My homepage doesn't rank anymore. It's been replaced by irrelevant subpages which rank around 100-200 instead of top 5.
-
Hey guys,
I think I got some kind of penalty for my homepage. I was in top5 for my keywords. Then a few days ago, my homepage stopped ranking for anything except searching for my domain name in Google.
sitename.com/widget-reviews/ previously ranked #3 for "widget reviews"
but now....
sitename.com/widget-training-for-pet-cats/ is ranking #84 for widget reviews instead.Similarly across all my other keywords, irrelevant, wrong pages are ranking.
Did I get some kind of penalty?
-
hello Ian.
Here is my DMCA
To do this, you need to pay the Copyright office to register your choice.
My DMCA agent is a lawyer, but you can do it yourself, if you want,
as long as there is correct address information that can be served with letters or papers.
What this does is give you a small amount of protection. If you are allowing third party submissions of stories or comments or photo uploads or you outsource content creation, you need this. It gives anyone with a complaint against you, a guaranteed way to contact you - but they have to comply with the rules too, so it can't be a frivolous complaint.
-
Thank you for the suggestions - I will implement those today. One thing I don't get though is how to set up a DMCA page. Can you tell me more about that? I researched but I can only find info on how to file dmca complaints etc.
What's a DMCA page?
-
Nope I haven't bought links but I have asked people for links and written them articles in return or done other odd jobs for them. I just checked my links and I see some weird stuff that looks like scraper sites or something, linking to me. Could that cause a homepage to stop ranking at all?
-
Apart from thje usual wordpress problems that would not accoubt for a sudden loss of rankings i could not find anything wrong, I thonk youir problem may lay off page, did you ever buy links?
-
Ian,
The site looks good.
This isn't the problem, but you should redirect index.html and .htm to the home page, as you do with .php
Your home page author and description are both empty
- actually, you have two descriptions - the first one is empty, the second is OK
If you have blogs, remember to set up a DMCA page.
-
You're right Alan. The URL is www.ipage-reviews.com and I must explain that it's much higher quality content than my competitors. It's a relatively new site so it's not my favorite or highest quality of the sites I work on... So please don't just say oh your site is filtered because it's not high quality.... The competing sites make this look like wikipedia...
-
Great idea - I have checked that way, and my main page is not in the results.
I did see that someone I know personally to have done some weird shady things to me before has filed a DMCA notice to have a site removed from results. I checked it out on ChillingEffects.org and it doesn't include details about what site was removed, etc.... Also I checked in my webmaster tools and there is no message about it.
-
Really do need a url to help
-
Ian,
what happens if you search for your keyword, go to the very end of the SERPS and click the link that searches again, but this time allowing the hidden results?
Does your main page appear then, and is it about the same position it used to be?
-
Already done but good idea, thanks! No duplicate content detected by copyscape.
-
I would be checking the SERPs to see if there is duplicated content on a more powerful domain.
-
Hi Keri! I did have a potential buyer of the site who cursed me out because I didn't accept his lowball price... Maybe something could have happened, but seems unlikely that one person could sabotage my site... I hope.
I haven't received any notices in webmaster tools. In fact this happened to another site of mine as well after I did a redesign. All my rankings disappeared after about 2 weeks of the new design, and instead google started ranking irrelevant subpages instead of the homepage which was in top 3 or #1 for many keywords.
I can confirm that there is no wrong caninical or noindex, etc.
-
Knowing your URL would help, but I can understand if you don't want to share it here (you can create a private question and share it there if you like). Have you checked Google Webmaster Tools for any notices?
Has anyone recently done work on your site, where there might have been an unnoticed change to the code that put in the wrong canonical tag, or added a noindex tag?
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
-
Over-optimizing Internal Linking: Is this real and, if so, what's the happy medium?
