HomePage Stopped Ranking For Brand on Aged Site
-
I've got an odd issue (that I've never encountered in 27 years in SEO). Our home page stopped ranking for our brand "BlowFish SEO" and is no place to be seen when searching our brand. I do get the knowledge panel on the right-hand side of the page. and our about page now comes up number #1. Technically the on-page SEO is correct This page has ranked for many years for our Brand. If I search blowfish SEO west palm beach I get the home page and all the nice site links. And other various variations of branded search. Our company has lots of mentions across the web and branded backlinks. No manual penalty has been placed on us. Im starting to think some type of negative SEO attack but I can't find it. I do know someone is using my name and brand along with many other companies in cloaked doorway redirected pages to gain SEO leads.. Yeah I know I've complained about it to Google they do nothing about it..
Other things I've checked:
- No one else seems to be using my brand
- Home page canonical tag points to itself
- Title tag contains brand name at the front (rest of site it's at the end)
- No manual penalty
- XML sitemap contains home page (and accurate for other pages)
To make this even more confusing, if you search the brand name the physical location appears on the right rail with an accurate URL.
Ive added an image of the search result when I search BlowFish SEO
Please note the top result is PPC the about page is 1st organc
Any other ideas that I may be missing?
-
I think Google might actually have a problem with my site title.. I just googled BlowFish SEO west palm Beach and this is the result I got.
-
Thank you so very much for taking all that time out to help me. From what I'm seeing here it's looking like a combo 2, 3 and 4 and I am annoyed I'm going to have to go through all these links and add to the disavow file I guess. Once again I thank you. Besides handling the Day to Day here sometimes makes it difficult to get to the technical stuff lately personally. I guess its time to get this ship under control myself.
-
I get you at position #6 on Google. You are there but admittedly it's not great:
- https://d.pr/i/XS14Cn.png (screenshot)
The site is ranking, just very badly which makes me think it's NOT technical SEO related
Let's look at that first though:
- https://d.pr/i/5a7y8D.png (screenshot)
By the way you can grab that Chrome extension here, it's quite handy. DeepCrawl is actually a very powerful SEO crawling suite (they make their own crawler, and also this handy Chrome extension); many find it superior to Screaming Frog - the main reason it's not that talked about is the pricing which is pretty steep (IMO)
To confirm, there's nothing majorly wrong with your robots.txt file either:
- https://d.pr/i/7ZuIlf.png (screenshot)
On simple and relatively trustworthy one-page scanners, the site doesn't seem to have any massive technical SEO issues (at least at the homepage level): https://seositecheckup.com/seo-audit/blowfishseo.com
So let's look at links I guess?
https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/v2/subdomains/recent?target=blowfishseo.com
- https://d.pr/i/eH0GKc.png (screenshot)
That looks like it could be doing some damage. Massive spike in linking URLs May 2018, followed by a massive spike in referring domains July 2019. Doesn't look natural AT ALL
So what about anchor texts?
