Bad performance for low competition term (Take two)
-
Hi all! I asked the question below a little while back and got some great responses. Most said that the link profile needed A LOT of work.
This got me thinking. As it is quite a low competition term, and I have control over a few of its inbound links, would it be easier to move to a new domain and start again? That is, no 301, just move the site and update it in WMT?
Hi everybody. I've been working on this page for some time, http://www.double-glazing-forum.com/anglian-windows.aspx. Until several months ago, it ranked really well for the terms 'Anglian windows' and 'Anglian windows reviews'. However, following a Google update it tanked and has got worse ever since. Here's what I've done to try and fix it.
Added 800 words of unique copy
Added YouTube videos
Replaced scraped press releases with unique descriptions that link to the source
Analysed the backlink profile and uploaded a disavow file containing all bad links
Contacted webmaster to remove them where possible
Getting a bit low on ideas now, so any help would be great!
-
Hi There
I believe I recall chiming in on the original question. I would definitely still bring up that I'm not sure this page really targets "reviews" as I don't really see reviews very explicitly anywhere on the page? Definitely need to have a good keyword -> content match to rank.
Echoing Peter's good remarks, I have heard John Muller from Google in his hangouts state many times that they do not want to rank pages that pull content from other sources without offering much unique on top of that. This is part of the Panda algo and to get back ahead, the content needs to be unique and add value on top of other places you can find the same or very similar content on the web.
-Dan
-
Hi, it's an option to scrap and start again although bear in mind that the current domain is four years old and a new domain will lose that and any authority it has accrued.
That said, maybe the real issue is that your page has suffered in terms of its ranking because of Google's own shake up to the pages it ranks for "Anglian Windows" and "Anglian Windows reviews" and its objective to provide pages that offer relevant and unique content in its search results.
Looking at the page with an embedded YouTube video and lots of content scraped from other sites, does that genuinely fit the intent of someone searching for reviews about Anglian Windows. IMHO I am not sure it does and with the recent Hummingbird update to Google's algorithm, providing unique relevant content is even more important.
I hope that helps,
Peter
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
-
If I disavow bad Backlinks of my website. If, I create Backlinks again, those websites. Did that again become count in my Backlinks?
Hi, all please tell me. If I disavow bad Backlinks of my website. If, I create Backlinks again, those websites. Did that again become count in my Backlinks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sourav60 -
Splitting One Site Into Two Sites Best Practices Needed
Okay, working with a large site that, for business reasons beyond organic search, wants to split an existing site in two. So, the old domain name stays and a new one is born with some of the content from the old site, along with some new content of its own. The general idea, for more than just search reasons, is that it makes both the old site and new sites more purely about their respective subject matter. The existing content on the old site that is becoming part of the new site will be 301'd to the new site's domain. So, the old site will have a lot of 301s and links to the new site. No links coming back from the new site to the old site anticipated at this time. Would like any and all insights into any potential pitfalls and best practices for this to come off as well as it can under the circumstances. For instance, should all those links from the old site to the new site be nofollowed, kind of like a non-editorial link to an affiliate or advertiser? Is there weirdness for Google in 301ing to a new domain from some, but not all, content of the old site. Would you individually submit requests to remove from index for the hundreds and hundreds of old site pages moving to the new site or just figure that the 301 will eventually take care of that? Is there substantial organic search risk of any kind to the old site, beyond the obvious of just not having those pages to produce any more? Anything else? Any ideas about how long the new site can expect to wander the wilderness of no organic search traffic? The old site has a 45 domain authority. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Bad Backlink?
Hi I found this site whilst looking through WMT backlinks to our site: http://www.buildingarena.co.uk/companies/key-industrial-equipment Is this type of iFrame of our site a bad signal to Google? It's not something we've done, so I'd like to know before getting it removed. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Do low quality subdomains affect the ranking performance/quality of a root domain?
