing?


RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !=443
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://boxculvert.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Error Catch

ErrorDocument 400 https://www.BoxCulvert.com/error/
ErrorDocument 403 https://www.BoxCulvert.com/error/
ErrorDocument 404 https://www.BoxCulvert.com/error/
ErrorDocument 500 https://www.BoxCulvert.com/error/

Disable Director Access

Options -Indexes

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^BoxCulvert.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.BoxCulvert.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Secure htaccess File

<Files .htaccess>
order allow,deny
deny from all


Assuming your canonical URL is https://www.boxculvert.com I would use the following in htaccess:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(?:www.)?(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://www.%1%{REQUEST_URI} [L,NE,R=301]

This should force http (with and without www) along with https (without www) to your canonical domain. No need to enter the actual domain in this by the way.

Thank you @manofdogz. I have updated the .htaccess file. How did you identify the issue?

I can work on the rest of the list. Maybe this is doable by myself. I have never used H tags on my sites and am working on that as I type.

Thank you again. I feel we accomplished something and it appears that building in SEO isn’t all the poopoo I thought it would be. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Re headers:

If using Stacks, there are specific Header stacks that are just like a text stack but you select what header you want it to be H1 - H6.

If using Markdown, just put # before a line to make it a header. # = H1, ## = H2. ### = H3 and so on

If using a Styled Text page you can select the headrr text, then select your heading from the ‘code’ tab at the bottom of the page.

I’d recommend Markdown over styled text where possible. RW has a markdown page and there are also Markdown stacks.

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Thanks for the H tag stack hint. That helps a lot.

H1 is good to go for Page Title automatically in the them. I am good to place one on the page in the text too? That is my understanding that google is cool with that now. Or should I go straight to H2 and down from there?

Tradition dictates one h1 tag per page although HTML5 supports the < article > tag so you could, if desired, split your page into several articles each with its own h1 tag.

h2 - h6 are hierarchical sub headers and you can use multiple times.

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Eric, I found you on page 3 for “box culvert”. There’s nothing that looks too wrong with your on-page SEO. I tend to use only 1 H2 and multiple H3’s. When I compare your Home page to the page Columbia landed on for the same keyword, the biggest difference I see is the amount of written content. They have almost 3 times the amount of word count. I would suggest you write a more detailed meta description, write additional content for your Home page, and start a blog, linking blog posts back to the Home page.

You guys have a lot of external links, but your Moz Domain Authority is less than theirs. That can sometimes take time to develop. You may want to review the external links and see if any of those links are “spam”. Disavow those. Not all links are good links and spammy links can harm your seo.

Outside of that, I would look into the amount of traffic that comes into the site. You may want to start a Google PPC campaign. Sometimes relaligning the goals can make a huge difference to your bottom line. If you’re based in TN and ship to CA, then box culvert would be a good keyword to target. If you guys ship only regionally, then talk to some customers and find out what they’re typing into Google to find you/competitors. They may be typing in a more specific keyword, like “box culvert installers near me” or “box culvert suppliers in TN.”

We provide seo as an ongoing service if you’re interested. Call me anytime.

Eric Vaughn (209) 480-4418

Box Culvert website report

Columbia website report

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