I must be doing something very wrong
-
Can I get some direct advice for a domain I am trying to optimize?
The domain is mmfiles.com , it contains software submitted by users, 1500 different listings/pages with title/description, around 20 000 Google results for the domain, site is live since Dec 2008.
Problem
I am getting 20-40 hits from Google per day, it is pathetic. Best days were around June 2010, ~400 hits/day (if it matters).
I am not sure what my problem is but with so much content and so little hits I must be doing something very wrong.
Some possible problems and things I did:
- Google says I have 8 back links, that is not good but I know it's not all about links.
- SeoMoz says I have "too many on page links", can this be so important ?
- How should I redirect users landing on an url that moved? e.g software title can change, old location /12/photo-gallery/ is now /12/xml-photo-gallery/ , if user lands on old URL should I 301 redirect to new one? Because I can tell it's intention by the listing number. I used to 301 redirect, now I just display same content on any url string like /12/whatever/
- I put rel="nofollow" on some internal pages like contact page, login, register, etc hoping to prevent diluting the page rank.
If someone can have a look at the site and mention the most obvious seo problems it would be great.
-
It looks like most of the content on your site is duplicate content. That's your biggest problem. Google doesn't like duplicate content, so if you want to rank, you're going to have to create content that is unique to your site.
Reducing the number of links you have on the page can help, and will probably be a better user experience. No use overwhelming the user or confusing the search spiders with tons of links.
Finally, do not nofollow your internal pages. This will not preserve page rank, it only results in link juice evaporation.
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
-
Wrong domain name showing in the SERP
I work with Axos Bank, and the domain name in the SERP started showing axos-services.com a couple of weeks ago. *As a test, search for [axos bank] in Google. You may need to click on "Search instead for axos bank" under "Showing results for axis bank" which is a whole separate issue we want to resolve. They do own axos-services.com, and it redirects to axosbank.com (along with a number of other domains). The SERP has always shown axosbank.com until recently, but the redirect has been in place for some time. Any idea why and how to prompt Google to show the correct domain? Thanks, all!
Technical SEO | | Gildej0 -
Something weird is happening with this keyword?!
Hey guys,
Technical SEO | | CongthanhThe
In the past weeks, i was ranking #4 for a keyword and as a result, I was getting a lot of traffic and I made some unremarkable modifications to page content and reindexed it.
after that, i noticed a drop in traffic, and when i checked it out, i noticed that the page is not ranking for that keyword anymore, it's no longer in the search engine (not even in page 15).
The funny thing is that if i add any letter to the main keyword (for example "Keyword" c) and search for it, my page ranks #1.
It's as if google bots are avoiding to rank my page for that main keyword only.
Ps: I didn't make any black hat SEO for that page or my website in general. No issues with other keywords i reindexed the page several times and what i noticed, is that in the first 4 hours i restore my ranking whit that keyword but after a while, the same problem occurs (My site disappears from the search engine)
If you have any idea about this issue, i will be grateful if you could help.
Thanks in advance0 -
Wrong canonical URL was specified. How to refresh the index now?
Wrong canonical URL was applied to thousands of pages of a client website, pointing them all to a single non-existing URL. Now Google has de-indexed most of those pages. We have fixed the problem now, but do we get Search engines crawl those pages again and start showing in Search results? I understand that a slow recovery is possible if we don't do anything. Was wondering if we can fast track the recovery... Any pointers? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Krupesh0 -
Wrong Title In SERP
Hi, When i search for specific keyword that i rank in Google, my title page is completely different from what i see on actual page, but when i search for my other keyword that i rank too, i can see exact same title that i have on my page for the same URL, I'm using Thesis theme to manage my meta tags, How can i change that Title, my CTR dropped dramatically for the past week since it happened Thanks
Technical SEO | | KentR0 -
What I doing wrong when trying to search for links from external websites to my website
This is just the little frustrating question nothing important but I’m sure somebody will know the answer. In the white board Friday this week Rand suggested at one point that when you’re searching for results links to your website if you put a - followed by site followed by your url like –site:yourwebsite.com you get the results of pages with links on other websites but excluding your own webpages but it just doesn’t work I get no results just an error message, any idea why? If I remove the - I get tons of results but there on my own webpages……….
Technical SEO | | whitbycottages0 -
Far away from top 50, am i doing it wrong or does it come down to linkbuilding?
Im currently far away from top 50 of a very crucial search term i google. Its my frontpage and the search term is aimed towards the city i live in Im having a hard time determing if its just a matter of linkbuilding. My concrern is if google have some kind of punishment on my frontpage or if the page. It could be a combination of SEO optimization that is not good enough and too little external links for the time being. The page has been live for a small month. Im in Denmark so there is no "sandbox" 🙂 my frontpage can be visited here:
Technical SEO | | Havalina
http://www.nikolajgrundtvig.dk Its in Danish, but you should have a idea of the structure and the amount of text on the page 🙂 Im a photographer btw 🙂 Best reguards!0 -
How do I put something below description in the SERPs of Google?
How do I put something below description, the search box within the website, and map in SERPs of Google? For example, when I enter ‘mit’ as the keyword in Google, the description of MIT is shown more. Many thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | OSO0 -
Is robots.txt a must-have for 150 page well-structured site?
By looking in my logs I see dozens of 404 errors each day from different bots trying to load robots.txt. I have a small site (150 pages) with clean navigation that allows the bots to index the whole site (which they are doing). There are no secret areas I don't want the bots to find (the secret areas are behind a Login so the bots won't see them). I have used rel=nofollow for internal links that point to my Login page. Is there any reason to include a generic robots.txt file that contains "user-agent: *"? I have a minor reason: to stop getting 404 errors and clean up my error logs so I can find other issues that may exist. But I'm wondering if not having a robots.txt file is the same as some default blank file (or 1-line file giving all bots all access)?
Technical SEO | | scanlin0