Homepage not showing for searches

[rfksolutionsltd]

Hi

Looking for a bit advice our client - www.financial-wise.co.uk

We worked with this client on his old website www.mortgage-wise.co.uk we had him ranking for most local searches. The client then re-branded the full company and got another company in to do this, they did him new website www.financial-wise.co.uk, the company then launched the new domain with the old one still showing, some of the content was the same, including homepage.

Anyway the issue im having now is, for certain searches im struggling to get them ranking again and for searches such as financial wise, its inner pages showing instead of the homepage?

I have che checked and homepage is indexed, i have also re-written all the text on the homepage but still having some issue, its almost like the homepage has been penalised

any help would be great?

[MarieHaynes]

Please let us know if it bounced back after the next Panda! I'm guessing it will.

[rfksolutionsltd]

Hi Marie

Thanks for your feedback - it was something that I did think may be related to Panda and was one of the reasons I opened this question.

The homepage was straight copy of the old homepage - the other website design company launched both sites - both where indexed - when I took it back over, I did a 301 right away - I also did address change in webmaster tools and verified the new website that all went through and believe shortly after the old website was then removed from the index.

I hope with next refresh it comes back a bit, strange alot of keywords im working on for homepage are showing in google places but not on the organic serps, but some are.

[MarieHaynes]

"the company then launched the new domain with the old one still showing, some of the content was the same, including homepage."

There's a good chance that you've got a Panda issue.  Here's what I see probably happened:

You launched the new site and it probably started to rank.

The next time Panda refreshed Google said, "Hey!  This new site has several pages that are exactly the same as a site that already exists in our index.  There's no point in showing this new site to people who search."

Even if the old site is now offline, it can still be in the Google index for a LONG time.  If you do nothing, eventually the old pages will drop out and eventually your new site can start showing, but that could take ages.

Did you follow these steps to move to a new domain? http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83105

Now, if you don't want to 301 (for example, if the old site was affected by a linking penalty like Penguin) then do the following:

1. Noindex, nofollow all of the pages of the old site.  (It's not enough to just do steps 2&3 in case other search engines have the old site indexed.)

2. Block the old site from search engine crawls via robots.txt

3. Use the Google url removal tool in WMT to tell it to remove the old site from their index.

Then, you'll need to wait until Panda refreshes.  The new site should pop up with the rankings of the old.  Panda tends to refresh about every 3-6 weeks.

With all of that being said, I see that the old site is no longer in the index.  If you've already taken care of totally removing the old site from the index then you simply have to wait until Panda refreshes.

EDIT:  I just saw that you did do 301s.  This may be more complicated than I first thought.  If the 301s weren't in place BEFORE you put the new site online then again, you likely need to wait for Panda.  Once the Panda filter gets slapped on your site it doesn't get removed until Panda refreshes.

[Talooma]

You definitely have a point. Deeper page content is much better than home page content.

[josh-riley]

To Google, though, it's not a random page. It's the page they have selected as the best representation. That's the other way you need to look at it. Are there more links, better content to your deeper page compared to your home page for the selected keywords, could that be part of the reason?

As a user, I rarely like getting the homepage; it's usually pretty generic compared to deeper page content so it gives me a better user experience.

[Talooma]

Domain Age is also a factor that Google uses. So it's probably because it is a new domain and it needs to "age" a bit. Your old domain was probably older and had a bit more authority than your new domain.

[rfksolutionsltd]

I just felt their is something not quite right with regards to homepage - wasnt sure if it was because it was duplicate content before I put the 301 in place

just seems homepage not ranking as good as I think it should - when we did his old website he was ranking top 5 in organic serps (not google places) for most of the keywords

[Talooma]

It doesn't matter where you are building links. Links aren't the only factor that Google uses to determine relevancy. If one of your inner pages has more keyword prominence for "Financial Wise", then Google will see  that this page will provide it's users' with better, more relevant information about Financial Wise, than the home page.

Let's put ourselves in the searchers shoes again... I'm looking for a Mortgage Advisor in the West Lothian area. My first choice will be in Google places because I am looking for a physical business in the area. So Google shows me the areas first.

Now lets say I am looking for actual Mortgage Advice online. If you had optimized your home page to give me advice and your website is the "advisor", then your home page would probably be showing in the pure SERP and not Google Places.

I really hope this makes sense.

P.S If you add "in" to your phrase (Mortgage Advisors in West Lothian) you will see that your home page is ranked because you used the exact keyword.

[rfksolutionsltd]

https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Mortgage+Advisors+West+Lothian&oq=Mortgage+Advisors+West+Lothian&gs_l=serp.3..0j0i22l2.21737.21737.0.21917.1.1.0.0.0.0.107.107.0j1.1.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.nN9LSNR9iJs

an example without the in - its only showing in google places, other keywords aswell just showing in google places

if you search financial wise aswell few pages showing but not homepage

the homepage is the only place we have been building links to so far

[Talooma]

The keyword "Mortgage Advisors in West Lothian" is ranking your home page though. I don't see the problem.

Which keywords are the ones that are going to your "inner" pages?

[rfksolutionsltd]

the links - articles we have been developing have anchors related to business like

mortgage advisors west lothian etc, some of the searches showing up in google places but not in organic searches

[Talooma]

Unless you have a very popular brand, you shouldn't be focusing on your brand name (financial wise). You should focus on the services and products you provide like "Mortgage Advisors".

When you put yourself in a searchers shoes, you wouldn't search for Financial Wise. You would probably be looking for "Financial Advice" (blog article?) or "Mortgage Advisors".

The old way of doing SEO is over. You need to cater for your visitors. Ask yourself, "Is this page the kind of content I would be looking for if I searched fro this keyword?". If not then create it into one.

[rfksolutionsltd]

a full site 301 has been done, it was the first thing i went ahead and done

but keywords im pusing which are for homepage, are not showing or showing a random page

[Talooma]

If you haven't done so already, you need to create a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new one.

Google wants to find the most relevant pages to show it's users so those "inner" pages you are seeing are probably the most relevant for the keyword/phrase. It's not a bad thing at all, so don't stress over it.