How can we stop an article ranking so highly?
-
We secured an article on national newspaper site for a client which now ranks number one for its own branded search term. Since we secured the article (over two years ago) the client has changed the direction of its business so the article is now no longer relevant and is actually causing a lot of trouble for the client. When people search for their business the article is telling readers one thing when their business actually does something else. How can we stop this article ranking so highly?
-
Have you tried organization schema to markup the brand, company name, etc?
http://schema.org/OrganizationI second the suggestion to try Adwords if you can't retake the first ranking. Should be pretty cheap if you're bidding on branded keywords with low competition and high-quality score for the client's site.
-
The OP doesn't have access to the site, so that's not an option.
-
The OP is actually asking about a post on another site that is not under their control.
-
One thing you might consider doing is building some goodwill with people who are searching for that service and those who provide it. When Moz (then SEOmoz) decided to stop doing SEO consulting, we were still ranking really high for it and people thought that's what we did. Instead of just 404, we created our recommended companies page, which gave some goodwill and helped people out.
-
Have you (or the company in question) tried contacting the newspaper to ask for the page to be updated/a new page/article written as the original version is so completely different to what the company now does?
-
Hi Heather!
There are some strong suggestions here, but I really like Donna's suggestion about the Barnacle SEO. Makes a lot of sense and the WBF was great!! Definitely look into that
-
Wow that sure does make things tricky. I like Monica's suggestion that you contact them directly. They maybe more receptive to doing an addendum to the article. Some web-masters are a tad jiggy about removing content or adding noindex tags when content is performing on their site well.
Best of luck, and since this is a unique question I gave you a thumbs up on the original question.
-
That's a tough one Heather. I've had a surprising number of people ask me that same question.
You have some good suggestions so far. I can think of one more. It's called Barnacle SEO. It's referencing an analogy where you make like a barnacle on a ship, attaching yourself to a higher authority site to outrank the one that's above you in search results.
Rand did a whiteboard Friday on it last summer. It's still not a quick or easy solution, but it could help.
-
I see you're in the UK. While I'm not a fan of the court decision, there's always Right to be Forgotten. While it doesn't affect other Google indexes (i.e. google.com) or the article itself, it would let you at least have the article de-indexed in your local European market. It might buy you breathing room and maybe get the attention of the publisher so you can have the record corrected (I don't think any press organization likes having bad info out there).
I would focus more on marketing to make up the shortfall. There just isn't any other guaranteed solution. Buy ads, Pay-Per-Click and media time if necessary. Be louder than this article is.
-
Have you reached out to the newspaper and asked them to no follow/no index the page? This is an extremely high authority kind of link that is usually best handled directly with the webmaster of the other site. They should be able to take the page down for you no problem. I wouldn't recommend removing it completely as the brand mention is good for your SEO, but if you can ask them to remove the indexation it will stop out ranking your branded searches.
This might seem like a silly question, but are you searching for this while you are signed it? Your search results might be a little off if you are. Try using the keyword analysis tool here to see if that article truly outranks your branded search. I would make sure of that before I remove the link completely.
If you cannot get in touch with anyone at the newspaper to remove the link the other thing you might be able to try is sending feedback to Google. You can do that at the bottom of the page. It will allow you to send a message to Google and show them exactly which SERP you want moved/ removed.
-
Hi,
If you can do as recommended above and get rid of the page completely then this would be the way to go. Since it is on a national newspaper site and a couple of years old I am guessing this might be tough to do (although worth a shot).
Otherwise you can try to boost your own rankings and grab more real estate by:
1. Making sure all your on page data is branded (page titles, company schema etc).
2. Use verified social channels and link to them from your site (especially google+ but fb, twitter, linkedin, youtube are all good).
3. Get a few more branded links into the site (I assuming you are in 2nd position, it is a bit unusual for a branded search to not return the brand as the first option - you might just need a few more (honest) links).
5. Short term solution: Adwords on your brand's search. You should get a 4 pack of site links + descriptions in it also so should give a fair amount of real estate above the newspaper article and should be inexpensive.
-
Thanks for your responses - unfortunately because the article is on a national newspaper site, we have no control over redirecting it or removing it. So I'm really after other ways of stopping it rank so highly. Thanks!
-
Yes, this is another option.
-
you could use a noindex tag so the bots do not index it
More info from Google can be found here https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en
-
Hello Heather,
If the article is completely irrelevant then the best thing to do would remove the content from the site which would prompt a 404 error. In time the article will stop ranking as it no longer exist.
However, it may make more sense to capitalize on its success if at all possible. One possible way is to 301 redirect the page to a different page explaining the change of direction from what was previously stated in the article. This way you still get the initial traffic, and maybe convert those viewers to the new business model.
My thoughts, hope it helps,
Don
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
-
How can we improve our traffic?
