Specific Page Penalty?
-
Having trouble to figure out why one of our pages is not ranking in SERPs, on-page optimisation looks decent to me.
Checked by using gInfinity extension and searched for the page URL.
Can one page be penalised from Google engines (.ie / .com ) and the rest of the website not penalised?
The (possible) penalised page is showing in Google places in SERPs. I assume this would not show if it was penalised.
Would appreciate any advice.
Thanks
-
You may get no traffic from ranking #4 these days, especially on queries with a competitive paid portion of the SERP.
What I would do is stop assessing the "what if" scenario's and start focusing all your energy towards acquiring those editorial type links grasshopper was talking about.. right now! You'll get that ranking and secure it for long-term traffic.
-
There's no way to give an accurate time-scale answer to that question. If you're able to get editorial links from authoritative, trusted sites, you can see substantial movement within a week or two of the links being crawled. However, if your links are from lower-quality sites, or are weighted heavily toward devalued methods of link building (directories, reciprocal links, three-way links, etc), engines may not give those links much weight, if any, no matter how long you wait.
-
It has ranked well previously, according to Rank tracker on SEOmoz - it was ranking 4th last week however I don't think that is correct.
Is it a reliable tool??
Organic traffic shows no drop for keywords for the page in 2012 nor does page views for the page. If it was over-optimised, these would be noticeble in Google Analytics..
-
To me, the true clue would be whether or not the URL ranked well previously.
If it has not.. you need more links. It is probably a page authority issue.
If it has.. you may have over-optimized on the anchor text, sitewide links will do this. You may rank well for awhile, then you'll find yourself on page five shaking your fist at Google.
-
Hi Grasshopper,
I know the keywords I am trying to rank for are competitive.
I will take that into consideration and start working on these. How long do this take effect in Google engines?
Thanks
-
Hi Ronan,
Since it passes tests 1,2 and 4, I would say that #3 is the culprit. Having solid on-page optimization is great, but link authority is the name of the game for achieving ranking, especially if the keywords you're trying to rank for are competitive.
Run the Keyword Difficulty Tool against the keywords you're trying to rank for. I would expect that the URLs on page 1 of the SERPs all have significantly significantly stronger, more trustworthy link profiles than your URL does.
If that's the case, all the standard advice applies - create a truly differentiated page that offers content / resources / tools above and beyond what your competitors offer, and market the hell out of it.
-
The page is indexed
-
Hi Grasshopper,
Thanks for your input. I have checked each one and appears to be fine:
-
Yes
-
Text is true content on the page
-
The page itself does have low inbound links. It might be this?
-
Appearing first
Despite low number of inbound links, I wouldn't say this alone would cause the ranking issue as the page is well optimised and similar to competitors.
-
-
Hi Ronan,
First, to your general question - yes, it is possible for one page of a domain to be penalized / filtered, while the rest of the domain is not. However, it seems extremely unlikely that the URL in question would rank in Google Places if it was penalized. There are a few things you want to check:
-
The first thing you want to check is whether or not the page is indexed and cached, which is a simple query [cache:mypage.com/this-page]. Does it return a result?
-
If so, in the gray banner across the top of the cached page, click on "Text-only version". Does the machine-readable text match the true content on the page? If you have large amounts of machine-readable text that are only visible to an engine, and not a user, that can trip an algorithmic spam filter. Also, look for off-topic words - sometimes sites get hacked and hackers inject all kinds of spammy garbage and links, which can also trip the filter.
-
If the page is cached, and rendering the intended content, does it have sufficient link authority to rank for the terms you intend? It's quite possible that your page is in a competitive keyword space, and doesn't have enough juice to push past the competition.
-
If you want to see if it has enough juice to rank for anything at all, pick an sentence in the first paragraph of text, and search for it enclosed in quotes, ["Some random sentence from my first paragraph here."] Is your URL the #1 result? It should be. If there are other sites that you've syndicated your content to, or have scraped your content and are more authoritative than your site, it's possible that your URL isn't ranking because it's being (incorrectly) filtered out as duplicate content.
Hope that helps.
-
-
Is the URL no longer in Google's index at all?
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
-
Lost Wikipedia page and dropped heavily in rankings. How many of you aware of and experienced this?
