Why do other sites rank higher for our blog content?
-
Our site has always allowed other sites to RSS feed our content. Recently, we've noticed that searches for a title of our blog post will rank 2 sites that only publish said content, while our links are nowhere to be seen on the SERPs for Google.
Is there any way I can fix this or prod Google to adjust it for us?
Background: We were ranked highly in many long tail keywords, but lost many of them in June 2013. During this time going forward, we received no manual action.
-
The scraper's canonical tag points to their own site. I just added canonical tags to our content. I hope we win out.
-
When the same article appears on two websites and one of those has an rel=canonical pointing to the other website, then the site with the rel=canonical should not be indexed.
-
So I looked into the articles on both sites.
1)The first offender uses but links our original url using a <a href""=""> saying our page is the "source."</a>
<a href""="">2)The second offender just uses our titles and doesn't really have our content on their site, but links to the original page.
If I "play around" with cross domain canonicals that will probably help in the future, but will Google de-rank the articles posted by the first offender?</a>
-
You are getting a lot of diverse answers but Moosa has identified the key....
My advice would be to get quick links, whoever is syndicating your content ask them to link to the main source plus try playing around with cross domain canonicals and that might really help if the people who syndicate your content can add it on their website.
It does not matter who gets indexed first, adds new posts to sitemap, gets tweeted, gets fetched... Google generally respects strength and generally obeys canonicals.
-
Hey,
Depending upon authority, other pages are getting indexed earlier than yours. Best thing to avoid this thing
1. Submit Your Sitemap in Webmaster Tools to make your indexing fast
2. Whenever you add a blog post, make it indexed through this Google Tool: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url This works pretty quick.
3. Socialize your blog post immediatelyI hope this will help the cause!
Regards
-
I have found that a great way to take 'ownership' of your content is to immediately submit it to the Google index as soon as it goes live.
You can do this through Google Webmaster Tools.
Then, from the menu Crawl --> Fetch as Google.
Then, enter your URL, Fetch it, and Submit it to the index.
This should resolve your issue.
Note: Ensure that you get a confirmation message indicating that the page was submitted. Sometimes, it doesn't work on the first try.
-
I guess there are two parts in the question so let me go one by one!
Why other websites are ranking above mine? Exactly, when they use your RSS feed, they probably might get crawled quicker than the original content and that is why the problem starts!
My advice would be to get quick links, whoever is syndicating your content ask them to link to the main source plus try playing around with cross domain canonicals and that might really help if the people who syndicate your content can add it on their website.
You lost good amount of ranking positions in June 2013, I checked Moz Google Penalty calendar and finds out that there are 3 Google updates in June 2013 that are:
- Payday Loan on 11<sup>th</sup> June
- Panda dance on the same day
- Multi Week update on June 27, 2013
See if the traffic drop is around these days and in case of yes you know what the problem on your website is, consider fixing it!
Hope this helps!
-
Google uses a lot of different factors to determine why one site ranks above another site. However, when it comes to duplicate content (other sites using your site's RSS feed to generate content on their site), Google determines who posted the content first--and then the others are considered to be duplicates.
In your case, most likely the other sites are getting crawled quicker--therefore you are not the one who is originating the content, according to Google. You need Google to crawl your site quicker, and that typically is determined by how often you post content and the links to your content. Get more quality links to your site, and make sure you post on your social profiles (twitter, google plus, facebook, linkedin) whenever you post on your site.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Outsource Content Writing Services - Who Is The Best?
