Temporarily Delist Search Results
-
We have a client that we run campaign sites for. They have asked us to turn off our PPC and SEO in the short term so they can run some tests. PPC no problem straight forward action, but not as straight forward to just turn off SEO. Our campaign site is on Page 1, Position 4, 3 places below our clients site. They have asked us to effectively disappear from the landscape for a period of 1-2 months.
Has anyone encountered this before, the ability to delist good SERP for a period of time?
Details: Very small site with only 17 pages indexed within google, but home page has good SERP result.
My issues are,
-
How to approach this in the most effective manor?
-
Once the delisting process is activated and the site/page disappears, then we reverse the process will we get back to where we were?
Anyone encountered this before?
I realise this is a ridiculous question and goes against SEO logic, get to page 1 results only to remove it, but hey, clients are always presenting new challenges for us to address.....
Thanks
-
-
SEOJellyfish,
There is no way that you can turn off the site, wait 1 to 2 months, turn the site on, and expect to be anywhere near where you were.
So, have you asked any more questions around the "testing" they need to do? I am assuming you are an affiliate and not an agency since you state a line between their site and your "campaign" site.
Are they just tired of paying affiliates?
What do they want to achieve with this?
How are they going to compensate you for going black for up to 2 months?
What are they going to test?
If you do this and the test finishes and you cannot readily regain your ranking, what changes in your relationship?
I think I would clarify all of this before moving to turn your site off.
Best
-
JellyFish,
i think the best way to approach this is to use every possiblity provided by Google Webmaster including blocking Googlebot to crawl your pages. Then it should take some time to dissapear. You could also 301 redirect your pages (17 is not that bad) to other pages you want to rank higher with.
- if you ever get back to were you where is not certain and can't be said by anyone. I think their is a good chance that you can get your position back but i't can't be said for sure.
I never encountered this before but i can image the problem your client is having.
hope this helps
kind regards
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
-
[Very Urgent] More 100 "/search/adult-site-keywords" Crawl errors under Search Console
I just opened my G Search Console and was shocked to see more than 150 Not Found errors under Crawl errors. Mine is a Wordpress site (it's consistently updated too): Here's how they show up: Example 1: URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html/feed/rss2 Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html Example 2 (this surprised me the most when I looked at the linked from data): URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/3/ Linked From: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/2/ (this is showing as if it's from our own site) http://a-spammy-adult-site.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html Example 3: URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html How do I address this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rmehta10 -
Search Results Pages Blocked in Robots.txt?
Hi I am reviewing our robots.txt file. I wondered if search results pages should be blocked from crawling? We currently have this in the file /searchterm* Is it a good thing for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Indexed Answer Box Result Leads to a 404 page?
Hey everyone, One of my clients is currently getting an answer box (people also ask) result for a page that is no longer live. They migrated their site approximately 6 months ago, and the old page is for some reason still indexed in the (people also asked) results. Weird thing is that this page leads to a 404 error. Why the heck is Google showing this? Are there separate indexes for "people also asked" results, and regular organic listings? Has anyone ever seen/experienced something like this before? Any insight would is much appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HSawhney0 -
Website using search term as URL brand name to cheat Google
Google has come a long way over the past 5 years, the quality updates have really helped bring top quality content to the top that is relevant for users search terms, although there is one really ANNOYING thing that still has not been fixed. Websites using brand name as service search term to manipulate Google I have got a real example but I wouldn't like to use it in case the brand mentions flags up in their tools and they spot this post, but take this search for example "Service+Location" You will get 'service+location.com' rank #1 Why? Heaven knows. They have less than 100 backlinks which are of a very low, spammy quality from directories. The content is poor compared to the competition and the competitors have amazing link profiles, great social engagement, much better website user experience and the data does not prove anything. All the competitors are targeting the same search term but yet the worst site is ranking the highest. Why on earth is Google not fixing this issue. This page we are seeing rank #1 do not even deserve to be ranking on the first 5 pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jseddon920 -
Since two years i lost place in google search
Hi, First excuse my but english. I am from France. Since two years i have lost place for the most important of my keyword in google search. The loss is gradual. It's been more than two years as I do not do link building. I do not know what to do. I just read your article on link building. (http://moz.com/blog/beginners-guide-to-link-building)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pascaltall
I would like if possible for someone to take a look at my website to see what is wrong and what i have to do do. For reasons of discretion I do not want to link the site name here, but you can see the domain name by following this link. http://riador.com/lien.html
Thank you to all.0 -
Does anyone have a clue about my search problem?
After three years of destruction, my site still has a problem - or maybe more than one. OK, I understand I had - and probably still have - a Panda problem. The question is - does anyone know how to fix it, without destroying eveything? If I had money, I'd gladly give it up to fix this, but all I have is me, a small dedicated promotions team, 120,000+ visitors per month and the ability to write, edit and proofread. This is not an easy problem to fix. After completing more than 100 projects, I still haven't got it right, in fact, what I've done over the past 2 months has only made things worse - and I never thought I could do that. Everything has been measured, so as not to destroy our remaining ability to generate income, because without that, its the end of the line. If you can help me fix this, I will do anything for you in return - as long as it is legal, ethical and won't destroy my reputation or hurt others. Unless you are a master jedi guru, and I hope you are, this will NOT be easy, but it will prove that you really are a master, jedi, guru and time lord, and I will tell the world and generate leads for you. I've been doing website and SEO stuff since 1996 and I've always been able to solve problems and fix anything I needed to work on. This has me beaten. So my question is: is there anyone here willing to take a shot at helping me fix this, without the usual response of "change domains" "Delete everything and start over" or "you're screwed" Of course, it is possible that there is a different problem, nothing to do with algorithms, a hard-coded bias or some penalizing setting, that I don't know about, a single needle in a haystack. This problem results in a few visible things. 1. Some pages are buried in supplemental results 2. Search bots pick up new stories within minutes, but they show up in search results many hours later Here is the site: http://shar.es/EGaAC On request, I can provide a list of all the things we've done or tried. (actually I have to finish writing it) Some Notes: There is no manual spam penalty. All outgoing links are nofollow, and have been for 2 years. We never paid for incoming links. We did sell text advertising links 3-4 years ago, using text-link-ads.com, but removed them all 2 1/2 years ago. We did receive payment for some stories, 3-4 years ago, but all have been removed. One more thing. I don't write much - I'm a better editor than a writer, but I wrote a story that had 1 million readers. the massive percentage of 0.0016% came from you-know-who. Yes, 16 visitors. And this was an exclusive, unique story. And there was a similar story, with half a million readers. same result. Seems like there might be a problem!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | loopyal0 -
In mobile searches, does Google recognize HTML5 sites as mobile sites?
Does Google recognize HTML5 sites using responsive design as mobile sites? I know that for mobile searches, Google promotes results on mobile sites. I'm trying to determine if my site, created in HTML5 with responsive design falls into that category. Any insights on the topic would be very helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BostonWright0
