UK company not ranking .com domain in UK
-
Hi,
we have a slight issue with our website. We have been proactively doing SEO for the past year, but we have run into a slight issue.
Our website is ranking for search terms everywhere except Our local area (UK)
We have tried creating separate sections of our site targeted just at the UK In search console. As well as targeting the whole site as UK preferred and setting the hreflang tags to en-GB.
Nothing seems to be working, any ideas?
Thanks in advance!
-
Darn. If you'd be willing to share the domain I'd be willing to do a full crawl of it and return the data to you. If there are no glaring technical errors then at least we'd know it was probably a combo of content issues and off-site popularity metrics which could be corrected over time
Up to you though. Seems complex though, like we should begin ruling stuff out
-
No it's not that i'm afraid. Thanks for your help though.
There's also no country targeting when you add a domain in the new version.
-
The targeting in Search Console isn't working for you very well right now as Google is overriding it. I might leave it in place but know that all it will really do, is limit the traffic you get from elsewhere. It does apparently push up your rankings in the location specified but only very, very marginally. Mainly it cuts traffic out from other locations, so based on that decide what's best for your site and business
It makes me wonder if you're working with the wrong search console property. Most sites are not currently on the domain-level search console property as it's currently annoying to set up (you need to edit DNS records or go through your host, instead of just uploading a file as it should be, as it has always been). This means you're probably working with non-domain level GSC (Google Search Console) properties
If that is true, you should have at least four registered (HTTP WWW, HTTPS WWW, HTTP non-WWW, HTTPS non-WWW). If you have always worked with a GSC property that references the site as beginning with "http://www." and then you move to HTTPS with WWW, and you still continue working with the old property, it won't do anything as it's the wrong one. When you change architecture you very often need to add a new GSC property to accommodate that. If that's true in your case it could be possible you've been making all the GSC changes in the wrong property to no effect, so do check that too
-
Hey,
Thanks for your response.
Are you saying that we should remove the country targeting that we have set in the search console?
The reason we're confident that there is a technical issue is because there are competitors with lower pagerank than us and far fewer links, that are ranking in #1 for relevant search terms.
Are there any particular things i should look for?
You are right in saying the majority of our backlinks are from overseas. But it's a catch 22, as our content is ranking elsewhere and not in the UK -
-
That can happen due to poor coding and misaligned hreflang tags, but more commonly happens due to a misaligned Digital PR strategy. In the absence of traffic data to dive into, Google will often look to popularity (link) metrics to decide whom it thinks should see a particular website. If lots of your links are from the USA and you are on a .com site then it might be pushing you up over there
Google's search console actually has a tool that forces a property / domain to rank only in a certain area. It doesn't move your rankings across though, it just nullifies any outside of the specified region (so either way you still have an uphill climb ahead of you, no magic bullets I am afraid)
I can only imagine it's having done something silly like building a UK site that lists prices in USD or something crazy like that. The sheer determination of Google to not rank you guys in the UK, should in the end point to an obvious and glaring error of some kind
It could be Digital PR related or to do with the structure of the site. Because Google seems adamant to rank you in the wrong area, I'd say it would be extremely likely to be a cascade of failures, converging to give you these unrelenting issues
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
-
Bing Ranking Factors
Question... I have a few clients that rank well for Google (first page) but are not ranking as well on Bing (page 5). Any suggestions on what to do to increase Bing ranking? I understand that Google and Bing use different algorithms, but just curious how you can increase ranking. Appreciate your input. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Changing domain names but still ranking as old one
Hi there, I have a client who changed domain names back in November 2015 but is still coming up in search engines with their old domain name not their new one. For example, I search for my clients name, let's call them Example B. So I search for "Example B" and within the search results they come up top and the title tag is correct as it says something along the lines of "Welcome to Example B". However the URL underneath is actually their old name which is Example A. When you click on the link, it redirects over to the new name so thats fine, but it's just annoying that Example A is still appearing when it should be Example B now. I don't think they have a new Webmaster Tools account setup for their new domain (I need to check still), but they do still have their old one setup. Is there something I can do within Webmaster Tools to tell it that Example A is now gone and to start indexing and referring to them as Example B? What else should I do to make sure their new name is coming up not their old one anymore?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz1 -
Referring domain issues
Our website (blahblah).org has 32 other domains pointing to it all from the same I.P address. These domains including the one in question, were all purchased by the website owner, who has inadvertently created duplicate content and on most of these domains. Some of these referring domains have 301's, some don't - but it appears they have all been de-indexed by Google. I'm somewhat out of my depth here (most of what I've said above has come from an agency who said we should address this before being slapped by Google). However I need to explain to my line manage the actual issues in more detail and the repercussions - any anyone please offer advice please? I'm happy to use the agency, or another - but would like some second opinions if possible?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LJHopkins0 -
Why isn't www.devonshiredentalcare.co.uk ranking?
Hi, devonshiredentalcare.co.uk was hit badly by one of Google's algorithm updates due to some prior poor seo (by another company). We took this client on and followed all of Google's guidelines and after a lot of work, managed to lift the penalty. It's been almost a year since the penalty was lifted, but it seems to be impossible to get this website ranking for 'Dentist Glasgow', they are currently page 4 in the SERPs! They have 33 Google reviews, we've built good quality links and citations, they have a 'Grade A' for on page optimisation in moz, we are also about to make the website responsive due to the recent mobilegeddon update. Do you have any further suggestions to help get this website ranking? Thanks in advance, Faye
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dentaldesign0 -
Why I am loosing my ranking?
My website is lonestarperio.com, I am loosing my website ranking, Is SEO agency doing any black hat SEO or doing anything wrong to my website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward1 -
Google Places: Multiple company listings. How to rank the HQ page over a branch location.
Hi Moz experts! I have a client with Google Place listings for multiple branch locations and for some reason the fully SEO optimized Head Office listing is being beaten by an un-optimized branch listing. The HQ listing gets a tonne of traffic where as the ranking and unoptimized branch location doesn't and is the main listing when searching through Google. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jon_bangonline1 -
Redirect non www. domain to WWW. domain for established website?
Hey guys, The website in question has been online for more than 5 years but there are still 2 versions of the website. Both versions are indexed by Google and of course, this will result in duplicate content. Is it necessary to redirect the non-www domain to the www. domain. What are the cons and advantages? Will a lot of organic traffic be lost at first (if non-www are getting a good amount of traffic)? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BruLee0 -
Ranking problems
Hi All My site is live for a year now. I;m getting tons of traffic (alexa 54k) and business are good. The only problem is that I have 0 page rank....I have checked again and again the site;s structure to see if there is anything wrong with the site but everything seems to be ok. Google just added search links to the site (megamoneygames) which looks very nice. For example, none of my competitors have search links but they all have page rank of 4 while I have 0. In addition, for some reason the site's age (days) shows 0 although it is live for a year now... Do you have any idea of what is going on? do I have errors in the site? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pariplay0