Lost ranking once optimised a page
-
Hello, we're a new member of SEOMOZ and love it but have a problem. Obviously the reason for joining is to learn more about SEO and hopefully get our website ranked a lot better than it currently is.
However, one particular page we've chosen to optimise (based on your tips) has since lost ranking and we can no longer find it in the searches. Is there a reason for this? We've only made the on page changes you suggested and also added more external and internal links so I can't understand why it would no longer be listed in the searches?
I look forward to your reply/feedback.
Many thanks
Peter
-
Hi Ryan,
Looks like you're using Wordpress. To take care of those redirect issue, try the following in your .htaccess file. Test thoroughly on a demo site before going live with this. Wordpress plugins that you're using might have options that reach the same effect, so look into that as well.
RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymLinks#Force trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www.)?mybabyradio.com/$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$
RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.mybabyradio.com/$1/ [R=301,L]
#Redirect non-www to www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mybabyradio.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mybabyradio.com/$1 [R=301,L] -
Hi Peter.
I am not clear what you mean by "swapped around". If the position of the href and rel properties were reversed, that is fine.
As far as which version of your link is used, with or without a trailing slash, that is up to your preference. I tend to think that a trailing slash represents a folder while a lack of a trailing slash represents a page. My preference for the conjunctivitis would be without the trailing slash.
The canonical tag, like most tools, can be used correctly to help your results. If used incorrectly, your results can worsen. It is a very important piece of code along with 301 redirects. I highly recommend taking a bit of time learning about both. My best advice is google "Matt Cutts canonical" and reviewing some of the results, along with "Matt Cutts 301".
-
I had a very similar problem with my own site disappearing from the SERPS, but showing as it should on any other PCs (that I hadn't previously used.)
The problem then related to Google's personalised search. Essentially, I had accidentally deleted my site and prevented it showing up in personalised search - though it still worked in any other browser that wasn't displaying my personalised results. ( See this article: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-test-lets-users-vote-add-and-delete-sites-in-serps/6031/ )
To remove personalised search take a look at: http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=54048
This sounds to be a likely suspect for the issue you are having.
Personalised Search can also provide false results as you are seeing personalised results, based on your search history, activity and preferences, rather than the non-personalised results as they actually appear without personalised bias in the SERPS.
You can see your web history settings here: https://www.google.com/history/
Hope that helps!
-
Any unsafe sites will be removed from the pages. So if you are 15 and there are 2 unsafe sites between 1 and 15 your rank will move up 2 spots to replace the pages that cannot be shown and so your rank will show 13.
-
The canonical do help as they funnel the links to provide rank for the http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis page. If you leave it out and follow Google webmaster tools you will see duplicate content errors showing up with the 4 urls Ryan mentioned highlighted.
-
Hi Ryan, for now, I'm gonna take the canonical tag off as I'm not sure it's right or if they're even helping sites. Just read some horror stories about these tags. Look forward to your reply in due course.
Many thanks
Peter
-
I agree, strange but more testing is required me thinks. In regards to the canonical tag this is what it looks like in our source:- Thinking on shouldn't it look like this
-
Hi Ryan, I've added the canonical tag, but when I've saved it it's swapped around the the way you've listed it. Check it out in the source and let me know what you think? Also, all the URLS should be like this http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis/ How do I do a 301 redirect?
-
You used to see the search result at #13, I see it at 13, and your iphone sees it there as well. I am going to go with the ranking of 13.
The other search results can be affected by numerous factors. Search Safe, your location, which Google search engine is used (uk vs .com vs others), past browsing history, and numerous other factors can be used to adjust the search results. These changes can happen even if you are not logged into Google.
With the above noted, the results are jumping around too much for my taste. I would suggest you perform additional tests, try clearing cache, try other browsers ( ie / chrome ) on the same pc and see what you come up with.
Good luck.
-
Your htags look good to me.
The code for a canonical tag looks like:
The canonical tag can go anywhere within the tag of your page.
Once you decide upon a URL style, be consistent throughout your site. You can decide on www vs non-www, and whether pages should end with a trailing slash.
-
Oh, and as another slant. I've just done a Google search on my iPhone and it appears at number 13. Obviously there's a discrepancy somewhere?
