Google de-indexed a page on my site
-
I have a site which is around 9 months old. For most search terms we rank fine (including top 3 rankings for competitive terms).
Recently one of our pages has been fluctuating wildly in the rankings and has now disappeared altogether from the rankings for over 1 week.
As a test I added a similar page to one of my other sites and it ranks fine.
I've checked webmaster tools and there is nothing of note there.
I'm not really sure what to do at this stage. Any advice would me much appreciated!
-
Another thing which is weird:
If I google "site:medexpress.co.uk" the page /clinics/erectile-dysfunction/viagra appears.
If I google "site:medexpress.co.uk viagra" that page no longer appears!
I could see why my page would have maybe dropped in the rankings but to go from a rank of around 30-70 for most of the keywords for this page to dropping off the index points to something more extraordinary. Its been like this for almost two weeks and I'm considering maybe changing the URL (as I mentioned other long-tail optimized blog pages are now starting to rank so it appears to be just this page).
Is it possible this page has been moved to the supplemental index for some reason?
-
Hi,
The domain actually has plenty of links and that page has two very high quality backlinks. The Moz tool for some reason is missing almost all the backlinks. If you use AHREFS it works much better (remembering to use www as the prefix for the domain).
The domain authority is 49 which is much higher than the bulk of sites on there and higher than the site in position number #1 which has somehow managed to rank with almost no backlinks (it has less than 20) or any quality content.
Whats even weirded I added a page to my other site www.centraltravelclinic.co.uk and it now outranks my main site even though it has less backlinks/relevant content.
There is even a page in my blog section which is now ranking as well.
I'm not sure but it seems as if there is some penalty against this one page...or something has gone wrong on the search index and it has been temporarily removed for whatever reason.
Regards,
Dwayne
-
Hi Everett,
I agree 100% the domain itself has a great name, the lack of domain authority or links undoubtably has taken its toll surprised it ranks for anything the honest without any authority.
A content marketing campaign with high quality content covering the topics he discussed like law, medical care and including tools for the end-user would make it extremely brand worthy.
I think the best way to go about it would be to start a six-month campaign and do some very aggressive work on site.
You have some great advice.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Thank you Thomas,
I did have a look at the site and came to the conclusion that it had relatively no domain authority or page/URL-level authority from quality backlinks. The page had no links, and the domain only had a couple, neither of them great. As you mention, this industry is very competitive. It is one of the most competitive niches online.
My recommendation was to embark on a content marketing campaign, possibly one that highlights medical care / law / coverage disparities between countries. The domain itself is very brandable, and if they were to latch onto a hot-topic issue in the right way they could get quoted as experts in that industry by major news outlets, or at least some decent blogs. Meanwhile, steady posting about the lindustry on the blog, occasional white papers or studies created by the company about the the industry... will help build their body of content and present their expertise on the topic. Any tool (calculators, price comparison charts, etc...) would also help. I also mentioned a recommended minimum budget for content creation and paid promotion of it over the next six months.
-
Hi Everett,
There is a good reason for him not not actually posting URL for keywords wants list for.
I think Deelo555 should private message you the information he sent me. They are keywords that are commonly thought of negatively is all I will say.
Deelo555 please send Everett what you sent me.
All the best,
Thomas
-
Deelo555 We'll need more information to be of much help here. Can you post the site and/or the keyword? If not, this is probably going to have to be assisted by private message with someone.
I'd look for over-optimized anchor text or spammy links going into that page just to make sure. From there I would look into whether the content on the page "should" rank for the keyword. In other words, does it answer the query or give the searcher what they are looking for? After that I would move on to general user experience. Does the site look good, trustworthy, authoritative...
Follow that path and you'll probably uncover some things to improve. If not, let us know.
-
I replied to the private message I hope it is helpful.
-
Fluxing sometimes can mean Google is testing your site verse the other competitors for that keyword.
If Google is unable to determine what is the most enjoyed by the end-user so they will allow for you to fluctuate in the SERPS.
If people query your keyword find your site in the SERPS then immediately leave once they have landed on your website. That is called "Pogo sticking" Google is simply trying to find out whether or not you are the best fit for that keyword.
1st off if you could test the site some of the tools below
https://moz.com/researchtools/crawl-test
http://deepcrawl.co.uk/ (Amazing tool)
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ ( everyone should have a copy I recommend the paid but you can crawl 500 pages for free using SF free addition)
You want to be see what Google bot can see your site can do that using
http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/
Check your Robots.txt using
http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/robots-txt-generator/ ( this will pull the file sometimes there are more than 1 it does happen)
make sure that if you're using WordPress or other similar CMS is that Google bot is not being blocked from seeing J query
The reason for this is Google cannot see the site as it might be shown to the end user therefore they would be less likely to come back & index
https://www.authoritydev.com/dont-block-jquery-from-googlebot/
once we have completed eliminated and chance of robots.txt or no follow / no index then you will want to look at your entire website Very thoroughly.
I do not know how old your domain is could you share its age?
what is your domain authority? what is the page authority of pages not being indexed?
we need to look at all of this before we can render a verdict.
