Subfolder ranks worse than the rest of the site
-
We have the strangest problem. The blog for our website ranks very poorly:
www.lifeionizers.com/blog = average position in SERPs = 200. The site itself has an average position in SERPs of 12. The blog has a few terms it ranks #1 for such as branded terms and:
is mineral water alkaline = 1.3
kangen water vs alkaline water = 2.6
kangen water pyramid = 1.2
ph of redbull = 1.1 (Used by Google as answer in knowledge graph)
But the blog ranks terribly for most search terms. This blog has about 440 pages of in-depth, well-written authoritative content. Readers are well engaged, the blog has a bounce rate of ~3.5% with average time on page of over 6 minutes. The problem can't be the quality of the content.
Does Google levy penalties against specific subdirectories? Or is this a configuration problem? Bad links have been disavowed.
-
Awesome! Thanks for the update.
-
UPDATE: Organic traffic to the blog has doubled in the last few days. It started going up about 4 days after I unblocked the categories from being crawled. I'm not certain that it's all Google organic traffic, but it sure looks encouraging since the blog hasn't responded to any SEO fixes for nearly two years!
-
I would definitely check out the list on Clarity: https://clarity.fm/browse/technology/wordpress - and for developers it's often best to look in your own network - so I'd ask friends / colleagues for referrals, or you can search your LinkedIn connections as well.
-
Got to work on those blocked scripts. It turns out they are all outside resources:
- Hubspot
- Zopim Live Chat
According to Google, if outside resources are blocked, you have to contact the vendor about unblocking them. I contacted both Hubspot and Zopim, they will get back to us in about 2 days. Thankfully, we didn't have any of our scripts/CSS blocked.
I'm also working on that redirect. It turns out that if I shut it down, and redirect to the 200 OK page, that the blog will then render search result pages that will be indexed. That will give us a massive duplication problem. Its because of this that we did the redirect in the first place.
We're considering getting a Wordpress pro to come in and fix it right. Any suggestions?
-
Great! So glad it's helped so far, please keep us updated
-
You were right about the Fetch and Render. I found tons of scripts and images that were blocked. We're unblocking them all. I'm still working on your other suggestions, we do have a lot of old content. My plan is to leave all the evergreen content, and purge everything else
-
I've unblocked the categories in Wordpress. Let's keep our fingers crossed!
-
Hi - I wouldn't focus too much on that - I would take the suggestions made in my first answer and start with those! You really don't want to block crawling of categories!
-
My mistake, we deleted a page with a similar URL. That page was published on Dec 9th. Three days is not an uncommon lag for Google to index a new blog post. WMT shows that we are only indexed to the 7th of December. Google appears to re-index our site once per week:
Lastest index 12/7
Previous index 11/30
Previous index 11/23
Is this unusual? And thanks for your help! This has been a very frustrating problem!
-
Do you reactivate it? It's still live:
http://www.lifeionizers.com/blog/health-more/benefits-alkaline-water-hair-loss
-
We recently deleted that page. It was ranked at ~1000 in SERPs, so that indicated to us that Google had a major problem with it. Since we couldn't figure it out, we got rid of the page.
-
I just want to add for record, one thing that was really interesting. That is this page: http://www.lifeionizers.com/blog/health-more/benefits-alkaline-water-hair-loss
Was cached in Google but not indexed - which is odd. And to me a sign that Google is not crawling and processing the blog correctly. I've attached screenshots since they may very well index the page shortly.
Cache - http://screencast.com/t/cZcGbIHb
Site: search not indexed - http://screencast.com/t/IJQbyMhd
-
Hi - this was an interesting one! But I think I have found some of the issues.
- I'd really let Google crawl the categories. They are currently blocked from crawling in robots.txt - http://www.lifeionizers.com/robots.txt - this is an issue because I suspected part of the problem may be due to crawl efficiency. One reason I say this, is because Google has yet to index a blog post from about 2-3 days ago.
- This is a small thing, but link to the 200 OK version of the blog from your main menu. Right now, it links to /blog but then redirects to /blog/ with the trailing slash. Any little bit friction you can reduce the better.
- Because you have a lot of things in that robots.txt file - I would definitely perform some fetch and render tests in webmaster tools. Here's the thing, Google has said if you block CSS or JS from being crawled it will harm your sites ranking - so definitely do fetch and render and make sure that's not the case.
- The order of "Recent Articles" in the main content area in the blog homepage: http://www.lifeionizers.com/blog/ - don't seem to be "recent" at all. At least they are not in chronological order. This is confusing for me (and others users probably) so likely very confusing for Google. Most would expect the /blog/ homepage to list the most recent posts by published date. Especially since it is labled "recent". If these are supposed to be maybe "popular" I would label it as such.
