Why have I disappeared from 1st page to outside top 100 results?
-
I have been #2 in Google for "plenty more fish" for about 8 years and have now disappeared.
I've been told that I have no manual spam action against my domain www.plentymorefish.net.
Can anyone suggest why I have disappeared and how I might rectify this?
My guess is something to do with the Panda update Sept 27th - EMD (Exact Match Domain), although I don't understand why Google have left a competitors site #1 as this also has exact match domain. Maybe they've just picked one exact match domain to display and have not chosen mine as the .com has a better overall SEO score.
Appreciate any assitance. Thanks.
-
Hey, no worries, glad it helped!
-
Thanks Marcus, that's really helped. I've discovered that old pages Google had indexed are still accessible even though they can't be found via links from the site.
-
I googled a chunk of text of a page, there is probably a lot of other duplication:
"Register free for Plenty More Fish online dating in Scotland"
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
Hi Marcus, thanks for your comments.
I realise I've been on borrowed time with this one which is why I introduced a blog nearly 12 months ago to try and improve the content quality but I guess this has not been enough. I know the blog isn't amazing, but certainly more recent post are unique, relevant and well written. http://www.plentymorefish.net/fish-dating/
How did you come across the URL http://plentymorefish.net/scotland ?
I spider the site with Xenu to check it but I can't find that URL.
Thanks
Paul
-
Hey, as Adam said below, your site is a prime candidate for these recent penalties and algorithm updates.
- You have no branded URL anchors pointing to your site
- You have a heavy keyword volume in your anchor text
- You have dodgy sitewide links from sites that I am guessing may also be yours: http://www.lovesecondtimearound.com/
You also have some duplicate content issues
http://plentymorefish.net/scotland / http://www.plentymorefish.net/Dating-in-Scotland.htm
Then, the site has little positive to prop it up in a heavy and competitive industry.
- No natural editorial style links
- No unique or valuable content
Ultimately, sites are having to justify their existence and old strategies of EMD domains and interlinking networks of sites are just not cutting it any longer.
The page 100 thing seem excessive though and more penalty than devaluation so sort out your duplication and linking issues and you should see some return to form but I would be surprised if you could go first page again with some additional content and links to help justify that position.
Sorry to be the barer of bad news!
Marcus
-
Thanks Adam. That confirmed my thoughts really. I just wanted to check if I'd missed something.
-
Sounds like you may have been hit by the EMD update. The update didn't hurt all exact domain sites - only those that Google deemed low quality.
I looked at your backlink profile and found multiple footer links that look like they might be paid links or doorway sites. It's possible that these links played a factor in why your site's ranking was reduced.
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
-
Issue with AMP pages
Hello, We have implemented AMP on our blog pages, but now some of the Web pages are also being shown like AMP pages. ( no footer and no navigation ) What could have gone wrong ? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Johnroger0 -
Menu interlinking Pages
Hello, I have my most important pages in my menu. Those pages are present on all my pages because they are on the menu. Are those pages considered to be linking between each other because they are in the menu or should I create links between those pages in my text if I want them to link with each other ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Search Results Pages Blocked in Robots.txt?
Hi I am reviewing our robots.txt file. I wondered if search results pages should be blocked from crawling? We currently have this in the file /searchterm* Is it a good thing for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Pages Disappearing from Search
Hi, We have had a strongly ranking site since 2004. Over the past couple of days, our Google traffic has dropped by around 20% and some of our strong pages are completely disappearing from the rankings. They are still indexed, but having ranked number 1 are nowhere to be found. A number of pages still remain intact, but it seems they are increasingly disappearing. Where should we start to try and find out what is happening? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simonukss0 -
301 Externally Linked, But Non-Producing Pages, To Productive Pages Needing Links?
I'm working on a site that has some non-productive pages without much of an upside potential, but that are linked-to externally. The site also has some productive pages, light in external links, in a somewhat related topic. What do you think of 301ing the non-productive pages with links to the productive pages without links in order to give them more external link love? Would it make much of a difference? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Duplicated Pages and Forums
Does duplicate content hurt that particular duplicated content, or the entire site? There are some parts of my site that I don’t care about getting high rankings on search engines. For example, I have a forum and there are certain links that only logged in people can see. If you aren’t logged in, they will take you to a page where it tells u to log in. google, obviously not logged in, interprets this as lots and lots of the same duplicated page. Should I just leave it alone cause I dont care if those pages makes it to search engines. Will it not hurt the entire site? For example, can my homepage search rankings decrase? That leads to my next question. What is the best way to optimize a forum? Whenever someone posts a new post, it seems another url for the same forum thread is created..... which is obviously duplicated….in other words, if like 20 people post on a thread, i believe my site adds 20 urls for that page...anyone know how to fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waltergah0 -
Do in page links pointing to the parent page make the page more relevant for that term?
Here's a technical question. Suppose I have a page relevant to the term "Mobile Phones". I have a piece of text, on that page talking about "mobile phones", and within that text is the term "cell phones". Now if I link the text "cell phones", to the page it is already placed on (ie the parent page) - will the page gain more relevancy for the term "cell phones"?? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James770 -
Noindex term for pages
I have a client who has a virtuemart site and all of the "ask a question on this product" had been indexed on google. I have managed to get a noindex meta tag into the ask a question page, will these be dropped from the index next time they are crawled and google sees the noindex?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webseoservices0