Homepage no longer showing in Google.co.uk
-
Hi guys,
Has anyone ever had this before? My clients website was appearing 4 & 5 in Google.co.uk for the keyword 'voltage optimisation'.
Since moving up in the rankings after furiously optimising the website we have now gotten to position 3 in Google.co.uk but the homepage ranking has disappeared and now is just displaying our 'what is voltage optimisation' page. I'm guessing Google feels that this page is more useful to someone searching 'voltage optimisation' but my client wants answers?!
It's almost like Google have said, "if you want to take position 3 were only going to list one of your pages" because everytime we drop back down to position 4 our homepage appears position 5.
-
LOL. Sounds like an opportunity for an upsell to me
I'd look for some variants where the home page does rank 1 and say "well, here's something we managed to arrange for you....."
-
Thanks for your responses, I didn't think there would be a straight forward answer and it is most likely that Google feels that this is the most relevant page for that particular search query which is what I have told them. They are wanting suggestions on how to replace this page with the homepage?! They just don't understand how it use to be there along with other page and no it isn't. Interestingly if you search in https://www.google.ie the SERP's display the same as .co.uk use to display.
-
Generally I find that what happens with a new website is that I start off with several category pages that rank for a number of main keywords. As the site develops and we look to increase rankings you tend to build specialist pages that then overtake the main category pages. So here is an example of what you see in Moz
In this case we were optimising for a type of steel called S690QL1. To start with it ranked in SERPS on the page for High yield steel. As we optimised the site further we saw the page S690QL replace the high yield steel page in rankings (on june 20th). Then on August 29th S690QL1 then replace the S690QL page and it now looks to be at number 3.
So you should be able to see something similar in your "analyse a keyword" on moz pro.
-
It is normal for Google to optimise there own serps to deliver the most relevant pages, as such your "what is voltage optimisation" is clearly deemed the more relevant for users searching. From my experience the home page tends to be displayed mainly when surrounding branded search.
-
Maybe google is testing the two landing pages to see which is better for the user? I am assuming here that Google has signals that indicate whether a site/page is useful or not to the people using the query to find them. I've noticed this sort of thing happen to my sites and it always settles down in the end.
As for your client - I'm in-house now, but when I was agency-side I would have found a questioning client tricky. I think though, that honesty is the best policy - even if you have to say "I don't know why Google is behaving this way. I am looking into possible reasons why this could be happening, but I may never find the answer. I am monitoring your site and am continuing to optimise your homepage for the keyword, 'voltage optimisation'."
Sometimes clients can be difficult, but they have to understand that some of the things Google does are a complete mystery, and that's just the way it is.
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 some pages are not showing cached in Google, WHY?
I have website http://www.vipcollisionlv.com/ and when i check the cache status with tags **site:http:vipcollisionlv.com, **some page has no cache status.. you can see this in image. How to resolve this issue. please help me.
Technical SEO | | 1akal0 -
Google Crawling Issues! How Can I Get Google to Crawl My Website Regularly?
Hi Everyone! My website is not being crawled regularly by Google - there are weeks when it's regular but for the past month or so it does not get crawled for seven to eight days. There are some specific pages, that I want to get ranked but they of late are not being crawled AT ALL unless I use the 'Fetch As Google' tool! That's not normal, right? I have checked and re-checked the on-page metrics for these pages (and the website as a whole, backlinking is a regular and ongoing process as well! Sitemap is in place too! Resubmitted it once too! This issue is detrimental to website traffic and rankings! Would really appreciate insights from you guys! Thanks a lot!
Technical SEO | | farhanm1 -
.com and .co.uk duplicate content
hi mozzers I have a client that has just released a .com version of their .co.uk website. They have basically re-skinned the .co.uk version with some US amends so all the content and title tags are the same. What you do recommend? Canonical tag to the .co.uk version? rewrite titles?