- Lastly, with this much old content I would do a thorough content audit (directions here or here) of your blog. You should prune old, poor, outdated, low-traffic content just like you'd prune a plant - this will certainly help user metrics signals and keep your indexed:trafficked ratio healthy!
Those are just some of the immediate things I saw. I'd start there.
-
I think that it could just be that the key terms are extremely competitive. I would advise actually having someone take a look at the site in depth. Anything someone says without actually seeing the site is just speculation and maybes. I'm sorry I can't be more help!
-
I have been treating them as separate entities. I've focused on testing the blog, and fixed everything I could find - it had no effect. I've voraciously pursued scrapers with takedown orders etc, it had no effect.
I'm reaching out now, because I'm out of ideas, done everything I could, and nothing has worked. We are considering abandoning SEO entirely because there seems to be nothing we can do to get our rank to improve. I'm hoping someone in here can help me figure out what the problem is before we abandon ship
-
All on the subdomain? Google treats your subdomain as a separate site from your domain. If the penalty was on the subdomain level, that is where you need to focus your efforts. You have to treat them as separate entities.
-
We've seen a lot of Keywords improve significantly (+200 positions improvement in SERPs) but then a week or so later, they simply drop back down to where they were. We've seen other terms improve, and stay improved. We've also picked up about 500 keyword phrases since Penguin 3.0. The site as a whole has improved it's position in SERPs by about 20 positions since Penguin
So the answer is a definite we don't know.
-
Did you have a Penguin penalty by chance? You said you disavowed bad links, but if you were penalized was the penalty removed? I think the terms that you are targeting are extremely competitive and you need to do some more off site op to get them ranking well. Run a competitive SERP and see what page on looks like.
-
Yes, this blog targets specific terms related to alkaline water, water ionizer, ionized water, kangen water. We used to be competitive for all those terms, until Google nuked us. We fixed everything we could find, SEO-wise, but have seen zero improvement for those search terms.
I'd expect that if you improve the copy on a page, and promote it in social, that it should do better than position 200 (Google supplemental index). But SEO optimization on-site has had no effect on how this blog ranks. It improved from 220 to 200 after Penguin ran recently, but that's it
-
Without seeing the site I am not sure what else it could be. Are the blogs targeting specific key terms? If so, did you analyze them to see what metrics you need in order to compete with the people on page 1?
-
Yes, we've built good links for the site, and the blog has acquired good organic links all on it's own. We share regularly on social media and the blog has videos from YouTube on it.
This is the strangest thing. The blog has been built and maintained using white hat techniques, with every effort to provide value to the user, and play by the rules. Yet Google still treats it like we're pushing payday loans or something.
I've been fighting this for a year and a half, with no improvement. As a company, we are at our wits and and may just shut the blog down if this persists
-
The bad links have been disavowed but have any good links been built? Refresh some of those links with good, high quality, relative links. Share some of the pages on social media and add a couple of videos if you can, from Youtube. All of those things should help you.
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
-
Google is alternating what link it likes to rank on wordpress site and
Hi there, I'm experiencing a problem where google is pick and choosing different links structures to rank my Wordpress site for my main keywords. The site had pretty good #1 rankings for a long time but recently I noticed Google is choosing to rank the page in one of two ways. Let me just say that the original way where it held good rankings looked like this for example: flowers.com/the-most-beautiful-wedding-bouquets/ this is just an example it' is not my site. And when google decides to switch it up it uses this link structure:flowers.com > weddings (this still points to this link flowers.com/the-most-beautiful-wedding-bouquets when I hover my mouse over it) however this link structure that never appeared before and now does, usually has much lower rankings. Please note it's not both link structures being ranked at the same time for the keywords. It's one or the other that google is currently alternating in ranking and I believe it's hurting the sites position.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | z8YX9F80
I'm not sure if this is a wordpress settings thats gone wrong or what the problem is but I do know when shows the expanded and descriptive link structure flowers.com/the-most-beautiful-wedding-bouquets the rankings are higher and in 2nd place. I'm hoping by rectifying this I can regain back my position. I'm very grateful for any insight you could offer on why this is happening and how I could fix it. Thank you. PS Wordpress site has several SEO plugins0 -
Site's disappearnce in web rankings
I'm currently doing some work on a website: http://www.abetterdriveway.com.au. Upon starting, I detected a lot of spammy links going to this website and sort to remove them before submitting a disavow report. A few months later, this site completely disappeared in the rankings, with all keywords suddenly not ranked. I realised that the test website (which was put up to view before the new site went live) was still up on another URL and Google was suddenly ranking that site instead. Hence, I ensured that test site was completely removed. 3 weeks later however, the site (www.abetterdriveway.com.au) still remains unranked for its keywords. Upon checking Web Master Tools, I cannot see anything that stands out. There is no manual action or crawling issues that I can detect. Would anyone know the reason for this persistent disappearance? Is it something I will just have to wait out until ranking results come back, or is there something I am missing? Help here would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavo0 -
.com ranked where .co.uk site should After Manual Penalty Revoked - Help!!!
