Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
When doing a site search my homepage comes up second. Does that matter?
-
When I do a site: search the homepage comes up second. Does this matter?
-
Hi there, just checking in do see if you have an update for us.
Christy
-
http://germanhausbarn.com/ Here is the homepage. It is more informational then anything.
-
Sounds good. Let us know how things work out.
-
I am in the process of redoing our homepage. We actually do not have a lot of content on our homepage and virtually no keywords. That should be remedied in the next few weeks and we will see if that solves the problem.
-
What's the purpose of the home page? Is it purely navigational? Does it have any unique content on it?
Hard to assess whether there's a real problem or not and what that problem might be without taking a look at the site.
-
We've come across this situation a number of times. I have a very strong feeling that your homepage has over optimised anchor text. If you want to post or PM me the URL I can take a further look but the most common reason I see for this (over & over) is Panda (over optimisation, thin content, poor titles, incorrect canonicals, or anchor spam.)
It can also depend on your site & keywords. If you have an seo company for instance and a page at yoursite.com/seo, that page may rank better for your domain if it also includes the word SEO. Let me give an example because no matter how I write that, it's confusing.
If your domain is ouragency.com and your /seo page comes up first, chances are it's something I mentioned above.
However, if your domain is seoagency.com and your /seo page comes up first, it may just be that the /seo page is better optimised for the term.
-
It is just a basic site for a non-profit. Everything seems to be ok, I just thought it was weird. It looks like the homepage doesn't have an optimized enough title so I think that might be it.
-
I don't think it matters, but without knowing more about your site it's hard to say for certain.
See this article: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-site-command-ranking-12858.html
What's more important is that you have the right page getting visibility for the right keywords/topics so that you provide the best user experience and increase your chances of converting those visitors into customers/followers.
What page is coming up first? Can you make any guesses as to why?
What I have use the site: search for is to look at the top 10 pages and assess how well these reflect the products/services/topics for which the site wants to be associated with.
-
It isn't a keyword search it is a site:search. I have a copy of a site audit and it says that the homepage should come up first, but it doesn't.
-
Could you provide URLs for that?
I also dont' quite follow you - say you're looking for "plumber in Taos" -- do you mean that your site comes up 2nd?
-- if so good!Do you mean if you're searching for "Bills Plumbing Services" (your company name) and that comes up second?
- if so, then what comes up first?
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
-
What IP Address does Googlebot use to read your site when coming from an external backlink?
Hi All, I'm trying to find more information on what IP address Googlebot would use when arriving to crawl your site from an external backlink. I'm under the impression Googlebot uses international signals to determine the best IP address to use when crawling (US / non-US) and then carries on with that IP when it arrives to your website? E.g. - Googlebot finds www.example.co.uk. Due to the ccTLD, it decides to crawl the site with a UK IP address rather than a US one. As it crawls this UK site, it finds a subdirectory backlink to your website and continues to crawl your website with the aforementioned UK IP address. Is this a correct assumption, or does Googlebot look at altering the IP address as it enters a backlink / new domain? Also, are ccTLDs the main signals to determine the possibility of Google switching to an international IP address to crawl, rather than the standard US one? Am I right in saying that hreflang tags don't apply here at all, as their purpose is to be used in SERPS and helping Google to determine which page to serve to users based on their IP etc. If anyone has any insight this would be great.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MattBassos0 -
Adult Toys Sites
Does anyone know of any changes SEOwise when running an adult toy site versus a normal eCommerce site? Is there any tips or suggestions that are worth knowing to achieve rankings faster? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
Google cache is showing my UK homepage site instead of the US homepage and ranking the UK site in US
Hi There, When I check the cache of the US website (www.us.allsaints.com) Google returns the UK website. This is also reflected in the US Google Search Results when the UK site ranks for our brand name instead of the US site. The homepage has hreflang tags only on the homepage and the domains have been pointed correctly to the right territories via Google Webmaster Console.This has happened before in 26th July 2015 and was wondering if any had any idea why this is happening or if any one has experienced the same issueFDGjldR
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adzhass0 -
Multilingual Site and 301 redirection
Hey there awesome people of Moz I have this site that has many languages in it. The main language is English and my developer did the following www.example.com ( is the main site ) which redirects with a 301 to www.example.com/en if your geo location is supported by our languages then you will automatically be redirected to whatever language you have in your country but does the first language with is english have to 301 redirect to www.example.com/en ? I thought that the right way is to just leave /en at the root file. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
Moving to a new site while keeping old site live
For reasons I won't get into here, I need to move most of my site to a new domain (DOMAIN B) while keeping every single current detail on the old domain (DOMAIN A) as it is. Meaning, there will be 2 live websites that have mostly the same content, but I want the content to appear to search engines as though it now belongs to DOMAIN B. Weird situation. I know. I've run around in circles trying to figure out the best course of action. What do you think is the best way of going about this? Do I simply point DOMAIN A's canonical tags to the copied content on DOMAIN B and call it good? Should I ask sites that link to DOMAIN A to change their links to DOMAIN B, or start fresh and cut my losses? Should I still file a change of address with GWT, even though I'm not going to 301 redirect anything?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdaniels0 -
SEO site Review
Does anyone have suggestions on places that provide in depth site / analytics reviews for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordian0 -
Temporarily shut down a site
What would be the best way to temporarily shut down a site the right way and not have a negative impact on SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LibertyTax1 -
How To Best Close An eCommerce Site?
We're closing down one of our eCommerce sites. What is the best approach to do this? The site has a modest link profile (a young site). It does have a run of site link to the parent site. It also has a couple hundred email subscribers and established accounts. Is there a gradual way to do this? How do I treat the subscribers and account holders? The impact won't be great, but I want to minimize collateral damage as much as possible. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0