Traffic drop off and page isn't indexed
-
In the last couple weeks my impressiona and clicks have dropped off to about half what it used to be. I am wondering if Google is punishing me for something...
I also added two new pages to my site in the first week of June and they still aren't indexed. In the past it seemed like new pages would be indexed in a couple days.
Is there any way to tell if Google is unhappy with my site? WMT shows 3 server errors, 3 Access denied, and 122 not found errors. Could those not found pages be killing me?
Thanks for any advise,
Greg
-
Hi David,
I did add ton of new web pages and because of those got those 404's. I've since cleaned them all up. i thought I had them cleaned up before the my traffic fell but there could be a lag there. I am a little bummber my PR is 2... pretty marginal improvement over 0.
I will keep an eye on my traffic and hopefully it was the bad links.
Thank you for the thoughful response!
-
I'm showing your homepage as PR 2. So you're definitely indexed. I also Googled a sentence from you homepage, and it was the first result. So you're good with the index.
Your problem is all of the errors. The bots won't crawl your site as frequently if you have a lot of 404 errors. Also, your server errors and access denied errors are worrisome. Check your robots.txt and make sure it isn't blocking out part of your site. Additionally, you need to track down the server errors and fix them. If you're using a commercial host like Host Gator or Go Daddy, then their customer service can help you with the server side stuff.
Go back to the last time your changed your site's architecture or linking syntax, and that's probably the source of all the 404 errors. Then it's just a matter of figuring out which pages in your site contain links to the pages that are gone and fixing those bad links. You can also petition Google to stop indexing certain pages through the webmaster tools. That helps with the 404 errors.
After the site gets cleaned up, the crawl rate should pick up again. If you want to goose the crawl rate a little bit, but a blog on your site. It's fairly easy to get a wordpress blog looped onto your site. Consistently fresh content always helps a sluggish crawl rate.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
301 migration - Indexed Pages rising on old site
Hello, We did a 301 redirect from site a to site b back in March. I would check on a daily basis on the index count using query "site:sitename" The past couple of days, the old domain (that was 301 redirected) indexed pages has been rising which is really concerning. We did a 301 redirect back in march 2016, and the indexed count went from 400k pages down to 78k. However, the past 3 days it went from 78k to 89,500. And I'm worried that the number is going to continue to rise. My question - What would you do to investigate / how to investigate this issue? Would it be screaming frog and look at redirects? Or is this a unique scenario that I'd have to do other steps/procedures?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
Home page not being indexed
Hi Moz crew. I have two sites (one is a client's and one is mine). They are both Wordpress sites and both are hosted on WP Engine. They have both been set up for a long time, and are "on-page" optimized. Pages from each site are indexed, but Google is not indexing the homepage for either site. Just to be clear - I can set up and work on a Wordpress site, but am not a programmer. Both seem to be fine according to my Moz dashboard. I have Webmaster tools set up for each - and as far as I can tell (definitely not an exper in webmaster tools) they are okay. I have done the obvious and checked that the the box preventing Google from crawling is not checked, and I believe I have set up the proper re-directs and canonicals.Thanks in advance! Brent
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EchelonSEO0 -
Index Pages become No-Index
Hi Mozzers, Here is the scenario: I created a landing page targeting Holiday keywords for the holiday season. The page has been crawled and indexed - I see my landing page in the SERP. However, because of the CMS layout, since the Holiday is over and I don't want it to be displayed on the homepage, i have to remove the page from hp which makes it no-index (don't ask why, it's how the CMS was built). Question: How does this affect this LP's search? Since it's already crawled and etc. will it still be on the SERP after i change the page to no-index? If I remove the no-index next year for the holiday season, how does this all play out? Any insights or information provided will be appreciated. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TommyTan0 -
Home Page or Internal Page
I have a website that deals with personalized jewelry, and our main keyword is "Name Necklace".
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
3 mounth ago i added new page: http://www.onecklace.com/name-necklaces/ And from then google index only this page for my main keyword, and not our home page.