Hi all, We lost of our Wikipedia page for 2nd time and we dropped in rankings 2nd time too. I got confused first time whether Wikipedia was the actual reason as we had couple of major changes in our website. But recently it's been clear that losing Wikipedia page is the culprit as we have no website changes around these days. How many of you aware of this and experienced this? Please share your views. Hope this info will help you. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
What happens when we canonical and point to a page which has been redirected to another page? Google response!
Hi all, I would like to know the different scenarios Google going to respond when we use canonical and redirect for duplicate pages. Let's say A to B are duplicate pages with 95% same content and C Doesn't have same content but context wise similar and priority page we expect to rank for. What happens if we canonical from A to B and set redirect from B to C? What if both A and B are pointed to C with canonical? What if A or B deleted and other one is canonical to C? Note: We can noindex or 301 redirect as they have their own visitors. This is more about showing most relevant content to the audience and avoid duplicate content in search results. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
The evolution of Google's 'Quality' filters - Do thin product pages still need noindex?
I'm hoping that Mozzers can weigh in with any recent experiences with eCommerce SEO..... I like to assume (perhaps incorrectly) that Google's 'Quality' filters (formerly known as Panda) have evolved with some intelligence since Panda first launched and started penalising eCommerce sites for having thin product pages. On this basis i'd expect that the filters are now less heavy handed and know that product pages with no or little product description on them are still a quality user experience for people who want to buy that product. Therefore my question is this...
Algorithm Updates | | QubaSEO
Do thin product pages still need noindex given that more often that not they are a quality search result for those using a product specific search query? Has anyone experienced penalty recently (last 12 months) on an ecommerce site because of a high number of thin product pages?0 -
Page 1 all of a sudden for two clients
Hello, So, for many months, a couple of my clients have had a handful of terms that they were ranking for on Page 2. All of a sudden in the past month, both clients have moved up to Page 1, #2 for most of their terms. I have been working on some optimization tests and made minor changes, but I am concerned because the consistency of the #2 position for both clients for all of the previously Page 2 ranking keywords. I have seen this type of Google increase for clients before, and my experience has shown that it is a test from Google-so, from Google's perspective: "we're going to move your rankings up to Page 1 and see what you do with this to prove to us that your site is worth the position". Anyone had any experience with this kind of movement? Thanks so much in advance..
Algorithm Updates | | lfrazer0 -
Does this mean my pages are ranking better?
In GWT impressions are down 17%, clicks are up 57%. Is it safe to assume that pages are ranking better for my site? We have earned a couple great links in the past month.. 5lDZEUJ
Algorithm Updates | | Theskimonster0 -
Google indexing my website's Search Results pages. Should I block this?
After running the SEOmoz crawl test, i have a spreadsheet of 11,000 urls of which 6381 urls are search results pages from our website that have been indexed. I know I've read that /search should be blocked from the engines, but can't seem to find that information at this point. Does anyone have facts behind why they should be blocked? Or not blocked?
Algorithm Updates | | Jenny10 -
How did my Page Authority and Page Rank disappear?
I've hit a problem. A couple days ago my site's page authority was 51 and the PR was 3 and now they're 1 and 0 respectively. The developer did adjust some of the code in the site in the past couple days but that shouldn't have affected this. It was last cached by Google on the 5th. Can anyone offer some good advice? If it helps the page is www.duracard.com
Algorithm Updates | | Andrea.G0 -
First page slot 1 spot doesn't equal global monthly traffic
We have a client who has occupied the top spot on Google for the past several months. According to the Google Adwords keyword suggestion tool, this keyword should generate around 5,000 Global and Local Monthly average visits. Trends show this keyword has consistent month over month traffic. The keyword search type is broad match. When we look at analytics, they're only getting 5 visits per month. Shouldn't the top spot get the lion's share of traffic? We've noticed this trend on several of our clients whose traffic doesn't really increase proportionate to the estimated search volume that Google returns in the Adwords tool. Ideas? We see the estimated traffic and tell clients, "Once we get you in that top organic slot, you'll get most of that traffic," but it's not correlating. Thanks so much.
Algorithm Updates | | GravitateOnline0