Google picking up old pages
-
I recently redesigned a site that had all the keywords it was ranking for going to the home page. Now I have specific pages for each of these keywords but I'm seeing the home page (not the page that, if I do an on page optimization by hand in MOZ gives me an A rating) showing up in the auto reports (assuming pages Google sees for these keywords related to the url) as F's. They're all pointing to the home page. I've redirected the old index.html home page to the new but I suspect the reason is actually these pages (were) ranking for these terms (though none too well - all but one were not in the top 50 and one was 45) because these rankings are all dropping as well. I'm at a loss, with the site replaced, as to how to correct this and tell Google these keyword phrases all have their own pages now. I've dug through this forum and the only applicable answer I can see would be to add these phases to the home page (where they all rank for now) with anchored links to their new (A rated by Moz for these terms when I hand enter them) singular pages? Or is it just a waiting game?
-
It could be months or it could be days--like I said, you just have to wait it out. With that many pages focused on keywords pertaining just to pressure washing, you're really going to need to get some links happening to the site to get it crawled and all those pages to show up in search results. Be sure to watch A Manifesto of Content Marketing - Moz and the-guide-to-developing-a-content-strategy-for-boring-industries
-
Thanks Chris. It's disturbing to watch what little foothold they had (these 5 keyword/phrases) decline. The previous site had 5 pages in total with a service page that listed all of their services in one-line sentences. I know have 80+ pages that cater to each keyword/phrase specifically and many are already taking off. Unfortunately the client sells pressure washing and roof cleaning - not the kind of service people generally like and share but I do plan on introducing some Facebook/Twitter discounts so perhaps I can implement a request to share as terms for the discount. Any ida how long Google may keep these old pages (regardless of the 301) indexed for these keywords?
-
You just have to wait it out. I'm assuming that yours is a new site, which means you'll need a degree of patience when it comes to waiting for google to index changes. I'm guessing that you're already linking to those pages from your home page via the site's navigation, but that would only be a guess.
If you are, the next thing to work on is getting out into the social networks and develop a following of the audience members your site's content targets. Be sure the content you're creating for your site is worthy of engagement by those folks because you're going to want those people to be liking, sharing and linking to those new pages you've created--that's what's going to be the most help for them in the search results.
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
-
Old Blog Posts
Every single day we publish articles that have a high amount of engagement onsite 50-300 comments. We have been running for around 8 years now and have a rather bloated database of old stale posts. We post advice on betting on sports. Not guides as such but tips for events. After the event has started the posts are outdated. What is your advice for these? These articles are not seen as "thin" but rather outdated. There is no way possible for me to update the content as such. Also out right deleting the content would go against our openness and transparency of past selections advised.
On-Page Optimization | | MrDeeBee0 -
Meta Titles On Site Different From Google Index Page
This is very embarrassing but I hope someone can help. The Meta Titles on my site are not being shown correctly on the Google site index. For example, when I got directly to the page the appropriate page title is shown obviously. However when I go view that page on Google, the title in completely different. Page title: <a class="attribute-value">Web Design, SEO, PPC, Mobile Development In Philadelphia, Bucks| Infinity Digital Agency</a> Google Shows: Our Services - Infinity Digital Agency Here is the result page. I am currently running WordPress and Yoast. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.infinitydigitalagency.com%2Fservices%2F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
On-Page Optimization | | infinitydigitalagency0 -
Is it better to create more pages of content or expand on current pages of content?
I am assuming that one way of improving the rankings of current pages will be to create more content on the keywords used... should this be an expansion of the content on current pages I am optimising for a keyword or is it better to keep creating new pages and if we are creating new pages is it best to use an extension of the keyword on the new page – for example if we are optimising one page for ‘does voltage optimisation work’ would it then be worth creating a page optimised for ‘does voltage optimisation work in hotels’ for example and so on? I am guessing maybe both might help, this is just a question I have had from one of my clients.
On-Page Optimization | | TWSI1 -
What to do with old web pages after a re skin?
Buongiorno from foggy & wet wetherby UK 😞 Having launched a website there is a cluster of old redundant pages which i dont want to appear in the serach engines problem is they deliver search traffic. Would it be best to 301 redirect them? Or delete them & 404 Not found alert, I'm really not sure whats best 😞 Any insights welcome 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | Nightwing0 -
Why Google did not index exactly these 2 pages? Any ideas?
Dear Community, on 27th of July I relaunched my own website and submitted the sitemap as well I send the index-page to crawl it including all linked pages. Already the next day the new pages have been indexed. Today I checked them manually if they have been indexed. The result is that 2 of 13 pages have not been indexed, here marked in bold: http://inlinear.com/
On-Page Optimization | | inlinear
http://inlinear.com/suchmaschinenoptimierung-online-marketing.php
http://inlinear.com/design/
http://inlinear.com/design/printmedien-gestaltung.php
http://inlinear.com/design/corporate-design-und-corporate-identity.php
http://inlinear.com/design/corporate-raum-design.php
http://inlinear.com/webentwicklung/
http://inlinear.com/virtueller-rundgang-360grad-fotografie.php
http://inlinear.com/business-atlas-online-verzeichnis.php
http://inlinear.com/baudokumentation-bauueberwachung.php
http://inlinear.com/ueber-uns.php
http://inlinear.com/blog/
http://inlinear.com/kontakt/ The page "/design/" (which is the index.php of this folder should be the main-page because its about WEB DESIGN.
Should I create a copy and call it /design/web-design.php? May be Google prefers a meaningful URL than the index.php? So I put then a rel=canonical to web-design.php in my index.php? design/corporate-design-und-corporate-identity.php
The URL is a little long, but this should not be the reason? Or might be a reason that another page which is still in the index, but not online anymore (even redirecting to /design/) is still more dominant? Strange.... orshould I simply wait a little or try submitting these to sites manually to google? When checking Google Webmasters Tools Google tells me that just 3 pages have been indexed.
When I was checking which page is indexed or not I checked each URL with the site-search option:
site:inlinear.com/pageX.php ... when Google shows this page, it was a sign that it was indexed but why webmasters tools show up only 3 pages? (see screenshot) Do you have any ideas?
Thank You 🙂 indexed.png0 -
Can't canonical, but need pages to show in Google News
We are a news media site in which much of our content is third-party, and already published by several other sources. Our current version of our CMS doesn't expose head tags, so I can't canonical to the original and avoid a duplicate content penalty. Is it ok for news sites NOT to use canonical, or do I have to NOINDEX until our CMS is fixed?
On-Page Optimization | | Aggie0 -
Page Title
Hi All, I am wondering if you could help me please. I am getting the following result after I run my On-Page Analysis Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements _Easy fix _ <dl style="font-style: normal;"> <dt>Page titles</dt> <dd>"Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin -" and "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Web pages are meant to have a single title, and for both accessibility and search engine optimization reasons, we strongly recommend following this practice.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Remove all but a single page title element.</dd> </dl> Does this mean that i have 2 pages that are nearly identical or i should only name a page with one word? The reason i ask is because i have 1 page called "Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin" and another called "Aquashowers-Dublin Shower Repair" I don't have a page called "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin" (with the space inbetween the words and the hyphen) Any help would be great. Thanks again Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0 -
Should I convert PDFs to pages?
I have a client that has a lot of content in pdf files that are linked to from their website. The content on the site itself is quite thin. Should I recommend to them that they convert at least some of pdf files to actual pages on their website? That way there could be a title tag, meta-description, header tags, etc associated with the content. What role do pdf files play in SEO? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | bvalentine0