Hi, Late last year the company I work for launched two new websites that, at the time, we believed were completely separate from our main website. The two new websites were set up externally and were not well-planned from an SEO perspective (LOTS of duplicate content) - hence, they have struggled to rank on Google. Since the launch of the new websites we have also noticed that our main website (that previously ranked very well) has suffered a decline in visitation and search engine rank. We initially attributed this to a number of factors, including the state of the market, and ramped up our SEO efforts (seeing minor improvement). We have since realised that these two new websites have been set up as subdomains of our main website, with MOZ displaying the same domain authority and root domain backlink profile. My question is, do poor quality subdomains affect the ranking performance of a root domain? I have not yet managed to find a definitive answer. Please let me know if more information is required - I am quite new to the whole SEO concept. Thanks! Amy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | paulissai0 -
Reversing the bad effects of a problematic 301 redirect
I have a previously very strong ranking page that is now omitted from the SERPs, but only for one specific keyword phrase. I think I found the reason, which I'll explain, and I hope I can hear some confirmation of my theory and a way to correct it. Let's use the following made up domain and keywords: Political blog SiteA.com had a few news articles about "Blue Widgets" (like 10 out of 10,000 pages). They became exceedingly popular, so on SiteA.com we created a reference-type page about "Blue Widgets" and in the news articles we already had about Blue Widgets we added rich anchor text (Blue Widgets) links that pointed to this new About Blue Widgets page. (long before we wised up about keyword rich anchor texts and Google!) After seeing how much traffic was coming to the About Blue Widgets page, we created a whole new site, SiteB.com, which was about Widgets (not just Blue Widgets), a page for each color of widget, and other pages about widgets. SiteB.com has an important and popular page, SiteB.com/blue-widgets, which is about Blue Widgets. We then 301 redirected the SiteA.com's About Blue Widgets page to SiteB.com/blue-widgets. This page in SiteB.com ranked very high (like #2, #3) for years. Two weeks ago SiteB.com/blue-widgets fell out of the SERPs, but only for the phrase "Blue Widgets". The page still gets lots of traffic from other queries, and even the "Blue Widgets" query will bring up other pages on SiteB.com. So, the only thing hit is the specific query "Blue Widgets" for the specific page SiteB.com/blue-widgets. It seems obvious to me that Google took the combination of a) a site that it probably no longer liked since we sold it (SiteA.com) since it's gone downhill, b) the rich keyword anchor text on SiteA.com pages pointing to the SiteA.com page optimized for that keyword, and c) then being 301 Redirected to a SiteB.com Blue Widgets page optimized for that same anchor text. I only discovered the SiteA.com redirects last week, which I had completely forgotten about, and had them removed right away. My question is, 1) if this indeed was the issue, now that the redirects from SiteA.com to SiteB.com are gone will my ranking eventually go back to normal? and 2) is there anything I can do to get Google to notice the change and have it go back to how it was?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
Umbrella company is taking Domain and link strength!
Hi everyone! First thanks for reading this, I really appreciate it. The company I work for has two sites one is an event website and the other is a blog. The blog gets a great amount of the traffic and propels sales. The event website doesn't get much traffic but has been around for awhile and has garnered a 6 Google Page rank with a lot of backlinks and referring domains. The event website, though, has the same name of the company and this sometimes gets confusing when talking to businesses so the executives in charge want to make the event website an umbrella site for the company (very similar to Virgin's website). They will keep the event website but rebrand it with a new domain and basically start over. The good news about this is the event website, even though it has high link strength, has a lot of 404s because they had a previous database that they dumped leading to a lot of 404s (I made them change those to 410s). Here's my issue. I want to keep the SEO strength of the event website for the event website. Could I do a 301 redirect for a couple months and then take it off and make the umbrella site? Would the strength pass? Or would it be possible to do a 301 redirect in the subfolders where most of the content and links are? Or would you recommend another method of transferring the strength of the site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Therealmattyd0 -
Client hell bent on grabbing a competitive .net domain
Hi all, Firstly, i'm a content guy! Thrown into SEO at the deep end, but absolutley loving it and the community. I need some advice, so i'm popping my cherry with this one: I have a client who is in the service industry, very competitive and in a City, so it's all local. He has branded site that has had little investment in SEO and a huge PPC spend over the years. After a lot of nagging they are getting the message that PPC is a massive money tap and as soon as it's turned off that's it - gone! They have had conversations and hit me up with this as their want. Example: They see www.londoncakebakers.com / .co.uk which is a site belonging to Smiths Cakes. They have spotted that www.londoncakebakers.net is free to purchase! You know what's coming right? They want to buy it, get me to design a site for it and deploy SEO on it in a big way! The key phrases are all in the domain name and all the obvious benefits. Am I over thinking this and should embrace it, or should I advise, no, no, no? Thanks in advance. Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UrbanMark0 -
Two Brands One Site (Duplicate Content Issues)
Say your client has a national product, that's known by different brand names in different parts of the country. Unilever owns a mayonnaise sold East of the Rockies as "Hellmanns" and West of the Rockies as "Best Foods". It's marketed the same way, same slogan, graphics, etc... only the logo/brand is different. The websites are near identical with different logos, especially the interior pages. The Hellmanns version of the site has earned slightly more domain authority. Here is an example recipe page for some "WALDORF SALAD WRAPS by Bobby Flay Recipe" http://www.bestfoods.com/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1 http://www.hellmanns.us/recipe_detail.aspx?RecipeID=12497&version=1 Both recipie pages are identical except for one logo. Neither pages ranks very well, neither has earned any backlinks, etc... Oddly the bestfood version does rank better (even though everything is the same, same backlinks, and hellmanns.us having more authority). If you were advising the client, what would you do. You would ideally like the Hellmann version to rank well for East Coast searches, and the Best Foods version for West Coast searches. So do you: Keep both versions with duplicate content, and focus on earning location relevant links. I.E. Earn Yelp reviews from east coast users for Hellmanns and West Coast users for Best foods? Cross Domain Canonical to give more of the link juice to only one brand so that only one of the pages ranks well for non-branded keywords? (but both sites would still rank for their branded keyworkds). No Index one of the brands so that only one version gets in the index and ranks at all. The other brand wouldn't even rank for it's branded keywords. Assume it's not practical to create unique content for each brand (the obvious answer). Note: I don't work for Unilver, but I have a client in a similar position. I lean towards #2, but the social media firm on the account wants to do #1. (obviously some functionally based bias in both our opinions, but we both just want to do what will work best for client). Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crvw0