- https://d.pr/i/GagQUI.png (screenshot)
- https://d.pr/f/jPWNPr.csv (data)
In green you have partially branded or branded anchor texts, Google usually has no problem with these. In blue you have part keyword part geo terms, Google can have a problem with these if they begin to feel your backlink profile looks unnatural. In red you have exact-match anchor keywords, Google doesn't really like people link-building in this way any-more (most SEO firms would say EMA links are a no-no)
That spike in referring domains which we saw earlier really interests me. It seems to be concentrated... mostly between... 28th June 2019 and ... 6th August 2019
Let's take a look at new links specifically from within that time period (remember it's actually the time when Ahrefs discovered them, they may have gone live slightly earlier - but Ahrefs are pretty supreme for any kind of proper backlink research)
https://d.pr/i/Wi7p8S.png (screenshot)
https://d.pr/f/RhbuDv.csv (data)
... highlighted some stuff there that looks odd. Links from unrelated markets (languages) or locked regions (CN / Chinese firewall) and links from weird looking subdomain sites that look spam-made and mass produced
Yup, I'd say it's the backlink profile being too oldschool and full of crap, with recent spikes and anchor-text balancing problems. You unfortunately 'just' tipped the scales in a bad way and now you're suffering
Four possibilities:
1) You have been doing some bad backlink work, or had previously done so and never took the time to do a big disavow / link removals project when standards changed. Legacy is hitting you now, because of recent spiking link movements, which tipped you over the scales (has happened to many people, doesn't mean you're a terrible SEO or anything of the sort - was actually quite impressed with your on-site architecture and stuff)
2) One of your subordinates has gotten slack and done some bad backlink work (you'd need to find out who is playing you for a mug ASAP and sack them). If it's someone extremely junior show leniency I guess. But if you looked at the data I had supplied and found a bad network of shallow content links from no-name sites, and then found a paper-trail saying you had actively paid for those... I'd personally be pretty annoyed
3) Some scraper site has started scraping your posts onto their sh*tty network of sites, in the hopes of making their sites less terrible, but actually now it's hurting you as well
4) Deliberate negative-SEO intervention (we have seen a few of these lately on here, it seems to be a very 2019 thing IMO)
... hope that helps!
-
Its been doing that sporadically playing hide and seek. I'm surprised it showed. I'm more than surprised the about page is coming above the home page since the About has an anchored link for the term pointing at the home page. It should tank the about page under the home page for the term. I'm using an Incognito window not logged in when i search.
-
Over the last two and a half months in GSC, I have watched the branded search for the home page slip nationally from #1 to number three and then not show locally at all for the branded term. This started before the major core update.
-
We just searched "blowfish seo" and see your twitter profile at #1, your about page at #2, and your home page at #3.
How long ago did you notice the change in which page ranks for your branded search? And has the about page consistently been showing up since you first noticed it or does Google switch back and forth between the two from what you have seen?
-
I did a Google search and found the homepage listed. Strange as I checked if you were logged in and displaying something becuase of personalized results. So not sure
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
-
How to Rank Local Website in Search Engines?
Hello, I'm the owner of a rubbish removal company based in London - Frank Rubbish Removal and trying to optimize the website of the company for search engines. Until now, I have hired a couple marketing companies but without success. What I want to achieve is to rank for local keywords in the rubbish removal niche, for example, Rubbish Removal Chelsea, waste clearance Hackney, waste removal Harrow...and similar local keywords. I have spent a lot of money on marketing companies and the website still can't go on 1st page of search engines in the UK. Can you tell me what I can do or who can hire to bring my website on 1st page for the local keywords?
Local Website Optimization | | korado112 -
How can my categories rank for my different branches? Tidied site up but now local rankings are worse
Dear Mozzers , I am wondering if someone could please help with some advice and assistance on the following for our Tool hire site: Basically I like to know how we can rank for our categories for our different branch locations ?. We have a branch finder page and separate branch pages but I do not know if I should have an internal link from all our branch pages to all my different categories or not or is google clever enough to know that I have x locations and x categories and I should rank all the categories in all the locations. I think my site structure is fairly straightforward and on the face of it similar to what others do who have multiple branches . For example I enclose a link to 2 of our categories - carpet cleaner hire category and a floor sander hire category carpet cleaner category - http://goo.gl/cMyS4i floor sander category - http://goo.gl/4ipUyA Heres a link to our Branch Finder - http://goo.gl/UyTQdK Heres a link to one of our Branches for example - Bristol Branch - http://goo.gl/9TXHTK And heres our link to our google plus Bristol page - google plus bristol branch page - https://goo.gl/h0IwAK . We have link from our bristol page going to the bristol google plus page and visa versa. Currently within our internal linking structure there is No