Landing pages rank higher thank home page
-
Ive been tasked to work on several sites from a client that had some shady past seo work done for them. Weak content, tons of useless links all pointing to home page, etc. Ive gone through site and given a total re-write and worked on removing and dissavowing links.
Majority of the sites home page ranked high on first page google. Now the sites are closer to 100 rank than first page, and the odd thing is that home page cant be found but pages like terms and conditions or disclaimer are ranking. These pages have hardly no content compared to home pages, and while they are still ranked 80 to 100 positions back they are ranking while the home page cant be found.
We have tried changing anchor text to "click here", and "for more info" instead of keyword and nothing much changed yet. Competition still has pretty much keyword anchor text and worthless links and they still rank well.
Am I wasting time with rewrites and link dissavows or should I continue and eventually get the sites home page to come back on the radar? We have added social media presence and a blog that we post to regularly and for 6 months of work have hardly seen a dent for improved rankings.
Am I on the right page or spinning my wheels? Any advise is appreciated.
-
Hi Anthony
Kurt's answer was pretty dead on (thanks Kurt!).
Just want to add some more detail about the disavow specifically. We've been told by John Muller in some of his Google Hangouts (he works on the webmaster tools team) that the disavow can take up to 6 months to fully take effect. This is because Google has to have crawled all the domains/pages in the disavow file, based upon their own crawl schedule (having nothing to do with when you submit the file). As they crawl the disavowed URLs, they then add a nofollow basically on those links.
Sounds like you're doing the right things! I would also think about being sure to try to get traffic from other places in the meantime, even paid. I have heard John also suggest that you can start testing page quality with PPC traffic. I also believe evidence of other traffic sources, especially social, will help any site recover much more quickly.
-
Hi Anthony,
It sounds like your on the right path. Make sure the site has good, quality, optimized content. Analyze the link profile and deal with the issues you find. Create new quality content that is remarkable and get it in front of people via social networks, guest blogging, etc.
It's not a quick process, though. It sounds like the site you are working on was in pretty bad shape, dealing with both Panda and Penguin issues, including spammy links and over-optimized anchor text. It's a lot to fix and Google doesn't just bounce you right back to where you were. First, Google wants to see that you are really back on the straight and narrow and aren't going to try any more spammy stuff. Secondly, the rankings the site had before weren't legit. The site had them because of manipulative strategies which are no longer working. Think of it this way...
If I weighed 250 lbs and I wanted to lose weight. If, instead of working out and eating right, I decided to lose weight by adjusting the scale and I adjust it to the point where it says I weigh 200 lbs. The scale may indicate I'm losing weight, but I'm not. It's fake. If someone then comes in and fixes the scale so it can't be adjusted, I shouldn't expect that the scale would still say I'm 200 lbs because that wasn't real. It'll say I way 250 lbs (or may more). In a similar way, if you manipulate the search engines to give certain rankings instead of getting those rankings by creating great content and getting links naturally, then when the search engines change so you can't manipulate them anymore, you shouldn't expect to keep those fake rankings. You'll be back to where you were at the start, possibly worse off if you get penalized.
So, you are on the right path, but you (and your client) need to have the proper expectations. You may have more issues to deal with and you probably need to be creating new, remarkable content so people will share/like/link the content and build the site's authority up...the right way.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com
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
-
Second anchor text on page. Does it count?
Back in 2008 there was "proof" that the anchor text of a second link on a page would not be counted for the anchor text.
Link Building | | Stramark
In the MOZ starter guide it is still advocated: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/learn/seo/anchor-text BUT in 2014 it was reported on searchengine land:
http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718
That the second link might be counted. Direct link to the matt cuts video from 28 may 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AsLWIuNNMU (Even in 2010 there where already some different opinions and work arounds.
https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/the-first-link-counts-rule-and-the-hash-sign
https://mza.seotoolninja.com/ugc/3-ways-to-avoid-the-first-link-counts-rule (2011) Question: did anyone recently test this recently? The deeper questions are:
1:is the LINK value counted if you have more that one link on a page to another page?
2: is the Anchor text counted if you have more than one anchortext to another page? The most interresting i have is that i have a menu from which i link to my important pages. Does it help to put extra links in the content to specific pages?1 -
How Many Keywords & How Will They Take to Rank?
Hi Guys Just taken on a new site with around 80 keywords with no links because the site is new. Each page is optimised correctly, very user friendly with completely unique content for each and every page. I'm interested to know what would be your online marketing "plan" for such site to begin ranking. Thanks Gary
Link Building | | GaryVictory0 -
Should I Be Concerned About Unnatural Links Pointing to 404 Pages?
I bought an existing domain name on Sedo sometime ago and launched a new website on it in early June this year. I noticed there are about 5 or 6 spammy links from directories that were obviously bought by the previous domain owner but they're pointing to pages that never existed on the new website. Other than that, the link profile is 100% clean and it's quite good actually, lots of links from my content being shared on social networks. So should I be worried about these links? Like a lot of webmasters, I'd like to avoid using the disavow tool, I really don't trust that thing.
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
Number of pages to target per Keyword
Hello, I Want Help my company with our webpage we are "manufacturers" and "wholesale Suppliers" our products are "Transponder Keys", "Automotive Door Locks". On my keyword research on Adwords I Found "Transponder Key" = 1600 Exact Global Searches so, long tail Keywords like "Transponder Key Manufacturer" have less Searches but are less competitive. I´m trying to Target "Transponder Key Manufacturer""Transponder Key Supplier"
Link Building | | iKsn
"Transponder Key" Main Question, when you do SEO for webpage, all your seo campaign goes for 1 webpage, example www.example.com/new_seo_content.html or one page for groups of similar keywords like Transponder key, transponder key manufacturer, transponder key supplier0 -
Ranking for multiple cities
My current method is creating a post/page for each city a client wishes to rank for with unique content. Is this really the best way? Is it best practice? If not. What is?
Link Building | | RickyShockley0 -
Should I work on links to a specific page or site in general?
Hi Guys, I'm trying to have my page rank better for "sell my car Houston". I'm about to start working on getting links to our site and my question is should I work on getting links to that specific page or would it be OK to just get links to the home page (same seo effect)? Specific page: http://www.motorsonwheels.com/pages/sell-my-car-in-houston-tx Home page: http://www.motorsonwheels.com Thanks! -Nash
Link Building | | nkabbara0 -
2 links going to same domain but different pages
Hi, How is the link juice distributed when you have 2 links in the same article but they go to different pages on the same domain? I know some say if 2 links go to the same page in an article then only the first link passes juice. Would it be better to have 2 articles each having 1 link or 2 articles each having 2 links?
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Why is my Page Rank 0.
Hi, I am trying to understand why my Page Rank is 0. Many forums say that it is because my site has been blocked by google. Any help with this would be much appreciated. http://davincidrivers.com
Link Building | | MariaPerrone0