Hello fellow Mozers! We are currently in the process of hiring an additional content developer but he doesn’t start for a couple weeks. We have some work that is piling up and I am considering outsourcing some content development until the new hire gets here. I have looked into Scripted, TextMaster, CrowdContent and a few others. I stay away from sites like UpWork and Fiverr because I abuse them in the past and I don’t get quality work. Is there any company that you have used in the past that you really trust and who are familiar with SEO? Thank you in advance for all of your recommendations
Content Development | | InfinityDigital1 -
Duplicate Forum Content
HI everyone, great to be here, absolutely loving everything, please go easy on me I'm quite a noob when it comes to seo, but hopefully my question isn't too basic. After running the initial checks on my websites, I found there are 7,646 duplicate pages? Some are easy fixes but the majority are not, being forum pages, the edit, quote and new post links are coming up as duplicates of the main post? Does anyone know how to fix this? Best Lee
Content Development | | LeeC0 -
Blog Marketing
Hi everyone, I have a quick question regarding blog marketing. A colleague is embarking of her new years resolution to get in shape and is blogging about her experience, which has so far been successful. Can anyone suggest any good free blog directories where I can list her Blog? Or any other ways to market her blog? (she will be doing one post a week over the next 20 weeks)
Content Development | | Hardley1110 -
How does WordPress 3.5.1 impact site rankings?
We have a user interested in having a WordPress 3.5.1 blog on their own existing, robust site. There is a blog module available in the CMS but the user feels more familiar with WordPress. It will be set up at the root as a subdirectory. Based on the URL structure, Google should see the WordPress blog and the user's website as the same website. (www.website.com/wordpress). There will not be a 301 needed. Does using the Wordpress module impact rankings? We've understood that Google doesn't care for Wordpress because 99% of spammers use it... is that only if it is hosted on WordPress.com? Also, are there any other reasons that our user should use/avoid WordPress?
Content Development | | dianemahan0 -
Nearely identical content
Hi Everybody, I'm just checking the warnings from Seomoz an realized that on our site there are a lot of duplicate page content problems. In fact some of them are not really duplicated content because there are subtle differencies ie. colour or pack of products: http://www.szepsegbolt.hu/termekek/david_beckham_intimately_yours_for_man_eau_de_toilette_30_ml.html http://www.szepsegbolt.hu/termekek/david_beckham_intimately_yours_for_man_eau_de_toilette_50_ml.html What do you suggest, ignore this warning or change something on the site? Thank you in advance Balint
Content Development | | SanomaMediaseo0 -
How Does Traffic Reach My Blog?
I've posted a few articles on my website blog page, but one particular blog receives a lot more traffic than the others. How, where and why do people find that particulat article over the others? http://www.salesandinternetmarketing.com/saim/blog
Content Development | | lindsayjhopkins0 -
Help with Content Revamp
Many years ago we wrote about 60 content pages for our surfboard e-commerce website targeting all the top popular keywords. Many of them generic but very keyword focused. We are now revamping our content our our site and want to move away from the generic side of things and actually rewrite all the pages to make them very useful and actually stuff our customers can really use and will find very helpful. I noticed that many times we wrote small pages less than 500 words that target similar keywords around a general theme. In looking at the analytics all the pages are getting a good amount of traffic and ranking well but im wondering would it be ok to focus on a main topic and combine similar pages if they are related? So i can take the say 60 articles and combine it down to say 10 articles and make the articles cover alot more stuff instead of just being small 500 word articles. As an example we have many surfboard models so we wrote an article for -Longboard Surfboards -Funboard Surfboards -Mini Malibu Surfboards -Retro Fish Surfboards -Womens Surfboards -Beginner Surfboards My question is could i weave these all together and write one long guide on say "Choosing The Type of Surboard you need" and cover all the board models in that article and then redirect the old pages to point to that one article. Would i still rank well for all these words Or would this destroy all my current rankings for these words? What is the best approach to rewriting and or combining old content pages that currently rank well but could be combined with others around the same theme to make it more user friendly?
Content Development | | isle_surf0 -
Setting up a blog for client, should I build external links to the blog
I have a new client in the holiday industry and want to setup a wordpress blog, we will be writing the first few blogs and linking back to the relevant site page. But I am wondering how I should promote the blog so that the links are more powerful back to his own site. Blogging is not my forte and doesn't come naturally so I really need some good advice to how I can start offering this service to my clients. Thanks
Content Development | | iprosoftware0