Technical SEO | | KarlBantleman0 -
Google having trouble accessing my site
Hi google is having problem accessing my site. each day it is bringing up access denied errors and when i have checked what this means i have the following Access denied errors In general, Google discovers content by following links from one page to another. To crawl a page, Googlebot must be able to access it. If you’re seeing unexpected Access Denied errors, it may be for the following reasons: Googlebot couldn’t access a URL on your site because your site requires users to log in to view all or some of your content. (Tip: You can get around this by removing this requirement for user-agent Googlebot.) Your robots.txt file is blocking Google from accessing your whole site or individual URLs or directories. Test that your robots.txt is working as expected. The Test robots.txt tool lets you see exactly how Googlebot will interpret the contents of your robots.txt file. The Google user-agent is Googlebot. (How to verify that a user-agent really is Googlebot.) The Fetch as Google tool helps you understand exactly how your site appears to Googlebot. This can be very useful when troubleshooting problems with your site's content or discoverability in search results. Your server requires users to authenticate using a proxy, or your hosting provider may be blocking Google from accessing your site. Now i have contacted my hosting company who said there is not a problem but said to read the following page http://www.tmdhosting.com/kb/technical-questions/other/robots-txt-file-to-improve-the-way-search-bots-crawl/ i have read it and as far as i can see i have my file set up right which is listed below. they said if i still have problems then i need to contact google. can anyone please give me advice on what to do. the errors are responce code 403 User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /xmlrpc/0 -
Remove Site from Google
How can I get my website out of google? I want all pages completely gone. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
UK website ranking higher in Google.com than Google.co.uk
Hi, I have a UK website which was formerly ranked 1<sup>st</sup> in Google.co.uk and .com for my keyword phrase and has recently slipped to 6<sup>th</sup> in .co.uk but is higher in position 4 in Google.com. I have conducted a little research and can’t say for certain but I wonder if it is possible that too many of my backlinks are US based and therefore Google thinks my website is also US based. Checked Google WmT and we the geo-targeted to the UK. Our server is also UK based. Does anyone have an opinion on this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | tdsnet0 -
Google and QnA sites
My website has a QnA site - a bit like this one except it's not private to premium members. It is a page with a left colomn for category links and it has a list of recently asked questions, each question is a link to view the full question and answers etc. Does google know this is a QnA ? Or will it say - hey, there are far too many links on this page, tut tut. Is there anything I can do to help it understand what the page is.
Technical SEO | | borderbound0 -
Google rankings tanked....Now what?
We just experience a drop in Google rankings, some pretty harsh, across all of the keywords we have been ranking greater than 50. I’m a noob at SEO, but a technical noob so I started doing my home work. I’ve seen references to the “google dance” and “Honeymoon”, but this hit seems to have effected competitors too. Everyone seems re-ranked with several junk directories jumping up more than I think they should. Has anyone else seen this? Is this more Google algorithm adjustment or a natural settling based on our new SEO attempts? In either case, what should we do next? I know there is a holistic approach and everything is important however, we need bang for the buck at this point to before we start bleeding. One or two next steps? Our industry is residential cleaning and the site is www.bitabliss.com Here is a little history:
Technical SEO | | BitABliss
The site that’s been running for about 2 years. We initially put up a very basic “throw something up” site without much thought of SEO except for some basics and a long tail approach with a blog, FaceBook and Twitter. We launched an updated site on Feb 23. with new theme and this time some, “on page” work to better hit the basics. The site structure was kept the same and we added on some more localized content in hopes to take advantage of local searches. Also, enter SEOMoz to get us tracking things (Yay MOZ). Until yesterday, we had been doing pretty well in some of our target cites even with the more basic site. When we launched the new site focusing on page titles, descriptions and page content, and a few directory attempts. We started to see some incremental growth. It seemed to me that this kind of growth meant that we were doing the right things and doing a better job than some of the other sites. Any way, yesterday we got smacked down. This seems too harsh for a for the slow increases we have seen over the last month. Any thoughts you have would be great appreciated. Thanks! -Shawn1