Another client copies everything to blogspot. Is that what keeps her site from ranking? Or what? Appears to be a penalty somewhere but can't find it.
-
This client has a brand new site: http://www.susannoyesandersonpoems.com
Her previous site was really bad for SEO, yet at one time she actually ranked on the first page for "LDS poems." She came to me because she lost rank. I checked things out and found some shoddy SEO work by a very popular Wordpress webhoste that I will leave unnamed. If you do a backlink analysis you can see the articles and backlinks they created. But there are so few, so I'm not sure if that was it, or it just was because of the fact that her site was so poorly optimized and Google made a change, and down she fell.
Here's the only page she had on the LDS poems topic in her old site: https://web.archive.org/web/20130820161529/http://susannoyesandersonpoems.com/category/lds-poetry/ Even the links in the nav were bad as they were all images. And that ranked in position 2 I think she said.
Even with her new site, she continues to decline. In fact she is nowhere to be found for main keywords making me think there is a penalty.
To try and build rank for categories, I'm allowing google to index the category landing pages and had her write category descriptions that included keywords. We are also listing the categories on the left and linking to those category pages. Maybe those pages are watered down by the poem excerpts?? Here's an example of a page we want to rank: http://susannoyesandersonpoems.com/category/lds-poetry/
Any help from the peanut gallery?
-
Sorry for the slow response Christy. We never could pinpoint the problem. Since everything looked good, I asked her to give it time. Took about 6 months after the website launch, but she's back on the first page in position 2 and 3 for "LDS poems." She just kept doing everything right - writing poems and posting in her channels. She also continues to post on Blogspot on the same day she posts on her main site. I advised her not too but it apparently doesn't matter. Google is not showing her blogpspot site in the SERPs. I added the publisher and author tags on this site and connected that to her G+ account, so maybe that helped at the time.
-
Any updates, Kat?
-
Hi Kat, were you able to sort this out? We would love an update. Thanks!
Christy
-
Did you notice the precipitous drop in backlinks in March?
I'm still trying to get data from her so I can get a timeline, but I bet that's it. Looks to me like some site might have taken her out of a blogroll with so many pages suddenly disappearing, but the domains also went down and continue to fall.
Thanks, Marie.
-
Hi Kat,
I found that link by looking at the links from ahrefs.com sorted by anchor text.
-
Hi Marie,
I share your concern over blogspot. She says she's been doing it for years and never had a problem, but you and I know the only thing constant about Google is change and what worked yesterday may not today. I'm trying to get her to no-index that site, but she is reluctant, so I'm looking at other things as well. To address your comment about similarity in the sites, there is very much that. Many pages are identical.
Most of her backlinks also come from the blogspot site. The answer may be in the backlinks alone. As we saw what happened with MyBlogGuest, she could be guilty by association. So looking at all the backlinks is a something we need to do as well. I didn't find that mention you did but found others. How did you get that one?
I need to add in here for the benefit of other small business owners, be careful who you hire for SEO. She bought SEO services from a very well respected web host thinking that with their good reputation, she'd get great service and great results. She got great price and great expense.
Trying to get data and dates from her now. She was not using Analytics but some other tracker software. I'll share when I get it.
Thanks for your input! - Kat
-
"...client copies everything to blogspot."
If a large amount of the content on her blogspot site is the same as her main site AND if for some reason Google has chosen the blogspot site as the originator of the content, then there's a good possibility that the Panda algorithm is looking unfavorably on the main site. The key would be to noindex the duplicate content on the blogspot site and if this is the cause then within 1-2 Panda refreshes you should see improvement. Panda generally refreshes around once a month.
I'm guessing it's not Panda though as when I search for her name, her blogspot blog doesn't come up prominently. Still, it's not a good idea to publish to both places unless you can noindex or canonicalize one. It is ok to put the poems on more than one site provided that there is significant difference and value on each page other than just the poem.
I'm definitely seeing unnatural links too though such as http://demo.classyhost.com/SocialNews5/story.php?id=409614. It may be worth disavowing those types of links.
Can you tell if there is a specific date when the traffic decline started? If you can reconcile it with the date of a Panda (content) or a Penguin (links) refresh that might give you a better idea of what is going on.
