Google not index main keyword on homepage in 2 countries same language, rest of pages no problem
-
Hello,
Two the same websites, two countries, same language
http://www.lavistarelatiegeschenken.nl / http://www.lavistarelatiegeschenken.be
The main keyword "relatiegeschenken" in top 10 of netherlands (steady position for 2 years) and in ** belgium** not in top 15****0 the main keyword "relatiegeschenken| but other keywords good positions, thats so strange
I didn't understand and now every thing turned around suddenly:
Now the main keyword "relatiegeschenken suddenly " not anymore in top 10 in the netherslandsits gone and other kewyords still good positions , now **main keyword suddenly in top 10 of belgium 2 years was not **other pages still ok.
It are exactly the same websites and the same language. So double content
But my programmer told me in google webmaster tools settings are right, so no problem with double content ?
I really dont understand first main keyword in netherland in top 10 and in belgium not, now changed, now in belgium top 10 and not findable in the netherland on the main keyword.
Maybe problem in code ?
Maybe problems in code because websites are identical and active in two different countries wit same language ?
No message about a penalty message in WMT, no spam links
week i delete two strong but according to Linkdetox a bad links.
I can not find a solution but its really important keyword that my customer want back in top 10 in netherland, like it was. All other positions and visitors are the same.
Befor i have had this with belgium site, also main keyword google not index homepage. But suddenly no google show in belgium in top 10
Its turned around
Kind regards,
Marcel
-
Hi Marcel,
Content duplication shouldn't be an issue if you are using ccTLDs targeting to each country (as you are already doing with The Netherlands & Belgium), the geolocalization feature is disable in the Google Search Console already when you are using ccTLDs as they are "automatically" geolocated to the country of the extension. In fact, this is the "ideal" way to internationalize your web if you're targeting to countries (and not languages) and give the best possible signal to Google that you are targeting to different countries, as in this case.
Nonetheless, additionally you should also implement hreflang annotations: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en in order to avoid the situation that due to a higher authority -with stronger link profile- one of the domains rank instead of the other in the non-relevant country. I've seen that you are already including hreflang annotations on your sites pages, however these are not correctly implemented because you are only pointing to the other country URL and specifying its language and country.
You need to always specify the language and country of the own page where you are adding the annotation as well as its alternative (check out the specification I included above). Please read: https://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool and use this tool to see the type of tags you need to add: http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/international-seo-tools/hreflang-tags-generator/. This is how you're going to avoid showing a result for the NL in BE and viceversa.
However, the problem that you describe though sounds like if you have suffered from a lost of organic search visibility due to other reasons that don't have to do with internationalization: whether being affected after an update, a configuration change or issue on your site, etc. since I went to check your SEO visibility profile on SEMrush for NL: https://www.semrush.com/nl/info/lavistarelatiegeschenken.nl+(by+organic_positions)?positions=lost that show a few keywords with a negative trend and an overall negative visibility behavior on the site: https://www.semrush.com/nl/info/lavistarelatiegeschenken.nl+(by+organic) since January specifically.
My recommendation is that you run a full SEO audit, instead of just focusing on international configuration that is very unlikely to cause this -unless you had release a new international version that wasn't correctly targeted, but is not your case- and verify especially if this coincides with a recent update (in January there were a few that you can see here: https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change and https://www.seroundtable.com/google-fluctuations-continue-likely-not-penguin-21489.html) and if you are suffering from content optimization issues for example that could have triggered this.
If you have any other question just let me know!
-
two identical webpages in different countries with same content in same language, everything is ok only the homepage got a problem
We do the settings in google webmaster tools and the rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”
So only 2 solutions:
-
Can create an url http://www.lavistarelatiegeschenken.nl/relatiegeschenken and create a link building profile with good links on that. At the end belgium will find this page for the main keyword and in netherland homepage will come back
-
Create unique content on the categorie webpages and also in the navigation, so google will see this as two different companies. Product pages can be the same in both countries.
That was the solution i hope
-
-
Hello Chris,
Thanks for the answer !
As well as in holland as in belgium we have from all subpages good rankings, .be and . except from the homepage, that only in one country a time.
We wanted that people in belgium see our belgium site and in holland the dutch website, so we make those settings in google webmaster tools.
But than have the double content issue, we have solved it to implentate this tag: rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” ta for both countries.
According to me it must be possible and also i see the competitor has also an identical website, but rank in both countries top 10.
AS told subpages rank same in booth countries, its only the homepage
https://www.google.be/?gws_rd=ssl#q=kaasprikkers
https://www.google.nl/?gws_rd=ssl#q=kaasprikkers
We have tried also to seperate both sites so no connection between the websites, own virtual adress and phonenumber, google places, no links to each other, own social media, no dofollow outgoing backlinks etc. So google will see it as different companies.
I have deleted some toxic links on the .nl domain with linkresearch tools, maybe something to do with it
answer 1: .be ranks better in .be and .nl ranks better in .nl
answer 2: i can make the navigation unique content. But there are so many products that is impossible, but as told a competitor has also identical website and ranks on main keyword "relatiegeschenken" in both countries with different domains top 10.
There are upcoming good quality links to the .nl name.
Its strange its only the homepage not the subpages and the homepage has diffierent unique content and the subpages all have duplicate content.
Hope somebody knows the answer, i never had befor
Grtz
Marcel
-
Hi Marcel,
I don't know German at all so I may have missed a few things but from what I can see, there are a few elements that may be causing this.
Your .nl site has the stronger link profile with 197 referring domains and a Domain Rating of 48 compared to 36 referring domains and a Domain Rating of 37 for the .be site.