-
Also, just been downstairs and done a search for the term on two separate PC's on a variety of browsers with different IP's than what we use upstairs and our searched term didn't appear in google's searches. Now I'm baffled.
-
Hey Ryan, thanks for the on page assessment above I will narrow down the keyword to 6 in the article. I take it I'm ok with it in the htags. Not sure how to do these canonical tags though. Where do you put them and how do they look?
Now, just gone into IE and seen our listing ranked at number 4. This is getting a bit weird now.
-
Peter, I am using FF and tried private browsing. The result is the same.
Rather then troubleshoot FF, can you try opening up a IE or chrome browser and checking your result?
You can also try FF or any browser from another pc.
-
An additional note. You did a good job of optimizing the page for your keyword. There are a few opportunities for improvement.
1. Add a canonical tag to your page. There are at least 4 URLs which lead to the same page:
http://mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis
http://mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis/
http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis
http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis/
Those are considered 4 separate URLs, each of which can be linked to and divide your page's ranking. Adding a canonical tag will ensure all of your link juice flows to the correct page.
2. Decide which version of your URL is preferred for your site, www or the non-www. Once you decide, add a 301 redirect to enforce your decision, then take a look at your site and ensure all your links use the correct URL.
3. Optimizing is a great idea, but using "conjunctivitis" 24 times on a page goes far past anything needed for a search engine. There is not any exact number but I would say using the term four times should be sufficient, and six times is very safe. I would advise adjusting the content for the best readability and resist the urge to use the keyword at every opportunity.
-
Hi Ryan, very odd. I've just clikced your link and I still can't see it. I use firefox and whenever I want to get a clean search I go into > tools > private browsing. Is there something else that I need to do or plugin I need to use?
Cheers
-
I went to google.co.uk and searched for conjunctivitis and found you at...spot 13 just as you suggested.
If you are not seeing yourself there, perhaps you are using google.com, not google.co.uk? Or perhaps your browser is customizing your results based on other factors?
-
Hi Ryan, this is the URL it currently sits on:- http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis/ look forward to your reply.
Oh, the term is "conjunctivitis". Last time I checked it was appearing at number 13 in Google searches in the UK. Now, it's gone, where I haven't a clue. Or even why?
-
If you are willing to offer the URL of this particular page, along with the terms you optimized the page for, I am very willing to help.
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
-
Why is this site ranking higher?
We've put a fair bit of effort into delivering value here: https://lewescountycars.co.uk/ But a search for "Lewes taxis" or "taxis Lewes" puts this site above us: https://www.lewestowntaxis.co.uk/ As you can you see, this is a tiny site that we outperform in most ways.... what can we do to rank above it that we haven't already done? Thanks in advance - Gerard.
Technical SEO | | Paul7301 -
Website SEO Product Pages - Condense Product Pages
We are managing a website that has seen consistently dropping rankings over the last 2 years (http://www.independence-bunting.com/). Our long term strategy has been purely content-based and is of high quality, but isn’t seeing the desired results. It is an ecommerce site that has a lot of pages, most of which are category or product pages. Many of the product pages have duplicate or thin content, which we currently see as one of the primary reasons for the ranking drops.The website has many individual products which have the same fabric and size options, but have different designs. So it is difficult to write valuable content that differs between several products that have similar designs. Right now each of the different designs has its own product page. We have a dilemma, because our options are:A.Combine similar designs of the product into one product page where the customer must choose a design, a fabric, and a size before checking out. This way we can have valuable content and don’t have to duplicate that content on other pages or try to find more to say about something that there really isn’t anything else to say about. However, this process will remove between 50% and 70% of the pages on the website. We know number of indexed pages is important to search engines and if they suddenly see that half of our pages are gone, we may cause more negative effects despite the fact that we are in fact aiming to provide more value to the user, rather than less.B.Leave the product pages alone and try to write more valuable content for each product page, which will be difficult because there really isn’t that much more to say, or more valuable ways to say it. This is the “safe” option as it means that our negative potential impact is reduced but we won’t necessarily see much positive trending either. C.Test solution A on a small percentage of the product categories to see any impact over the next several months before making sitewide updates to the product pages if we see positive impact, or revert to the old way if we see negative impact.Any sound advice would be of incredible value at this point, as the work we are doing isn’t having the desired effects and we are seeing consistent dropping rankings at this point.Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you,
Technical SEO | | Ed-iOVA0 -
How to make my good sub-page rank ahead of my generic home page?