I have heard a lot about having a solid internal linking structure so that Google can easily discover pages and understand your page hierarchies and correlations and equity can be passed. Often, it's mentioned that it's good to have optimized anchor text, but not too optimized. You hear a lot of warnings about how over-optimization can be perceived as spammy: https://neilpatel.com/blog/avoid-over-optimizing/ But you also see posts and news like this saying that the internal link over-optimization warnings are unfounded or outdated:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SearchStan
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-no-internal-linking-overoptimization-penalty-27092.html So what's the tea? Is internal linking overoptimization a myth? If it's true, what's the tipping point? Does it have to be super invasive and keyword stuffy to negatively impact rankings? Or does simple light optimization of internal links on every page trigger this?1 -
Should you allow an auto dealer's inventory to be indexed?
Due to the way most auto dealership website populate inventory pages, should you allow inventory to be indexed at all? The main benefit us more content. The problem is it creates duplicate, or near duplicate content. It also creates a ton of crawl errors since the turnover is so short and fast. I would love some help on this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gauge1230 -
Does Google Read URL's if they include a # tag? Re: SEO Value of Clean Url's
An ECWID rep stated in regards to an inquiry about how the ECWID url's are not customizable, that "an important thing is that it doesn't matter what these URLs look like, because search engines don't read anything after that # in URLs. " Example http://www.runningboards4less.com/general-motors#!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 Basically all of this: #!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 That is a snippet out of a conversation where ECWID said that dirty urls don't matter beyond a hashtag... Is that true? I haven't found any rule that Google or other search engines (Google is really the most important) don't index, read, or place value on the part of the url after a # tag.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Why isn't the Google change of address tool working for me?
Last night I switched my site from http to https. Both sites are verified in Webmaster Tools but when I try to use the change of address it says- Your account doesn't contain any sites we can use for a change of address. Add and verify the new site, then try again. How do I fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Ranking 1st on Google, but not in top 50 on Bing and Yahoo?
Hi Mozzers, Roughly 2 weeks ago we were ranked:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
#2 on Google for "African American Business Owner Mailing Lists"
#2 on Bing
#2 on Yahoo Now we are ranked
#1 on Google #50 on Bing
#50 on Yahoo I noticed a lot of our other keywords improved on Google during this period but vanished from the other 2 search engines. Other KWs include
"Apartment Owner Mailing Lists " (#4 on Google)
"Community College Mailing Lists (#3 on Google)
etc. What gives?
Thoughts?0 -
There's NO reason these sites should be beating mine...Or is there?
Hi Over the past 10 months, my internal page rankings (previously excellent) have plummeted. I'm now trying to recover them. I haven't received an unnatural links warning in Google Webmaster Tools. Also, I used to have hundreds of internal links to each of these 21 pages using the same exact-match anchor text eg, Tuscany real estate, Umbria real estate, etc. I changed this about 6 months ago. So why am I still ranking poorly for these (only moderately competitive keywords) behind sites with poorer metrics? 1) Keyword: lake como real estate My page here – **http://tinyurl.com/d34k8m ** -- used to rank No1 or No2 neck-and-neck with this page www.immobiliarevacanzelago.com/. He's still No1 but I’m down to about No13. Yet when I look in Open Site Explorer virtually all my metrics beat his.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeepster0 -
Why won't my sub-domain blog rank for my brand name in Google?
For six months or so, my team and I have been trying to get our blog to rank on page one in Google for the term "Instabill." The URL, http://blog.instabill.com, is a sub-domain of our company website and they both use the same IP address. Three pages on our www.Instabill.com site rank in the top three spots when searching our brand name in Google. However, our blog ranks 100+. For our blog, we are currently using b2evolution and nginx. We have tried adding static content on the home page, static content in the sidebar, static content on an About Instabill page, and optimizing blog posts for the keyword Instabill, but nothing seems to work. We appreciate any advice you can provide to us. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Instabill
Meghan0 -
How are pages ranked when using Google's "site:" operator?
Hi, If you perform a Google search like site:seomoz.org, how are the pages displayed sorted/ranked? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anthematic0