Static content pages ranking dropping all the time
-
Hello all. I have been working three months in my current job in the hotel industry. I have been publishing a lot of content to our website (mainly articles), which in general have been ranking well and really boosted our website traffic.
The problem that I am facing, though, is the fact that our static pages' rankings are basically constantly dropping. Especially one of our main pages, which is this hotel page. I haven't been doing any real changes to the content, but the ranking (with keywords "hotelli helsinki" [Hotel in Helsinki in Finnish]) has plummeted from 13th position all the way down to 19th...
What has been happening during these last three months is that we did change to a new domain and we have done all the redirections and also informed Google about this change through search console. I have also done some minor changes to the on-page content, such as changing the meta titles and descriptions as well as the page title and some of the text content to more natural ones instead of clumsy SEO texts and optimizing the images. This hasn't helped at all though and the rankings seem to steadily drop all the time.
What would YOU do with this page? Maybe add more text content to the page to be more informative? All tips would be highly appreciated.
-
@tom-capper Nice!
-
@tom-capper thank you Tom. When I look at the first page of Google with this search query, information sites and comparison sites (such as Booking.com) tend to do well. But what also has happened is that some individual hotels have passed us in the rankings.
I did some minor changes to our on-page content last week, which saw us climbing to 15th position again with this query. Also on other website someone gave me a tip about user experience and he mentioned that for example the H1 title is too far down in the page and that there are multiple blocks on the page, before the actual text content starts...
These are of course things that I need to talk about with our coders and see if we can find a solution.
One other thing mentioned is the website speed, which seems bad, but in Google Search Console's page experience report, we are getting 90% acceptance for mobile and 76% for desktop, so this should not be an issue in Google's eyes...
-
Although some of the changes you mention (especially the domain shift) can commonly result in ranking changes, it's important to remember that changes in your ranking are not necessarily the result of things that happened on your own site.
Changes to Google's algorithm, or to competitor sites, are at least as likely to be responsible.
What are the sites that have overtaken you in the last few months? Are they a similar intent (i.e. individual hotels vs. comparison sites vs. information sites)? Are they better known? Similar page content? Higher Page Authority? etc. etc.
The explanations often lie in the answers to questions like these.
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
-
Reputable Place For Guest Posts
We do our SEO in-house, and I don't have the time for blogger outreach. Does anyone know of a reputable place where I can submit our content to be pitched to relevant outlets for backlinks and US traffic? I am not in it for someone creating our content; I write it myself and have a degree in the content I produce. I am looking for a place that gets REAL US traffic, not some P.B.N. sites or those where I can create accounts at a post myself. I want real traffic from relevant, reputable blogs or a place where I can have them use my content and find niche sites for me.
Link Building | | tammysons1 -
Understanding Redirects and Canonical Tags in SEO: A Complex Case
Hi everyone, nothing serious here, i'm just playing around doing my experiments 🙂
Technical SEO | | chueneke
but if any1 of you guys understand this chaos and what was the issue here, i'd appreciate if you try to explain it to me. I had a page "Linkaufbau" on my website at https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau. My .htaccess file contains only basic SEO stuff: # removed ".html" using htaccess RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ (.*)\.html\ HTTP RewriteRule (.*)\.html$ $1 [R=301,L] # internally added .html if necessary RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$ RewriteRule (.*) $1\.html [L] # removed "index" from directory index pages RewriteRule (.*)/index$ $1/ [R=301,L] # removed trailing "/" if not a directory RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /$ RewriteRule (.*)/ $1 [R=301,L] # Here’s the first redirect: RedirectPermanent /index / My first three questions: Why do I need this rule? Why must this rule be at the top? Why isn't this handled by mod_rewrite? Now to the interesting part: I moved the Linkaufbau page to the SEO folder: https://chriseo.de/seo/linkaufbau and set up the redirect accordingly: RedirectPermanent /linkaufbau /seo/linkaufbau.html I deleted the old /linkaufbau page. I requested indexing for /seo/linkaufbau in the Google Search Console. Once the page was indexed, I set a canonical to the old URL: <link rel="canonical" href="https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau"> Then I resubmitted the sitemap and requested indexing for /seo/linkaufbau again, even though it was already indexed. Due to the canonical tag, the page quickly disappeared. I then requested indexing for /linkaufbau and /linkaufbau.html in GSC (the old, deleted page). After two days, both URLs were back in the serps:: https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau.html this is the new page /seo/linkaufbau
b14ee095-5c03-40d5-b7fc-57d47cf66e3b-grafik.png This is the old page /linkaufbau
242d5bfd-af7c-4bed-9887-c12a29837d77-grafik.png Both URLs are now in the search results and all rankings are significantly better than before for keywords like: organic linkbuilding linkaufbau kosten linkaufbau service natürlicher linkaufbau hochwertiger linkaufbau organische backlinks linkaufbau strategie linkaufbau agentur Interestingly, both URLs (with and without .html) redirect to the new URL https://chriseo.de/seo/linkaufbau, which in turn has a canonical pointing to https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau (without .html). In the SERPs, when https://chriseo.de/linkaufbau is shown, my new, updated snippet is displayed. When /linkaufbau.html is shown, it displays the old, deleted page that had already disappeared from the index. I have now removed the canonical tag. I don't fully understand the process of what happened and why. If anyone has any ideas, I would be very grateful. Best regards,
Chris0 -
GSC problem: how to solve?
