What reason would scrapers, and syndication sites outrank all of our content?
-
Typing in any of our titles for content, scrapers and content syndication sites all outrank us by quite a bit. What is the main reason for this usually? I started noticing this happening quite a bit this year, and think maybe it has to do with panda. Has anyone figured out the reasoning?
-
What is the main reason for this usually?
I don't think that there is really a main reason for this.... a couple things play in concert..
As with many sites that produce great content my bet is that... Lots of people have grabbed your stuff and are using it. They are using your titles and your brand and your words and your images to enrich a site that is monetized with ads or affiliate programs. Some of these people are really smart about optimization. Some of them have created sites that have become moderately powerful.
Perhaps this has not been theft. Perhaps you gave your content away and now you are paying the price for creating duplicate content that is being used against you by smart people.
And, google says that they are "good at recognizing relevant content to return to the searcher"... but they have not decided to put the resources into returning the original version - even after we tell them which version it is with rel=author as they requested. They have simply not decided to put the resources into this- even though I am sure that some of them would like it to work that way.
There you have it.
-
A few possibilities. We just went through this:
- If your site recently got hacked and delivered malware, Google may temporarily remove your site or push it down in the rankings. Assuming you fixed it, you should recover fairly soon.
- Do you rank #1 for your own brand name? If not, you may be under a Penguin or Panda penalty. Did you get a warning message from Google regarding unnatural links?
- Is the content on your site unique? (aside from the scrapers) If it's not, that can cause what you're seeing.
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
-
Changing top level navigation between site sections
We've got an internal proposal to change our top level nav depending on the section of the site. For example, on our homepage it might read: Products, Library, About with relevant links dropping down below. As we have varied products, the drop down underneath it would include the various families. When arriving on the product family page the top-level nav would change to represent more specific offerings. For example: xxx.com 1. Products; 2. Library; 3. About xxx.com/xxx 1. Product family 1; 2. Product family 2; 3. Product family 3; 4. Library; 5. About What are the SEO/UX implications of this? It seems confusing but allows more specific navigation via the main nav depending on the section of the site. Also it seems that an alternating TLN might not be too Google-friendly.
Web Design | | gwelch0 -
ECWID Ecommerce Sites. No Custom URLS?
Is there any way possible to be able to name product urls in website that use ECWID for their ecommerce? They have long and "dirty" urls. For example this running boards site: http://www.runningboards4less.com/general-motors#!/~/product/category=6593890&id=28043027 Isn't this hurting the overall SEO of the site? Especially product pages?
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
SEO tricks for a one page site with commented html content
Hi, I am building a website that is very similar to madebysofa.com : means it is one page site with entire content loaded (however are commented in html) and by clicking on sections it modify the DOM to make specific section visible. It is very interesting from UX point of view but as far as I know, since this way most of my content is always commented and hidden from crawlers, I will loose points regarding SEO. Is there any workaround you can recommend or you think sites like madebysofa.com are doomed to loose SEO points by nature? Best regards,
Web Design | | Ashkan10 -
What is a really great bounce rate for a product or service site? What does Good look like?
I am really curious about a result I have never seen before. Our bounce rate went down a lot on a new site. So, what is good??? Recently, we took on a project with a company that offers a product they install for consumers and who had been in business for 15 plus years. The company is successful, has good customer base of those who have been made very happy, etc. It is not a repeat sale type of product, etc. One and done. Their site when we began talking was roughly a year old and was not well constructed but not terrible. Most of the issues were around I frames, use of older coding, poor SEO, etc. There was not really a way to "redesign" and we built a new site. This became a true collaboration in a B2B environment as the owner pushed us like crazy. Not the bad kind of push, the one that makes you say to your team, "Let's find a way!" The result, IMO, was a gorgeous site. But, as you know, those are a dime a dozen. But, to get to the point, when we took over the account they had a bounce rate of around 45%. I did not see this as either good or bad, but a fact and for this industry probably not bad at all. In all honesty, I was not looking at that as a first metric I wanted to move, but it was obviously at or near the top for all the reasons we know. So, this site is a local business, not an everyday product and gets about 2500 to 3000 uniques per month. If we compare to May of 2011/2012: 2011 2012 Total Visitors 1852 3,298 Uniques 1609 2,740 Pageviews 5,634 23,203 Pages/visit 3.04 7.04 Avg Duration 2.05 3.20 Yes, I am leaving off what we are getting, yes, I am leaving off the site. Please don't hate me. I am really wanting to see what others see with site changes and bounce rates first and will disclose. So, what's a great bounce rate? How do you know?
