New website showing old domain titles in search
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Hello Moz,
We have recently built a new website http://www.hegroup.org.uk/
The new site has the domain for one of the clients old sites pointing to it - heartofmersey.org.uk.
When we check the SEO index (site:hegroup.org.uk) for the new site, most of of the indexed items are using the old 'Heart of Mersey' title in the index although these do redirect to the new site. See below.
Heart of Mersey
<cite class="_Rm">www.hegroup.org.uk/</cite>Jessica Bell · Andrew Bennett · Nicola Calder · Matt Donnelly · Alexandra Holt · Robin Ireland · Magdalena Kolka · Alison Gradwell · Matthew Philpott · Trustees.
Not sure how to resolve this issue. Any suggestions
Thanks
Ian
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I saw a new page cached on Google, so it seems like Google was able to find some, if not all, new content, sitemap or not. What concerned me though, was the cached page had old meta data in it. That's what made me think that Google might have been able to find a sitemap on the website server, but the sitemap could have been pointing to the test (versus production) domain.
I've seen that happen before.
So it's good you submitted a new sitemap via Search Console. I'd also take a look a see if there might be conflicting sitemaps on the server.
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Sure thing. As Donna mentioned, the sitemap is definitely a good place to start.
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Hi Donna,
Just checked GWT and the client hasn't submitted a site map.
Just submitted one for them.
Will see if that makes a difference.
Thank you for the response.
Ian
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Hi Erika,
The site was launched approx 8-9 months ago. The client was supposed to submit a sitemap - but didn't. I have just submitted a sitemap for the site, so will hopefully see some changes over the next few days.
We may be doing some SEO work on the site shortly so need to get this resolved.
It look like Google was appending every title with the old 'Heart of Mersey' site.
May try amending menu page title or using shf404 if the sitemap submission doesn't work.
Thank you for the response.
Much appreciated
Ian
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When did you implement these changes? When I viewed the cached version of the following page:
www.hegroup.org.uk/accessibilty
I see that the snapshot was from Dec 23, 2015. If your changes were after this date, it appears Google hasn’t crawled the new/updated pages yet.
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Hello Ian Molyneux,
I don't have the answer but did notice that the cached version of the page uses your old title and meta description tags. Check your sitemap. It's a place to start. Is it perhaps pointing to your test region?
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