Hi all, Google Search Console gives me an error on these pages: info:https://www.varamedia.be/?utm_content=bufferbaaa4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer info:https://www.varamedia.be/?utm_content=bufferece3f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer I see there's an UTM tracking in the URL from Google+. We do have an account there but I don't see how this might give an error. Is this hurting our ranking score? How can we solve this?
Reporting & Analytics | | Varamedia0 -
Unsolved Website with no backlinks and a DA of 1 ranks first. Why?
https://www.realestatephotos.melbourne does not have any backlinks and has a DA of 1.
Keyword Explorer | | garrypat
This site ranks first for keywords - real estate photography melbourne and property photography melbourne.
Not sure why.
URL contains keywords and site is ok. But other sites with many links and higher DA rank lower. Why? Garry1 -
Can I replace categories with a static page
Hello there. I want to replace all of WordPress categories with static pages so that users see a well designed and constructed presentation of all the articles within each topic instead of just a long list of excerpts. I've already done this with 2 categories and although it is hard work I can't help feeling it is a much better thing for my users. However, I'm concerned that I am embarking on this project without being totally sure that it makes sense from an Seo point of view, or whether there are any downsides I haven't thought of? My idea is that the WordPress categories are set to noindex and nofollow. Search engines should find all of my static category pages and all of the content within each category will be spidered from there instead. Just to be sure you know what I mean here is a link to a normal category - https://www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk/category/consumer/ and here is my static page replacement for it - https://www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk/consumer-rights-appliances/ Both pages contain links to all articles within the category except the one generated by WordPress is just a long paginated list, and my replacement is a proper category page, which is hopefully far more useful . Can someone please confirm that there are no downsides to this strategy? 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | Snowdune1 -
Why isn't our site being shown on the first page of Google for a query using the exact domain, when its pages are indeed indexed by Google
When I type our domain.com as a query into Google, I only see one of our pages on the homepage, and it's in 4th position. It seems though, that all pages of the site are indexed by google when I type in the query "site:domain.com". There was an issue at the site launch, where the robots.txt file was left active for around two weeks. Would this have been responsible for the fact that another domain ranks #1 when we type in our own domain? It has been around a couple of months now since the site was launched. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | featherseo0 -
No Content on home page + rankings
If a home page has no content will it hurt the sites ability to rank? The interior pages will have content but not the home page. (See attached image) My client does not want content on the home page as he feels it will take away from the look and feel he wants to achieve. This website is actually 10 sites or locations in one as we intend to market each location (a total of 10) separately. In reality the home page is a doorway page to each separate location. I'd like feedback if possible as to the necessity or not, of content on the Home Page of this or any website. Will the lack of content hurt on the Homer Page hurt with SEO? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | fun52dig
Gary Downey bobby-vans.jpg0 -
Page Authority
I have recently optimised a set of images for a client of ours: I'm looking through all the PA of these newly optimised images, and have varying PA {from SEOmoz toolbar} I understand that internal linking will pass link juice, and obviously external links will add to the overall PA. I have several pages with a PA of 36: { Fairly deep pages} Yet they have no external or internal links going to them. My question is "How can a page gain any authority when it has no visible links pointing at it?" Obviously there must be a link pointing at it {internally} as Google wouldn't have crawled the page right? Also lets say all the keywords are of equal competitiveness would the keywords with highest PA rank higher than those on O PA pages. Many Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Yozzer0