Website Not Ranking Organically - Not Links, Not Domain Authority...
-
This is regarding the domain: http://lesliekays.com
We got a new client about 5 months back who had a website that was hacked. It took several months, but we've cleaned up most of the spammy links and completely rebuilt their website. We have been successful with every other client that we have ever done getting our customers to rank well organically, but we just can't figure this one out. I'm willing to offer a REWARD to the single person who can figure this out for us. (Let's not get carried away, a small reward). This customer has great quality links to their site too.
We are looking for answers other than:
1. Backlinks
2. Content
3. Malware
4. Domain or Page authority
5. 404 errors
6. We have utilized Googles Webmaster tools endlessly
It is something else and we can not identify it! Let me know what you think! I will give a public shout out to the person who helps us identify this issue!
-
For anyone stumbling across this we were able to identify the issue. We had a WordPress installation that had a hidden database full of SPAM and bad links/images etc. The Database could not be located in MySQL which was interesting, so we had the client agree to allow us to delete ALL content and start from scratch. (They had previously been hacked with another vendor but owned their WordPress website). We were migrating the database because they had hundreds of blog posts. We all agreed since they weren't doing any good we would start from scratch.
Deleted entire website off of server, reinstalled WordPress and we've seen a 745% improvement in keyword rankings. We have over 20 keywords now ranking on page 1. Woot!
-
Hi Dirk,
Again, appreciated the second set of eyes on this. Unfortunately, nothing changed. In fact, it got mildly worse with all the changes! I'm at a loss. I'll keep poking around at it. If you have any revelations, please shoot them my way!
-
The 3 errors listed are for a pop-up chat feature we have running by a company called, Olark. Can this cause issues with Googlebot? This code is embedded into the footer area of the site.
-
I see errors with Googlebot:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flesliekays.com
and Mobile Friendly test uses Googlebot.You need to go in Search Console -> Crawl -> Crawl errors just to see what results are return to Googlebot.
-
Thanks Dirk,
Worked on much of what you recommended. We'll wait a week and see what happens. This client had an old blog that we moved over, but it was a mess. She has given us permission to remove these old blogs with broken links and missing images from here site. Your time on this was very much appreciated. Let's see what happens! I am marking this as answered.
-
The reward is not important - it's solving your issue which is the thing that matters. I don't know Wordfence - but I'm getting suspicious if a tool from Google (Pagespeed Insights) renders a 503 error. This could indicate that Google bot also might encounter troubles when checking your site. The best way to check is go over your logfiles & check for the responses you serve to the Googlebot.
Removing the country blocking now seems to enable pagespeed insights to work properly. Score is not great (50/100 - mobile) so more or less confirms the test by Webpagetest.org. Try to enable caching for static resources like images and enable gzip to compress data transfer. On top of that - compress your images (some of them are really heavy - check http://www.lesliekays.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/brake-hand-position.jpg . The other elements are probably more difficult to do - but these things could already get your score around 70%.
I would try to keep the Wordfence disabled for a week or two - to see if situation improves. Without the log files it's difficult to be sure - but my gut feeling is that this is the main reason why the site isn't ranking. Working on site performance can only help with this - the suggestions above shouldn't be that difficult to implement.
Some other issues - your internal links are not optimal - you have about 600+ links going to 404 (a lot of them = images) - 7 with wrong formatted url (without .com) - 600+ url's which are redirected (in your internal linking you are mixing both www & non-www versions) - so might want to clean up a bit on these ones as well. It shouldn't be a reason for not getting indexed but it's something you should have a look at - especially if the site has some issues before.
I ran a crawl - but it seemed to go on forever - so it's possible you have some kind of eternal loop as well. I stopped at 1781 URI's crawled.
I would recommend you to invest the 99 GBP in Screaming Frog - which would really help you in identifying / solving these issues.
Dirk
-
Screaming Frog... excellent resource!
-
Hi Dirk,
I have removed the Country Blocking from Wordfence so you could take a look at it closer. Thank you for your response and time looking into this! Yes, we run Wordfence on all of our sites (over 80 of them) and haven't had any issues with Googlebot accessing them. We started blocking foreign IP addresses about 3 months ago in an effort to curb some of the hacking and brute force attacks we get.
And I'm serious about this small reward! I value your time.
Taber
-
Really? We have WordFence running on 80 of our sites and don't see any issues with the other sites, all the same type of client as well. Do you have a better suggestions besides WordFence? Perhaps I'll disable it and see if that clears the issue. And, are you saying that you are seeing a return from Googlebot error or that it CAN cause issues?
-
True - i just joining and #WTF seeing such results.
-
Sorry Peter - I was first - the reward is mine
-
Wordfence? RU serious?
This plugin can serious hit your SEO performance because their settings. For example - you return error to GoogleBot...