Hi everyone, thanks for taking a look at this. We are looking at improving our traffic for our website. We are a tour company based in Thailand that caters to 18-25 year olds, mainly in the UK and USA. Our site is - http://www.starfishvolunteers.com/ A few years ago the now ex-team hired an SEO company who outsourced to a team in India. Things were considered to be going very well in terms of traffic but I suspect that a lot of it was shady link building tactics. The site was designed poorly, urls were a mess and there was a lot of misinformation on there. Fast forward a few years and there is a new team in place, we redesigned the site, added a blog & booking system, cleared out the misinformation and got ourselves a Moz Pro subscription. I only have Google search stats starting from 2013 and the total traffic (sessions) for that year was roughly 25,000. In 2014 traffic dropped to 19,000 and for the first five month of this year we are currently at 9,000. Obviously reduced traffic doesn't look good and we would very much like to get our numbers back up. We are tracking keywords in Moz and although we are ranking in the top 10 for a bunch of them the traffic just isn't going back up. Here are our thoughts on why we might be losing traffic - We're targeting the wrong keywords. We are being penalised. The competition overtook us. Right now we are at a bit of a loss because we don't know what direction to head in. Could it be our keywords? We would love to know what you think and sincerely appreciate the feedback. We will try and share any data that you think might be relevant or useful.
Keyword Research | | Starfish_Volunteers0 -
Keyword ranking stuck in neutral... Suggestions needed
Hi everyone. I wanted to make a post in hopes of getting some opinions on my next course of action when it comes to SEO. I have worked for my current company for 3 years and raised their keyword ranking from 39% to 55% (according to MOZ's keyword tracker). I did this mostly through improving on-page SEO for each keyword. I think the on-page SEO is as good as it can get? Just so you guys know there are 101 keywords they want to rank for nationally. We currently rank for 56. My current company has really starting to ask me more about the percentage we are at and they of course want it to grow (or show consistent growth) as time passes. Since May 2014 it seems to have fluctuated each week from 50% to 58%. Some other info: We are well known in our industry We post on social media almost every day We are at event trade shows We are a global company We have tons of ads in industry magazines etc. We have industry news sites write about us and link to us We are consistent with press releases (a few a month) With that being said, where should I go from here to get those number to grow? As I mentioned, my company is starting to look at these numbers more.
Keyword Research | | trumpfinc0 -
Ranking Tracker-"Sorry But This Page Inaccessible". ERROR
When I try to use the on page grader and enter my URL, an error message appears stating: "Sorry But This Page Inaccessible". The URL is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/commercial-space/office-space and it works fine when I enter it on my browser. Any page from this domain generates this error. Is there a bug with this tool? How would I go about tracking ranking on various keywords? I see it is possible to tag keywords, and I have done so for about 250. But I don't know how to generate a ranking report for these keywords; ideally I would like to do so filtering them by the label I have applied. Any suggestions? Thanks,
Keyword Research | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Ranks moving up & Down for a certain keyword search
Hi, We had lost rankings for certain keywords completely from google's index about 5 months ago. Recently the rank for the keyword reappeared on google. But it keeps moving up and down. One day on 26th position, next day it is on 45th position, then it comes back to 30th position. This has been going on for over a week now. What is the cause of this ? can someone shed some light on it ? Thank you
Keyword Research | | orion680 -
Ranking for broad search terms
Hello, ive been getting some good organic traffic lately, i always run the live real time analytics and have noticed that the site is ranking for very broad terms and not specific exact keywords that i have the pages optimized for. Is there a reason for this? thx
Keyword Research | | TP_Marketing0 -
Informational pages, not product pages, are ranking for product-related keywords
My site sells products (+1000s) and we have a few pages about how-to's, tips, etc. But when you search for keywords that are relevant to the products, the guides show up as search results. For example, if we search for "red widgets", the page for "how to make widgets" shows in the SERP and not the "red widgets" product page. This doesn't make sense when most of the search results go to our guides and not to the product pages. How can I change this? Do I permanent remove these guides? Or rename the title, description? My guess is that other sites have linked to these guides so they are making our site more of a "guide" site as opposed to the products we sell. Any advice/recommended would be appreciated.
Keyword Research | | mof3kz0 -
How can I find a page ranking?
On the ranking page Seo Moz displays words/pages in the top 50. How can you find where that word/page is ranked if it's below 50 and say up to 200?
Keyword Research | | lindsayjhopkins0 -
Keyword Rank are working Wrong???
hi i am in Argentina, search customize to Argentina in google,yahoo and bing. all my keyword in seomoz go down 10 places. when i click in a keyword , i see that is searching in .com (all the world) . when i do a local search i see correct rankings? thanks for reply Gabo
Keyword Research | | monotero0