Google looking more at visual appearance than before?

[Simon.P]

Thanks to studying the fresh bananas course (and help from the great bloke himself) i got my site to SERP 3 for my primary keyword. The two above me were nationwide companies; i was the first local trade so happy with that. I sat there for some time and then the big G had a shuffle. I dropped to 9. I have taken a look at the two sites that have trumped me and its a bit of a mystery to me at least!

I have consistent NAP, Google my business registered with 11, 5 star reviews. One of the sites is Google MB with five reviews, one isn't registered at all.

Both sites on shared servers with slower load times than mine which is virtual VPS by itself in the UK.

I read an article from SEO by the sea (or at least something linking from his site) stating the proximity to the city centre can have an impact from a Google MB perspective. Both sites have their business addresses slightly further away from the city centre than me.

I ran both of them through Screaming frog and found one site doesn't even have any titles or H1's!

They both have less, relative inbound links than mine.

They have no internal linking structure, keyword friendly urls and far less copy.

The only thing that stands out is they look prettier than mine. Loads of images, colours and call me buttons.

Anyone else been trumped by prettiness over copy?

 

[webit]

Both sites using the same security (i.e. both https or neither https)?

 

[Simon.P]

Both sites using the same security (i.e. both https or neither https)?

One site is, one isn't.

 

[webit]

Google is starting to consider SSL on sites (and Chrome will be marking non SSL sites as insecure at some point soon)

Also have the higher ranking sites been online longer than yours - also may be worth checking out their history on wayback machine

 

[Simon.P]

One of the domains is 6 years older than mine and looking at time machine has always had a populated site which is going in its favour. The other site is newer than mine and is the more mysterious one to me. Thanks for posting by the way.

 

[Nochexman]

Could you post links to these sites?

 

[Simon.P]

Could you post links to these sites?

I have just sent you a PM

 

[Khurram Aziz]

No, Google is NOT looking at how pretty a site is in order to judge its SERPs. I can answer that categorically. You should consider the sites backlinks profile before you come to this kind of conclusion.

 

[Nochexman]

What is your primary keyword?

 

[Alan]

I can answer that categorically.

Great to hear from a Google Engineer directly, although be careful they may discipline you for breaching confidentiality.