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
-
No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag
I'm getting an error in Search Console that pages on my site show No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag. However, when I inspect the pages html, it does not show noindex. In fact, it shows index, follow. Majority of pages show the error and are not indexed by Google...Not sure why this is happening. Unfortunately I can't post images on here but I've linked some url's below. The page below in search console shows the error above... https://mixeddigitaleduconsulting.com/ As does this one. https://mixeddigitaleduconsulting.com/independent-school-marketing-communications/ However, this page does not have the error and is indexed by Google. The meta robots tag looks identical. https://mixeddigitaleduconsulting.com/blog/leadership-team/jill-goodman/ Any and all help is appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Sean_White_Consult0 -
Geo ip filtering / Subdomain can't be crawled
My client has "load balancing" site traffic in the following way: domain: www.example.com traffic from US IP redirected to usa.example.com traffic from non-US IP redirected to www2.example.com The reason for doing this is that site contents on the www2 contains herbal medicine info banned by FDA."usa.example.com" is a "cleaned" site. Using HK IP, when I google an Eng keyword, I can see that www.example.com is indexed. When googling a Chi keyword, nothing is indexed - neither the domain or www2 subdomain. From Google Search Console, it shows a Dell Sonicwall geo ip filtering alert for www2 (Connection initiated from country: United States). GSC data also confirms that www2 has never been indexed by Google. Questions: Is geo ip filtering the very reason why www2 isn't indexed? What should I do in order to get www2 to be indexed? Thanks guys!
Technical SEO | | irene7890 -
What should the combined domain rank of 2 sites?
We have just combined 2 sites by redirecting a site with a domain ranking of 35 to a site with a domain ranking of 27 (this is because the we want to use the address with a ranking of 27) After a week I now have 1 domain with a ranking of 26?? So my questions are; Should the ranking have increased already? What should I expect the ranking to increase to if at all? Is there something I could have done wrong when transferring? Thanks
Technical SEO | | benj450 -
Why did google pick this page to rank over another one?
I recently started working here and I have noticed that google is ranking some pages over other for the main key word. Example: We are ranking on page one for ATV tires for this url http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/43/81/165/723/ATV-Tires-All I thought google would pick http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/81/165/ATV-Tires since it is higher up in the folders. I Have a couple reasons why the are picking the other one. Mostly from link signals from one other site and footer link.. Any other thoughts. If we want google to rank the second url instead what would you suggest?
Technical SEO | | DoRM0 -
Can dynamically translated pages hurt a site?
Hi all...looking for some insight pls...i have a site we have worked very hard on to get ranked well and it is doing well in search. The site has about 1000 pages and climbing and has about 50 of those pages in translated pages and are static pages with unique urls. I have had no problems here with duplicate content and that sort of thing and all pages were manually translated so no translation issues. We have been looking at software that can dynamically translate the complete site into a handfull of languages...lets say about 5. My problem here is these pages get produced dynamically and i have concerns that google will take issue with this aswell as the huge sudden influx of new urls....as now we could be looking at and increase of 5000 new urls. (which usually triggers an alarm) My feeling is that it could be risking the stability of the site that we have worked so hard for and maybe just stick with the already translated static pages. I am sure the process could be fine but fear a manual inspection and a slap on the wrist for having dynamically created content?? and also just risk a review trigger period. These days it is hard to know what could get you in "trouble" and my gut says keep it simple and as is and dont shake it up?? Am i being overly concerned? Would love to here from others who have tried similar changes and also those who have not due to similar "fear" thanks
Technical SEO | | nomad-2023230 -
We have set up 301 redirects for pages from an old domain, but they aren't working and we are having duplicate content problems - Can you help?
We have several old domains. One is http://www.ccisound.com - Our "real" site is http://www.ccisolutions.com The 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain works. However, the 301-redirects for interior pages, like: http://www.ccisolund.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators do not work. This URL should redirect to http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators but as you can see it does not. Our IT director supplied me with this code from the HT Access file in hopes that someone can help point us in the right direction and suggest how we might fix the problem: RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} ccisound.com$ [NC] RewriteRule^(.*)$ http://www.ccisolutions.com/$1 [R=301,L] Any ideas on why the 301 redirect isn't happening? Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Will training videos available on the "members only" section of a site contribute to the sites ranking?
Hello, I got asked a question recently as to whether training videos on the deeper pages of a website (that you can only access if you are a member and log in) will help with the sites ranking. On the SEOMoz software these deeper pages have been crawled as far as I can tell with errors reported on pages from the "members only" section of the site, leading me to believe the members only pages and their content will contribute to the sites overall ranking profile. I have suggested uploading the informational videos on the main pages of the site for now, making them accessible to all visitors and putting them in a more obvious place to encourage more sharing and views, however I've also said I would check it out with some experts so any information will be greatly appreciated! Many thanks 🙂 Charlotte
Technical SEO | | CharlotteWaller0 -
How can I improve my google places ranking?
I am currently registered with google places for 'video conferencing in Melbourne australia' however I don't show up on page 1 of the places sesrch results for this search term. How can I improve it. I do note that my office address is in a residential area and not Melbourne CBD. Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | dantmurphy0