Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Blog posts not showing in serps for exact match title search
-
hi-
my first client ranks #1 for the exact phrase of each blog post title
the 2nd client doesnt rank anywhere when i search for the exact post title
2nd client has robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/so that shouldnt noindex any posts right?
his site ranks for many kw's - but oddly none of his blog posts are anywhere to be found - i dont mean for a kw search - i mean for searching for the entire title he doesnt rank anywhere in first 5 pages for any of 6-7 posts i checked
any idea what could cause this?
thanks
-
Also check Google webmaster Tools. When doing a site: of your site, there are some odd-looking SERPs and at least one page has a message that the site might be compromised.
-
Taswir, every page on your website has a meta-no-index. no-follow tag in the header. This explicitly tells the search engines NOT to include you pages/posts in the search results.
On WordPress sites, this is usually caused by having the "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" box in the Reading section of the Settings checked. This is often set this way during development, then folks forget to remove it when the site goes live.
Remove the check mark from that box and the engines should start indexing your pages within a day or so.
If that box isn't checked, check for plugins that might have the same settings - like SEO plugins.
That should do it.
Paul
[Included a screenshot to show where in the navigation to find the setting to change]
-
Hi Paul would you please also have a look on my blog http://www.thetopblogger.com as I am also facing the same problem. When I search with the URL at Google, the URL appears on top but when I check with "Exact Post Title" from my bog, this doesn't pull the related post from my blog.
I checked more than 15 posts in this way and so far only 1 post ranked on #6 though the post title is exactly matching with my search.
I am not a expert at Robots.txt but you can check my blog's robots.txt file too. http://www.thetopblogger.com/robots.txt
Waiting for your reply Bro. Thank you.
Regards
Taswir
-
There are a number of issues that are likely causing indexing problems with this site, Eric, but I'm going to have to be up front with you.
The site's business model is so completely against the search engines' terms of service, and is contributing to the low opinion so many in the public have of SEO, that regretfully I must decline to provide any further help with this particular site.
This is my own judgement call and is not intended to reflect on you in any way.
Paul
-
I must've gotten confused with wp-content. Thanks for clearing up Paul!
-
Wp-includes doesn't include any user content, William. The wp-content folder is where all user-uploaded images, pdfs etc are stored, so removing wp-includes from the robots.txt won' t have any effect on whether posts/pages are indexing or not.
But even if such content were in that blocked directory, posts and pages are in the database and are output from their respective pseudo index pages, none of which are ni the /wp-includes directory.
I'm just on my out the door, Eric, but if you want to PM me a few example URLs/pages, I'd be happy to have a look. Or of course you could post them publicly here for others to give you a hand, if you're comfortable with that. It's pretty hard to address problems like this without being able to research the actual pages.
Paul
-
I'd troubleshoot the site by removing /wp-includes/ mainly because from what I understand images are pulled from that dir usually. Or a lot of content is from wp-includes.
Remove it and see if that helps.
I'd also check WMT and use Googlebot to fetch the site. Usually that works on getting things indexed quicker. I would also check WMT messages to see if there was any manual action taken on your client's account.
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
-
My url disappeared from Google but Search Console shows indexed. This url has been indexed for more than a year. Please help!
Super weird problem that I can't solve for last 5 hours. One of my urls: https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html Has been indexed for more than a year and also has an AMP version, few hours ago I realized that it had disappeared from serps. We were ranking on page 1 for several key terms. When I perform a search "site:dcacar.com " the url is no where to be found on all 5 pages. But when I check my Google Console it shows as indexed I requested to index again but nothing changed. All other 50 or so urls are not effected at all, this is the only url that has gone missing can someone solve this mystery for me please. Thanks a lot in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davit19850 -
Disallow: /jobs/? is this stopping the SERPs from indexing job posts
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesHancocks1
I was wondering what this would be used for as it's in the Robots.exe of a recruitment agency website that posts jobs. Should it be removed? Disallow: /jobs/?
Disallow: /jobs/page/*/ Thanks in advance.
James0 -
Author Byline in Page Title in SERP
I was exploring my company's visibility in Google News results, and I noticed the author byline in a recently published article was being pulled into the page title in the SERP. See the attached image for a screenshot. It makes it sound awkward: "How to Find the Best Cannabis Experience and High for You Patrick..." - as if we're explaining it to some guy named Patrick? We have the byline the same way in all other posts, but this is the first I've seen this happen. Has anyone seen/had this happen, and if so, have any ways to prevent it? Thanks in advance for any insights! Here's the post URL: https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/how-to-find-best-cannabis-experience-high csvmF
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davidkaralisjr0 -
Blog comments - backlinks - question
Hi, I see that many good websites have backlinks from very good blogs/sites which are relative. What I noticed that everyone use their real name or generic name in comments. They do not use the keyword for the name. So later they get backlinks with anchor text of their names... So, my question is this good technique ? Do I have any benefits from these backlinks for my website ? With such a technique, whether it is enough just to leave your real name or may I periodically put the keyword for the name ? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ivek990 -
Is a different location in page title, h1 title, and meta description enough to avoid Duplicate Content concern?
I have a dynamic website which will have location-based internal pages that will have a <title>and <h1> title, and meta description tag that will include the subregion of a city. Each page also will have an 'info' section describing the generic product/service offered which will also include the name of the subregion. The 'specific product/service content will be dynamic but in some cases will be almost identical--ie subregion A may sometimes have the same specific content result as subregion B. Will the difference of just the location put in each of the above tags be enough for me to avoid a Duplicate Content concern?</p></title>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | couponguy0 -
Is it worth removing date from Blog Posts / Articles
Wondering, is it worth to remove date from articles from seo perspective. Am sure, Google search algorithm would like demote a post written a year back, as against an article on the same post (unless a year old post has very strong Authoritative links) May be it can turn out a bad user experience of removing dates, but if can hide date using Javascripts so as to show it as image to user and hide it from search engines, is it a good idea !!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Article/ Blog Post submissions
Hello All, I'm looking to perform a 'Standard' guest blog post link building tactic, but i'm a little unsure as where to start. Does anybody have a list/ guide to websites that accept guest posts? Preferably ones that are useful for SEO purposes, I have been link building for about 3 months now, but to be honest, most of these links are NoFollow, which isn't too great! Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul_Tovey0 -
Exact keyword URL or not?
Hi all, I have a quick question about the proper use of permalinks. Let's say that I have a website about sports and I want to create an internal page dedicated to shoes. I know that the keyword "shoe" has 15.000 monthly visits, while the keyword "shoes" has 1.000 monthly visits. How do I have to name the internal page? http://www.example.com/shoe or http://www.example.com/shoes (with a final 's')? I would think that by naming the URL http://www.example.com/shoes, the search engine would consider that page for the keywords "shoe" and "shoes", but I am not sure about it. Should I create a URL that only focuses on one specific keyword ("shoe", in this example) or a URL that may encompass more than one keyword ("shoe" and "shoes")? I hope this is clear. Thank you for your time and help. All best, Sal
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0