Hi All, I wondered if some could help me as I am at my wits end. Our website www.domain.co.uk was hit with a manual penalty back in April 26th 2012 for over optomizing our inbound links and after 9 reconciliation request later and over a year and many links removed the penalty was revoked. Yay I hear you cry! During the year .co.uk was banned we built .com yet did not build any links to it. The purpose of the .com site was to attract an American audience for our products. .com was hosted on a US server and Geo Targeting set to United States in WMT. So here is my problem after the ban was revoke we expected .co.uk to spring back to some reasonable positions. Nope that is not the case Google now is ranking our .com site where our .co.uk should be for powerdull keywords in position 1st to 10th .com has Zero link equity and .co.uk is very reasonable, So how can I rectify this balls ups and get co.uk listed back where it should be…. I am not bothered where .com ranks. Note: To the best of my knowledge there are NO cross domain 301 or the like only an image link between the two sites. I have posted this on WMT forum and it has fallen on deaf ears! ....help me MOZ members you’re my only hope! Thanks in advance Richard PS: If anyone would like the URL’s in question PM me and I will let you know.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tricky-400 -
Checking keyword rankings
I have 2 questions: 1. To check keyword rankings with firefox, i am choosing: Tools>Options>Privacy>"clear all current history" Timerange to clear: Everything Check Boxes: Browsing and download history, form and search history, cookies, cache, active logins Is there anything else I need to be doing? 2. Search results in my Niche are heavily localized. Is there any way to check rankings in another area? Ex: By default, our rankings are for Northeast NJ. Is there any way to check Baltimore, for example?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
How can someone not call B.S. on this site ranking 4th.
We manage a lot of sites that are around pharmaceuticals and lawsuits. I was checking a couple of the sites around the keyword: Actos Lawsuit using the keyword difficulty with serp analysis. Our sites have done very little Adwords except for first month about a year ago and we have always ranked well and the client is very happy with the results. Tonight I notice a site that is http://wikilawsuit.org/drug-recalls/actos-side-effects-bladder-cancer-actos-lawsuit/ They are ranked fourth on Google. Our url which is http://actos-lawsuit.org/ is ranked 9th?? Frankly there are several sites ranked ahead and when you look at the parameters all the way across some we are killing. But Wiki, everyone is killing and it is still fourth. I ran it in OSE and the metrics came back better, but there is at best 3 to 4 real links out of 30 domains. This is a commercial site with a contact form in right sidebar and my guess is they are selling leads to lawyers. So they are about as Wiki as Hooters. That said, we see all the talk about quality links and I am seeing a lot of sites with few quality links and lots of junk links. Should we still believe it matters? Or, is it that it matters when the sites are huge (JC Penny), etc. but not if the site is under some critical number of poor links? Looking forward to a moz Fest on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertFisher0 -
How would you fix this site?
We're currently in the IA and design phase of rolling out a complete overhaul of our main site. In the meantime I've been doing some SEO triage, but I wanted to start making a longer term plan for SEO during and after the new site goes up. We have a pretty decent domain authority, and some quality backlinks, but we're just getting creamed in the SERPs. And so on to my question: How would you fix this site? What SEO strategy would you employ? http://www.adoptionhelp.org Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdoptionHelp0 -
Newish site dropped out of rankings - is this normal?
I've got a small, 3 month old site that was ranking for a few low-competition keywords. Then, yesterday, it dropped out of the rankings almost completely. The only way to find it is to google the URL/site name, and then it does come up. There are pages in the index, they're just not ranking like they did two days ago. I'm not doing anything black hat or even slightly shady - just writing articles and clean link building. Is this a normal part of the Google process? I've never seen it happen on any other sites I've been involved with.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | damoncali0 -
Key page of site not ranking at all
Our site has the largest selection of dog clothes on the Internet. We're been (every so slowly) creeping up in the rankings for the "dog clothes" term, but for some reason only rank for our home page. Even though the home page (and every page on the domain) has links pointing to our specific Dog Clothes page, that page doesn't even rank anywhere when searching Google with "dog clothes site:baxterboo.com". http://www.google.com/webhp?source=hp&q=dog+clothes+site:baxterboo.com&#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=webhp&source=hp&q=dog+clothes+site:baxterboo.com&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=dog+clothes+site:baxterboo.com&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=f4efcaa1b8c328f Pages 2+ of product results from that page rank, but not the base page. It's not excluded in robots.txt, All on site links to that page use the same URL. That page is loaded with more text that includes the keywords. I don't believe there's duplicated content. What am I missing? Has the page somehow been penalized?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BBPets0