If you're uncomfortable sharing your URL publicly you're welcome to send it to me privately.
what type of URLs are pointing (if any) Internal or external are pointing at your pages that are not indexing.
Sincerely,
Thomas
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
-
In the google index but search redirects to homepage
Hi everyone, thanks for reading i have a website "www.gardeners.scot" and have the following pages listed in google site: command http://www.gardeners.scot/garden-landscaping-Edinburgh.htm & http://www.gardeners.scot/garden-maintenance-Edinburgh.htm however when a user searches for "garden landscaping Edinburgh" or "garden maintenance Edinburgh" we are in the rankings but google search links these phrases to the home page not to their targeted pages. the site is about a year old have checked the robots.txt, sitemap.xml & .htaccess files but can see anything wrong there. any ideas out there?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | livingphilosophy0 -
Does including your site in Google News (and Google) Alerts helps with SEO?
Based on the following article http://homebusiness.about.com/od/yourbusinesswebsite/a/google-alerts.htm in order to check if you are included you need to run site:domain.com and click the news search tab. If you are not there then... I ran the test on MOZ and got no results which surprised me. Next step according to :https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40787?hl=en#ts=3179198 is to submit your site for inclusion. Should I? Will it help? P.S.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
This is a followup question to the following: http://moz.com/community/q/what-makes-a-site-appear-in-google-alerts-and-does-it-mean-anything0 -
Help my site it's not being indexed
Hello... We have a client, that had arround 17K visits a month... Last september he hired a company to do a redesign of his website....They needed to create a copy of the site on a different subdomain on another root domain... so I told them to block that content in order to not affect my production site, cause it was going to be an exact replica of the content but different design.... The developmet team did it wrong and blocked the production site (using robots.txt), so my site lost all it's organica traffic, which was 85-90% of the total traffic and now only get a couple of hundreds visits a month... First I thought we had been somehow penalized, however when I the other site recieving new traffic and being indexed i realized so I switched the robots.txt and created 301 redirect from the subdomain to the production site. After resending sitemaps, links to google+ and many things I can't get google to reindex my site.... when i do a site:domain.com search in google I only get 3 results. Its been now almost 2 month and honestly dont know what to do.... Any help would be greatly appreciated Thanks Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0 -
Why google does not show my site on my branding keyword?
Hi, I am the site owner of http://www.lankahq.net. It is a youtube video hosted website. 95% of the video contents are daily telecasting TV shows and categorized to make easy to find the specific video of the day of preferred program of the viewer. About 1 year ago suddenly disappeared my site from the google. Before happened that it was performing very well in search. Google showed my site contents within few minutes after I update in their search results when someone search for that. At the moment it does not show even some one search for "lankahq". It showing only if search for "lankahq.net", "lankahq.com" or "www.lankahq.net" something like a search keyword related to my domain name. Some other websites have added my branding keyword LankaHQ as a user of their site and they showing on top of Google. But not mine. It is much appreciated if someone can have a look on this matter. I can not find where is the problem.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cprasad0 -
How do I presuade Google to re-consider my site?
A few weeks ago I got an emai from Google that my site is suspected to violating Google guidelines-->suspected links manipulationg Google Page rank. My site dropped to the second page. I have contacted some of the top webmasters who link to me and they have removed the links or added a nofollow. When I asked for re-consideation I got an answear that there are still suspected links. What do I do now? I can't remove all of my links?! BTW this happened before the offical Pinguin Update.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ofer230 -
Does Google punish sites for Backlinks?
Here is Matt Cutts video, for those of you who have not seen it already. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4dAWb5jUws (Very Short) In this Video Matt explains that Google does not look at backlinks. Many link spamming sites have detected, there have been many website receiving warning messages in their Google web tools to deindex these links, etc.. My theory is that Google will not punish sites for backlinks. However, they manually check for "link farming sites" and warn anyone affiliated with them, just in case these links were built from a competitor. This way they can eliminate all the "Bad Link Farm" sites and not hurt anyone who does not deserve to be hurt. Google is not going to give us all their information to rank, they dont want us to rank. They want us to PPC. However, they do want to have the best SERPs available. I call it Google juggling! Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Getting rid of a site in Google
Hi, I have two sites, lets call them site A and site B, both are sub domains of the same root domain. Because of a server config error, both got indexed by Google. Google reports millions of inbound links from Site B to Site A I want to get rid of Site B, because its duplicate content. First I tried to remove the site from webmaster tools, and blocking all content in the robots.txt for site B, this removed all content from the search results, but the links from site B to site A still stayed in place, and increased (even after 2 months) I also tried to change all the pages on Site B to 404 pages, but this did not work either I then removed the blocks, cleaned up the robots.txt and changed the server config on Site B so that everything redirects (301) to a landing page for Site B. But still the links in Webmaster Tools to site A from Site B is on the increase. What do you think is the best way to delete a site from google and to delete all the links it had to other sites so that there is NO history of this site? It seems that when you block it with robots.txt, the links and juice does not disappear, but only the blocked by robots.txt report on WMT increases Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JacoRoux0