direct link on the branch pages to the categories ?. Is this something we need to do or not necessary ?. - If we do it , then it may mess up or confuse the page as I someone need to get all the category links on the branch pages ? We have lots of good unique content , lots of citations for our branches and categories etc but we just don't seem to rank at all well for any of our categories in local search. For example if somene was to search for - Carpet cleaner hire "City Name " or Floor sander hire "City Name" (City name being where our branches are). We dont rank very well for most of our cities. Even without putting the city name in we dont rank to well in local search. We used to have individual pages for our categories in each of the cities we have branches with unique content on all and these did rank quite well in a few cities but never top 3 in most and we got rid of these last month (start of Oct) as I was told that google may see this as quite spammy or doorway pages if I have a carpet cleaner hire Bristol page or a floor sander hire Bristol page etc ?.. All my location landing pages now just 301 back to the appropriate category. I am wondering if getting rid of these landing pages was a good idea as by tidying things up , I've seemed to have lost my local rankings for my cities. Can someone please advise if what I did was right and what else I should look at doing ?> Could it be an internal linking issue I need to sort ? Any assistance much appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC12
thanks
Pete0 -
Local SEO for National Brands
Hi all, When it comes to local SEO in 2015, I appreciate that having a physical location in the town/city you wish to rank is a major factor. However, if you're a national brand is it still possible to rank for local searches when you're based in one location? The reason I ask is that, although our service is national, the nature of what we offer means that it is not inconceivable that people would search for a local variation of our top keywords. Other than the standard things - location in the content, the H1/H2s, title tag, meta description, url etc. - is there anything national businesses can do to help? Thanks in advance. John
Local Website Optimization | | NAHL-14300 -
Our rankings are all over the place but mostly keywords are dropping
our rankings are all over the place but mostly keywords are dropping from 2-20 to 35 and over 51. it has been happening over the past 3 weeks but don't know what to look for. any advise is appreciated. stevesautorepairva.com . our other automotive website hometownetire.com seems to be doing better but do not know why. they are 2 separate businesses. Thank you very much in advance for any help. AqDQnRx
Local Website Optimization | | ifixcars0 -
Changing the sites root folder
Hi am in the process of developing my new site domainname.com/devs/ but my current site is still on www.domainname.com/ When the time comes to launch the new site (in devs folder) I want to change the main root folder to this devs folder. Is there a correct system to do this with as little pain as possible. I know I will need to go through all of my pages and make sure they are 301 redirected to the new folder, but not sure what the correct way to tackle the domain name root folder change. Any help would be awesome! Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | SeoSheikh0 -
Search Result Discrepancy: Keyword "Dresses" shows international sites in the search results of Google.co.in.
Hi All, What would be the reason that Google shows international websites in the first page results while there are huge local players available. Eg: Dresses - Keyword that shows results with almost all the results from International websites whereas the local big players in the same category are not shown. This is not the case for other keywords like Women dresses, Clothing, Shoes etc., Is it a bug or any particular reasons? Thanks,
Local Website Optimization | | Myntra0 -
Listing bundle info on site and on local SEO page.
We just finished a new telecom site, and like all telecom sites (think AT&T, Verizon, Suddenlink, etc.), we allow people to put their location in and find internet and phone service packages (what we call bundles) unique to their area. This page also has contact information for the local sales team and some unique content. However, we're about to start putting up smaller, satellite pages for our local SEO initiative. Of course, these pages will have unique content as well, but it will have some of the same content as what's on the individual bundle page, such as package offerings, NAP, etc. Currently this is the URL structure for the bundles: domain.com/bundles/town-name/ This is what I'm planning for the local SEO pages: domain.com/location/town-name-state/ All local FB pages, Google listings, etc. will like to these location pages, rather than the bundle pages. Is this okay or should I consolidate them into one?
Local Website Optimization | | AMATechTel0 -
Not displaying the address and its effect on local rankings.
I have just started working with a plumber in my local area to provide a website and generate leads from a combination of SEO, social media and advertising. The issue is that he is adamant that his address should not be displayed anywhere on the site or on any of the citations we are looking to build. This is even after I explained the importance of this information to rankings and the fact that his address can be hidden from view in local listings. I have already come to the conclusion that getting in the typical 7 pack will be near impossible without verifying the address or building citations without a address. But I would like to hear your thoughts on whether you believe ranking organically is still a possibility or whether I should just focus on social / advertising.
Local Website Optimization | | yabyy140