I have an ecommerce site for the clothes drying racks my family business makes, and it sells a few other laundry items also. It's about 5 years old. We used to rank on the first page for basic phrases like "clothes drying rack" and "umbrella clothesline". About 1.5 years ago we fell hard in the rankings. Since then "umbrella clothesline" has moved back to the first page, but "clothes drying rack" is stuck on the 3rd page and always with the result being the generic homepage instead of the good sub-page (which used to rank on the first page) that really shows-n-tells about our drying rack. Here are the three pages I am talking about. Home page = http://www.bestdryingrack.com/ Drying rack page = http://www.bestdryingrack.com/clothes-drying-rack-main.html and umbrella clothesline page = http://www.bestdryingrack.com/umbrella-clotheslines.html Any ideas on how to get the drying rack page to start ranking well again? (hopefully better than the generic homepage ranks) A little technical background: the Moz campaign on this site says that the home page has a PA = 42 with 190 LRD's and 344 external links. Both the umbrella clothesline page and the clothes drying rack page have almost equal statistics of PA = 35 with 20 LRD's and 23 external links. My anchor text distribution is maybe unbalanced. The drying rack page has 15 external links with the anchor of "Clothes Drying Rack". But the umbrella clothesline page has 14 external links with the anchor of "outdoor umbrella clothesline" and it ranks on the first page for that search. I can't figure out how to get OSE to tell me anchor text stats for just the homepage and not the whole site since www.bestdryingrack.com/index.html 301's to the plain www.bestdryingrack.com (if you know how, please share) What's wrong with my poor neglected clothes drying rack page? The only way I can get it to show up on the first page is to do a real specific search like "round wooden clothes drying rack" Your help could save a faltering family business. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | GregB1230 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Content > Wordpress Comments Page
Hello Moz Community, I've create a campaign in Moz and received hundreds of errors, regarding "Duplicate Page Content". After some review, I've found that 99% of the errors in the "Duplicate Page Content" report are occurring due to Wordpress creating a new comment page (with the original post detail), if a comment is made on a blog post. The post comment can be displayed on the original blog post, but also viewable on a second URL, created by Wordpress. http://www.Example.com/example-post http://www.Example.com/example-post/comment-page-1 Anyone else experience this issue in Wordpress or this same type of report in Moz? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | DomainUltra0 -
Rankings drop after Panda
Hi All, My site dropped completely out of the SERPS on September 27th. I've tried everything I know to do (re-wrote all content, disavow links tool, filed DCMA complaints, de-optimized on-page content, made anchor text less aggressive, etc). Can you all please take a look at www.doctorloanusa.com and let me know what you think the problem is and how much you'd charge to help? Keywords used to be: doctor loans, physician loans. I ranked 2 or 3 for those keywords consistently for over 4 years. I know I need more content, but I feel like it's a waste of time creating it. If a thin site was the issue, wouldn't I at least rank SOMEWHERE in the 1000 results? Thanks for your consideration. At my wits end.
Technical SEO | | Cary_Forest0 -
What is the best way to find missing alt tags on my site (site wide - not page by page)?
I am looking to find all the missing alt tags on my site at once. I have a FF extension that use to do it page by page, but my site is huge and that will take forever. Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions1 -
Off-page SEO and on-page SEO improvements
I would like to know what off-page SEO and on-page SEO improvements can be made to one of our client websites http://www.nd-center.com Best regards,
Technical SEO | | fkdpl2420 -
My site ranking
Hello, I have a website and working more than 1 year ago,I worked hard last year and paid alot to make guys write articles from my website to other forums so my keywords rank high and got good visitors, then I get in much care in SEO and found SEOMoz with is very nice,when I downloaded the tool bar it was a shock to find my website is almost zero although the big effort I had, I can do more but I need to guide what I exactly need to improve my website,I almost read alot of the beginner PDF and got good information to work with and can hire people to help too. I did a real big work sharing my subjects and i can see them in top#5 google but for other sites and now i found I am still zero 😞 adding my links inside also didnt help or counted. attached the statistics of the website and the competitors site to let me know which important things to take care to jump over. would be very thankful for detailed help, Best Regards 1_01308477251.png 1_01308477465.png
Technical SEO | | nesr_20200