As you pointed out, the two sites are almost exact duplicates of each other as well. Unless I'm missing something, there is nothing to mitigate this duplication so Google is typically going to rank the strongest of the two duplicates and almost ignore the other.
So, for the question of why you were seeing the .ne site ranking before and not .be, I would expect this is because they're both duplicates and .ne was the strongest.
As for why this has reversed now, I can see you've dropped a lot of links and referring domains from the .be domain recently, perhaps this was an intentional removal of low quality backlinks? If so this will have improved the strength of the profile.
On the other hand, the .ne site has picked up a large volume of links recently and only a handful of new referring domains which suggests these new linking domains are very low quality. Since you seem to have lowered the quality of the .ne profile and improved .be, I would expect to see the situation reverse, which is exactly what has happened.
Suggestions to Fix the Problems Assuming I am correct, there are a couple of ways to go about it:
**1. **Use only 1 website instead of 2. I realise they're for difference countries but the two locations are only 90 minutes apart. This could be dealt with by having 2 location pages on the one site. It removes the duplication you're currently struggling with and means you only have to work on a backlink profile and content for one site instead of two.
**2. **Alternatively, if you have a large budget or a lot of time available, you could tidy up those low quality new links to your .ne site and start writing some unique content for one of the domains so they're no longer duplicate.
So long as Google is seeing 2 identical websites, you're never likely to see them both rank well at the same time. Quality signals may go up and down over time which sees them trade rankings, but you're never going to see them both at #1 while they're duplicates of each other.
I hope that helps!
-
sorry, 2 same websites in two countries
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
-
Why google removed my landing pages from index?
I made new website meko.lv. I put many work to it, to make page SEO friendly, sprites, reduced requests added SSL, got google page speed insights score 100/100, but in 2. october all pages in google webmasters disappeared from index. Could you please look at website and say whats wrong with it? They are all search results present in google but for how long. it is so annoying, you put so many work but in result get high spam score. It is obvious that new pages can not get good links in one month https://meko.lv/ google webmasters google page speed score: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmeko.lv%2F&tab=mobile q1LDHTn
Technical SEO | | Mekounko0 -
Index problems, Part 2
Hi Guy's A few weeks ago i posted a question:
Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO
https://moz.com/community/q/index-problems After some good advice, we changed a few things: www.domain.com <<< NL version www.domain.com/fr/ <<<< French version (domain.com/nl/ 301 redirect to domain.com). So the SERPS for keyword ‘shutters’ went from #32 to #8...... for 2 day's.... and gone.... and not comming back anymore.... Did we missed something? Help is much appreciated, thanks 🙂3 -
3,511 Pages Indexed and 3,331 Pages Blocked by Robots
Morning, So I checked our site's index status on WMT, and I'm being told that Google is indexing 3,511 pages and the robots are blocking 3,331. This seems slightly odd as we're only disallowing 24 pages on the robots.txt file. In light of this, I have the following queries: Do these figures mean that Google is indexing 3,511 pages and blocking 3,331 other pages? Or does it mean that it's blocking 3,331 pages of the 3,511 indexed? As there are only 24 URLs being disallowed on robots.text, why are 3,331 pages being blocked? Will these be variations of the URLs we've submitted? Currently, we don't have a sitemap. I know, I know, it's pretty unforgivable but the old one didn't really work and the developers are working on the new one. Once submitted, will this help? I think I know the answer to this, but is there any way to ascertain which pages are being blocked? Thanks in advance! Lewis
Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Site removed from Google Index
Hi mozers, Two months ago we published http://aquacion.com We registered it in the Google Webmaster tools and after a few day the website was in the index no problem. But now the webmaster tools tell us the URLs were manually removed. I've look everywhere in the webmaster tools in search for more clues but haven't found anything that would help me. I sent the acces to the client, who might have been stupid enough to remove his own site from the Google index, but now, even though I delete and add the sitemap again, the website won't show in Google SERPs. What's weird is that Google Webmaster Tools tells us all the page are indexed. I'm totally clueless here... Ps. : Added screenshots from Google Webmaster Tools. Update Turns out it was my mistake after all. When my client developped his website a few months ago, he published it, and I removed the website from the Google Index. When the website was finished I submited the sitemap, thinking it would void the removal request, but it don't. How to solve In webmaster tools, in the [Google Index => Remove URLs] page, you can reinclude pages there. tGib0
Technical SEO | | RichardPicard0 -
Google Sitemap - How Long Does it Take Google To Index?
We have changed our sitemap about 1 month ago and Google is yet to index it. We have run a site: search and we still have many pages indexed but we are wondering how long does it take for google to index our sitemap? The last sitemap we put up had thousands of pages indexed within a fortnight, but for some reason this version is taking way longer. We are also confident that there are no errors in this version. Help!
Technical SEO | | JamesDFA0 -
Sitemap all of a sudden only indexing 2 out of 5000+ pages
Any ideas why this happened? Our sitemap looks the same. Also, our total number of pages indexed has not decreased, just the sitemap. Could this eventually affect my pages being in the index?
Technical SEO | | rock220 -
Duplicate pages problem
The Moz report shows that I have 600 Duplicate pages, How can I locate the problem and how can I fix it?
Technical SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Home page deindexed by google
when I search my website on google by site:www.mydomain.com I have found my domain with www has been de-indexed by google, but when I search site:mydomain.com, my home page--**mydomain.com **show up on the search results without www, put it simple, google only index my domain without www, I wonder how to make my domain with www being indexed, and how to prevent this problem occure again.
Technical SEO | | semer0