Beacuase the page is new, and we didn't have a lot of link to it, our rank is not so well. I'm considering to remove this page (301 to home page), beacause i think that if google index our home page for this keyword it will be better. I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but i know that our home page have a lot of good links and maybe our rank will be higher. Another thing, because google index this internal page for this keyword, it looks like our home page have no main keyword at all. BTW, before i add this page, google index our main page with this keyword. Please advise... U5S8gyS.png j50XHl4.png0 -
Town and County pages taking months to index.
Hi, At http://www.general-hypnotherapy-register.com/regional-hypnotherapy-directory/ we have a load of town and county pages for all of the hypnotherapists on the site a) I have checked all of these links and they are spiderable. b) About a month back I noticed after the site changes, not entirely sure why, but the site was generating rogue pages, eg http://www.general-hypnotherapy-register.com/hypnotherapists/page/5/?town=barnsley instead of http://www.general-hypnotherapy-register.com/hypnotherapists/?town=barnsley We have added meta no index, no follow to these rogue pages around 4 weeks ago..however these pages still have a google cache date of Oct 4th predating these meta changes c) There are examples of the pages we do want, indexed, and ranking too on page 1, site:www.general-hypnotherapy-register.com/hypnotherapists eg http://www.general-hypnotherapy-register.com/hypnotherapists/?town=ockham however these pages are few and far between, these have a recent google cache date of Nov 1 **d) **The xml sitemap has all of the correct URLS, but in webmaster tools, the amount of pages indexed has been stubbornly flat at 2800 out of 4400 for 4 weeks now e) Query Paramaters: for ?town and ?county in webmaster tools, are set to Yes/Specifies Would love any suggestions, Thanks. Mark.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Advantec0 -
My warning report says I have too many on page links - 517! I can't find 50% of them but my q is about no follow
if we put 'no follow' on some of these links does that mean the search engines won't index the no follow pages even if those pages are linked to from elsewhere? no link juice will flow from the page with the (no follow) links on? Just trying to understand why my rankings have dropped so dramatically in the last 6 weeks or so since we redesigned the site, and it might be that now we have too many links on the homepage. This is the page http://www.suffolktouristguide.com/ All suggestions appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SarahinSuffolk0 -
Volusion store product pages will not index
Hello, I have moved over to Volusion and was wondering if you guys know of any SEO practices that are Volusion specific. i have been working on this site now for 2 months and my impressions and rankings have dropped substantially My 301 redirects where in place before I flipped over and my keywords / titles/ tags etc.. are in place. However i am still not making any progress in the engines. I have noticed that my products are not being indexed per Webmaster tools. I have heard that volusion has something set up to where you must purchase their SEO package in order to rank. I am really at my wits end and currently I thinking about taking a loss and reverting back to my old Shoppe Pro site. Any help would be very appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kerry0217
.0 -
Google sees redirect when there isn't any?
I've posted a question previously regarding the very strange changes in our search positions here http://www.seomoz.org/q/different-pages-ranking-for-search-terms-often-irrelevant New strange thing I've noticed - and very disturbing thing - seems like Google has somehow glued two pages together. Or, in other words, looks like Google sees a 301 redirect from one page to another. This, actually, happened to several pages, I'll illustrate it with our Flash templates page. URL: http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | templatemonster
Has been #3 for 'Flash templates' in Google. Reasons why it looks like redirect:
Reason #1
Now this http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php page is ranking instead of http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php
Also, http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php is not in the index.
That what would typically happen if you had 301 from Flash templates to logo templates page. Reason #2
If you search for cache:http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php Google will give the cahced version of http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php!!!
If you search for info:www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php you again get info on http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php instead! Reason #3
In Google Webmaster Tools when I look for the external links to http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php I see all the links from different sites, which actually point to http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php listed as "Via this intermediate link: http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php" As I understand Google makes this "via intermediate link" when there's a redirect? That way, currently Google thinks that all the external links we have for Flash templates are actually pointing to Logo templates? The point is we NEVER had any kind of redirect from http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php to http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php I've seen several similar situations on Google Help forums but they were never resolved. So, I wonder if anybody can explain how that could have happened, and what can be done to solve that problem?0