Web Design | | RobertFisher0 -
Alternatives to Wordpress for updating content of a static html site
I have a static html site which I cannot update myself. What solutions/ programs would you recommend for gaining the ability to update it myself? I'm reluctant to switch to WordPress because the sites that use any CMS that are hosted by my web hosting company get routinely hacked. Thank you!
Web Design | | translate0 -
Duplicate Content Problem on Our Site?
Hi, Having read the SEOMOZ guide and already worried about this previously, I have decided to look further into this. Our site is 4-5 years old, poorly built by a rouge firm so we have to stick with what we have for now. Were I think we might be getting punished is duplicate content across various pages. We have a Brands page, link at top of page. Here we are meant to enter each brand we stock and a little write up on that brands. What we then put in these write ups is used on each brands item page when we click a brand name on the left nav bar. Or when we click a Product Type (eg. Footwear) then click on a brand filter on the left. So this in theory is duplicate content. The SEO title and Meta Description for each brand is then used on the Brands Page and also on each page with the Brands Product on. As we have entered this brand info, you will notice that the page www.designerboutique-online.com/all-clothing/armani-jeans/ has the same brand description in the scroll box at the top as the page www.designerboutique-online.com/shirts/armani-jeans/ and all the other product type pages. The same SEO title and same Meta descriptions. Only the products change from each one. This then applies to each brand we have (at least 15) across about 8 pages. All with different URLs but the same text. Not sure how a 301 or rel: canonical would work for this, as each URL needs to point at specific pages (eg. shirts, shorts etc...). Some brands such as Creative Recreation and Cruyff only sell footwear, so technically I think??? We could 301 to the Footwear/ URL rather than having both all-clothing and footwear file paths? This surely must be down to the bad design? Could we be losing valulable rank and juice because of this issue? And how would I go about fixing it? I want a new site, but funds are tight. But if this issue is so big that only a new site would fix it, then maybe the money would need to come forward. What do people make of this? Cheers Will
Web Design | | YNWA0 -
How much content is too much? Best Pages For Content?
To my understanding content has a lot to do with organic rankings if written correctly. My question is, how much content is too much and what pages are best to place content. Our company sells very costly products. Our customers call to purchase, we do not have an eCommerce site. Write now we have on average 350 words per page. We have about 200+ pages. Each page is written for that general category and each product has its own unique content. It seems to me that the pages with less content, tend to rank a bit better. As we are in the process of redoing our website, is there any recommendations on writing content, or adjusting the amount of text. I am thinking a lot of our text is informative only to a certain extent. Would writing content just for the main category page be better, and then on the actual product page, have only about 250 words as a description? Are there any other recommendations for SEO that are fairly new? Besides the Title, Description, Heading Tags, Image Alts, URLS etc.
Web Design | | hfranz0 -
Using "#" anchors to display different content
If I have a page that has an area on the page that acts like a widget and has three different tabs. These tabs provide 3 different types of information relevant to the page subject matter. By default when someone goes to the page one of the tabs is showing but you have to click on the others to see the info on them. Is it OK to use domain.com/topic#TAB1, domain.com/topic#TAB2, domain.com/topic#TAB3 to create shortcut links so that people can land on the page and have that predetermined tab showing. I'm wondering what search engines might think. Essentially all the content of all three tabs is there for people to see but they'd have to click to see the other tabs. I don't consider the content to be hidden. But I'd like to hear people's thoughts.
Web Design | | Business.com0