-
Bonus: You indicate that you don't have problems with 404's - but your site isn't exactly clean concerning the internal links. Can't crawl using Screaming Frog given the 503 I get - but manually checking few pages it seems you have mal formatted links:
Classic Car Insurance (the .com is missing) - it's not a 404 but DNS lookup error
I would do a full scan with Screaming Frog to check what other technical issues you have on the site.
-
Just added the screen copy from the Pagespeed Insights result for sake of completeness.
-
Difficult to check - given the very strict firewall rules you apply (I get a 503 out of Belgium : Reason: Access from your area has been temporarily limited for security reasons)
I assume you are sure that your firewall is allowing Googlebot to access your site? (the sentence "For example, if you were blocked because it was detected that you are a fake Google crawler, then disable the rule that blocks fake google crawlers" scares me a bit)
When I use Pagespeed Insights I get the message that they are seeing a 503 as well (and this is Google after all). You might want to check your logfiles to see that Googlebot is indeed able to crawl your pages (with all the IP addresses it is using)
Other than the config of your firewall - you might want to check loadtimes - according Webpagetest you page takes 25sec to load so there is probably some room for improvement. (I know from other cases where very slow sites were the main reason for indexing issues)
Let me know how to get the reward
(if one of these reasons is causing the indexing issues)Dirk
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
-
Hreflang and canonical tag for new country specific website - different base domain
I have a little different situation compared to most other questions which asks for hreflang and canonical tags for country specific version of websites. This is an SEO related question and I was hoping to get some insight on your recommendations. We have an existing Australian website - say - ausnight.com.au now we want to launch a UK version of this website - the domain is - uknight.co.uk please note, we are not only changing from .com.au to .co.uk.... but the base domain name as well changed - from ausnight to uknight as you can understand, the audience for both websites is different. Both websites has most pages same with same contents.... the questions I have is - Should we put canonical tag on the new website pages? If we don't put canon tag on new website pages, what is the impact on the SEO ranking of current website? I believe we need to put hreflang tag on both websites to tell google that we have another language version (en-au vs en-gb) of the same page. Is this correct?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TinoSharp0 -
Backlink is good or bad? All of the website links were of the same type.
Backlink is good or bad? All of the website links were of the same type. Website niche - Animation and 3D Rendering Studios Backlink from - http://www.adamfrisby.com/create-home-design-and-interior-decor-in-2d-3d.html the anchor tag is image URL from one of the many images in that post.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | varunrupal0 -
Website architecture - levels vs filters and authority loss - Enterprise SEO
Hi Everyone, I am participating in the development of a marketplace website where the main channel will be traffic via SEO. We have encountered the directories (levels) vs filters situation. 1. Does everyone still agree that if we have too many levels, authority is loss as you do down through the levels? Does everyone agree that there should be a max of 3 levels and never 4. Example 1 www.domain.com/level1/level2/level3 vs www.domain.com/level1 In theory, the content on "level 3" will have a lower DA than the content on "level1". 2. Does everyone agree that for enterprise SEO (huge marketplace websites) filters are a better idea than levels? Example 2 www.domain.com/level1/level2/level3 vs www.domain.com/filter-option1 In theory, the content on "level 3" will have a lower DA than the content on "filter-option1". Thanks so much in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Anyone Seen a Drop in Rankings from Article Links from Years Ago?
A client of mine did article marketing years ago with Ezine, PRlog, ArticlesBase, etc. Now those links are still linking to their domain. Do you think they'll see an increase in rankings from removing those links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alhallinan0 -
Organic Links and Skimlinks Affiliate Program
Hi All, If you're not familiar with Skimlinks, what they do is turn organic links into affiliates links so that publishers can earn commission through our affiliate program. Pretty much every SEO's nightmare. myfashionlife.com/archives/2013/07/16/get-anne-hathaways-paper-denim-and-cloth-look/ anchor text "Floppy straw hat" Looking at the source code the link looks clean, but as soon you click on it you get redirected via a 302 to our site. My questions is; is it just users that get redirect or is it the same for search engines? Screaming frog recognises the link as a 200. Are we losing all the link juice, or is it fine? I've have half a mind to kick them out of the program. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
Correlation Between Domain Authority and Crawl Penetration?
A. Is there a correlation between domain authority and crawl penetration? B. Is there a correlation between domain authority and juice distribution?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
Purchased a high ranking domain and want to transfer my site to the new domain
I recently purchased a highly ranked domain. The link profile is very good and I don't want to lose to many links however I want to transfer my site to that domain. What is the best way of doing this without losing the current rank on search engines? Also how much does the transfer of registrar information impact my SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ydop0 -
Purchased new site with good SERP ranks, do I operate and build links or redirect the TLD?
I recently purchased a blog within my product category - it has many first page rankings for difficult keywords within my niche. I am wondering if it makes more sense for for me to continue to operate this blog and build links to my site and blog (blog is in wordpress) or to export the XML feed and upload the content to my blog (new site also in wordpress), at which point I would do a 301 at the Top-Level domain. Any thoughts, ideas, or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NickEubanks0