Viral page not ranking onGoogle
-
A user generated talk thread on our social networking site went viral yesterday and generated around 36000 extra visits.
But, when we Google the key phrase in this thread our site is not even in the Top 50. Instead the pages are dominated by other (lesser) websites referring to the content and linking to the thread
The page is indexed
The on page SEO grade for the key phrase and variant according to SEOMoz is A
Our home page has a PR of 7 and an SEO Domain Authority of 76
We are the original source of this content
Other talk threads on different subjects in a similar category are ranking on page 1 of Google.
What's happening?
-
Mind shooting over the Query and URL in question? I'd love to take a peek directly.
-
Thanks Kris. The thing is our discussion threads are indexed daily and other new talk topics were already ranking 1 on Google for the title of the thread. We were the original source and we have good site authority and PageRank...
Since the topic went viral, the sites linking to us were not necessarily friendly sites or sites even known to us. The issue is not that we need to rank for that wacky topic (which was user generated don't forget) but that despite being the original source we failed to rank at all, nowhere, while all the sites talking about us were on page one and beyond. Kind of puzzling.
-
If it just went viral yesterday you might want to give it a few days to see ranking changes. Also remember that google still primarily relies heavily on links. Traffic != links. The other pages you mentioned may be more heavily direct-linked to than your page. My recommendation would be to hit up those people discussing your content and make sure they are placing a do follow link back to your content, preferably with an anchor text that either directly or partially matches the subject you are hoping to rank for.
-
Hi Cecily - what's the URL and I can look at your on site SEO
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
-
Does having no content on a mobile page have effect on the ranking.
We are about to go live with a mobile version of our webshop, mobile users will be shown an alternative version of the desktop page. At the moment we have little to no content on the mobile pages; how will this effect our ranking? (desktop and mobile page have the same URL and meta, only the "body" is different)
Technical SEO | | G.School0 -
Why Google ranks a page with Meta Robots: NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW?
Hi guys, I was playing with the new OSE when I found out a weird thing: if you Google "performing arts school london" you will see w w w . mountview . org. uk at the 3rd position. The point is that page has "Meta Robots: NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW", why Google indexed it? Here you can see the robots.txt allows Google to index the URL but not the content, in article they also say the meta robots tag will properly avoid Google from indexing the URL either. Apparently, in my case that page is the only one has the tag "NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW", but it's the home page. so I said to myself: OK, perhaps they have just changed that tag therefore Google needs time to re-crawl that page and de-index following the no index tag. How long do you think it will take to don't see that page indexed? Do you think it will effect the whole website, as I suppose if you have that tag on your home page (the root domain) you will lose a lot of links' juice - it's totally unnatural a backlinks profile without links to a root domain? Cheers, Pierpaolo
Technical SEO | | madcow780 -
Fluctuation in Ranking for the keywords
We were ranking well for most of the keywords.These keywords were at first page i.e mostly @ 1st and 2nd position in Google.But we have put the following tag ie no index tag for our pages by mistake and after that the ranking fluctuated & fell down in Google search results as our pages were out of index in Google .We have removed the noindex tag after encountering the problem.Now I can see my pages are cached & indexed in Google after submitting to index in Google webmaster tool.Can I regain my ranking for the keywords and within how many days I would regain my previous ranking?
Technical SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
Effect of 302 redirects from empty parent page to sub page
A client's website has links to their service pages which then redirect (302 through a php "Location:" header) to that service's first sub-page. For example, our-services/service-x redirects to our-services/service-x/about-service-x I can only think this has been done because there is no actual content for the parent page and to maintain some kind of structure for navigation and URLs. Really there's no reason why the 'about-service-x' page can't be removed and its content transferred to the main 'service-x' page. Then the redirects can be removed also - it's not how a 302 should be used for a start. I'm just wondering what kind of effect this current redirection has on SEO, as I know 302s don't pass any link juice? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | driftingbass0 -
Help! Pages not being indexed
Hi Mozzers, I need your help.
Technical SEO | | bshanahan
Our website (www.barnettcapitaladvisors.com) stopped being indexed in search engines following a round of major changes to URLs and content. There were a number of dead links for a few days before 301 redirects were properly put in place. And now, only 3 pages show up in bing when I do the search "site:barnettcapitaladvisors.com". A bunch of pages show up in Google for that search, but they're not any of the pages we want to show up. Our home page and most important services pages are nowhere in search results. What's going on here?
Our sitemap is at http://www.barnettcapitaladvisors.com/sites/default/files/users/AndrewCarrillo/sitemap/sitemap.xml
Robots.txt is at: http://www.barnettcapitaladvisors.com/robots.txt Thanks!0 -
Page rank and ranking down
Hi I blog at Technostarry. Some 3 months back during page rank update, my page rank went down from 3 to 2. I don't know the reason behind this. And now, my traffic and ranking is also down. I am not involved in any bad SEO practices, I don't copy paste and I write original content. I am too confused as why and what has happened with my site. If someone could analyze my blog and look at my weak points then that would be great. I would like to get any suggestions to get back my ranking and also page rank back. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | technotech0 -
Page rank 2 for home page, 3 for service pages
Hey guys, I have noticed with one of our new sites, the home page is showing page rank two, whereas 2 of the internal service pages are showing as 3. I have checked with both open site explorer and yahoo back links and there are by far more links to the home page. All quality and relevant directory submissions and blog comments. The site is only 4 months old, I wonder if anyone can shed any light on the fact 2 of the lesser linked pages are showing higher PR? Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nextman0 -
So I Get An Interior Page To Rank, But Lower. How does that help?
Hi, So, I have a term that would bounce around #3 to 5 for. I make a page some months ago that is solely targeted to that term. And, voila! Google sees the new page as the best result instead of the home page and the new page ranks, but at #9 or #10. Of course the homepage is a stronger page, but the new page is better targeted to that term. Using the handy SEOMoz toolbar, the homepage has a page authority of 59 and the newer interior page has 32. Both are equally functional to my purpose. Part of me just wants to 301 in the interior page to the homepage and forget about it. It would take forever to get that interior page up to a similar page authority through the magic of links. What do you think I should do. I feel like I'm channeling Wile E. Coyote. Thanks! Best...Mike
Technical SEO | | 945010