Why aren't our articles ranking in Google?
-
We have a website promoting Pakistani lawyers online. The website also has an articles section where we post articles reviewing different legal cases and laws. All of our articles are written by actual lawyers are high quality and unique.
Website itself doesn't have large page/site authority but its not a baby website either. I can't figure out why our articles don't rank on Google.
Here are few of the articles:
http://www.pakistanilawyers.com/articles/pakistan-child-custody-laws-explained-479/
http://www.pakistanilawyers.com/articles/pakistan-divorce-law-476/
http://www.pakistanilawyers.com/articles/pakistani-law-insolvency-guide-460/I don't know whether its simply because there are not enough links pointing to our website or if there is a problem in the website itself that i can't find.
Thanks for the help
-
No. You just need to wait for Panda to refresh. However Google recently said that they are now rolling Panda out with the regular algorithm so you won't know when the refresh will happen.
-
Thanks. After I noindex the pages with no content, do I need to submit a panda review ticket to Google?
-
Marie is right.
I only looked at the article pages.
I am willing to bet big money that you have a Panda problem.
The thin content pages should be noindexed or removed until you have content for them.
-
There's a good chance that your site has been affected by Panda.
As EGOL mentioned, if you search for text from these pages enclosed in quotes, your site is displayed. BUT...take the quotes away and you're almost nowhere to be seen.
I don't think the Panda filter was brought on by the articles though. It's probably the fact that a large portion of your site consists of thin content. You have page after page that consists of, "We currently have no Urdu speaking lawyers listed in (State/Country). Fill out the form below and we will do our best to connect you with one. This service will be free of charge to you."
So, your site consists of a few articles plus a pile of thin content. If Google sees that the majority of the site is not worthwhile showing to searchers then they'll flag it with Panda and the whole site can be affected.
There's a good chance that if you noindex the directory pages with no content that your article pages will eventually start to rank.
-
If I search Google for unique sentences from these articles between quotation marks, I see that the pages are in the Google index. Also, the sentences are unique to your website.
So you are getting indexed and not being filtered because of duplicate content.
I only see seven linking root domains to your website, some are directories. So, I don't think that your site has much power.
===============
On my sites, I notice google is quick to index new pages but those pages take a lot longer to develop good rankings. They often start out very deep in the SERPs and climb slowly to where I would expect them to rank. These are pages of substantive content (2000 words and six images) with PR6 and PR7 links into them from homepage and category pages. I published an article in November, 2012 and it originally ranked at about position 150, then slowly moved up a few positions per week and finally entered the top 10 this week. This is for a keyword with a difficulty of only 45%.
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
-
Ranking keywords
Is there a way to utilize our currently ranking keywords. I don't think editing the url would be a good idea. What areas of these pages should we improve? Or is it better not to do anything.
On-Page Optimization | | Timberwink0 -
Microsite and main website alternate in rankings
Hi all, I just noticed a potential issue with our websites. We have two ecommerce websites, one is a very large one selling all sorts of products, while the microsite focuses on a small segment of products. All products sold on the microsite are also sold on the main website. In the beginning of September, we upgraded the microsite to the same script that the main website uses to make it mobile friendly and update the design. They now look very similar. Before, both websites used to rank on page 1 for a specific keyword. I have noticed that since we upgraded the microsite, the two websites have been taking turns ranking for the keyword. For a few weeks the microsite ranks and the main website doesn't rank for the keyword. Then for a few weeks only the main website ranks and the microsite doesn't. I think the reason this is happening is that Google understands that the content is the same and the websites are both owned by the same company. Fair enough. I remember reading an article about this phenomenon before but can't remember where. Does anyone know which article I'm talking about (it would have been on an SEO blog/website, e.g. Moz, SEJ, SE Roundtable etc)? I'm not even sure what this phenomenon is called. If we can only have one of the pages rank, we would prefer it to be the microsite at all times. Would a canonical tag on the main website referring to the URL on the microsite fix this? I think at the moment the product descriptions are either very similar or identical. Would it help to make them more different to get both to rank again if that is what we wanted to do? In the end it is still the same product being sold by the same company - after Google has already sort of merged the two, would they "un-merge" them if the content was more different? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | ViviCa10 -
Why ranks my site so bad?
hello together, i think, that you read questions like this very often, but i hope someone has some good ideas for me. https://goo.gl/3iOmcqy with the keyword "sophos sg 210" we rank very bad. But i don't know why 😞 We have trust elements, a very good "avergage time on page" unique content... But i don't know, what can we make better 😞 Thx you so much
On-Page Optimization | | enbitcon0 -
Site update and what to do about current keyword rank
Hi im in the process of giving my site a major update as its only one page and not responsive . The the new site will have a homepage with a list of my services with a small description of each and each service will link to its own page. My one page site at the moment ranks number one in my area for a low competition keyword (moz keyword score of 13%) of course this sends me very little traffic. With my new site im also going for more keywords but these will be Moz KWD 30% and 40%. I know this will be quite hard and take some time but i'm pretty sure I know what I need to do to get there. Now my question is what do i do with my current home page (only page) that ranks for that low comp keyword?
On-Page Optimization | | juun
I dont want to lose my rank for that, so do i make a new page on my new site that is optimized for that keyword, but then I don't want to 301 my homepage to that so I guess as its such an easy word to rank for my new page would soon rank for that? What are your thoughts and advice please, thanks in advance.1 -
If Google still shows my old title in the search results then there is no way my title change could have changed my ranking yet right?
If Google still shows my old title in the search results then there is no way my title change could have changed my ranking yet right? In other words if I changed from TItleA to TitleB but search results and cache still show TitleA then any SERP drops or increases would still be entirely based on titleA right? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Rezo0 -
Google Drop
I started using SEOMOZ due to a sudden and huge drop in Google for two main keywords (hair bows and baby headbands). Our site (BloomingBows.com) has held a top three spot for years with these words and then in the last few months has dropped down on the first page and now they are completely off the charts. Is there any insight as to why? Also, we have been very active using the data from here in the last week or so to clean up and improve anything listed, but I am still seeing keywords drop into the 40 - 60 position and our traffic is drying up. Starting to panic and wondering if I am missing something or going about this in the wrong way. ANY insight is appreciated at this point!! Thank you!!
On-Page Optimization | | bloomingB0 -
Would adding a line break tag into the product name affect SEO ranking and Google's ability to read the entire title?
Our client would like to include a link break so that part of the product name always showed up on a second line. Would this affect how Google bots crawl the product name? Would it also affect how Google would show the product name in a search result page? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BrandLabs0 -
Best article about internal linking structure?
Hi! Could you please recommend me a good and deep article about best practises in internal linking structure? I need to rethink the structure of a big site (lucky me it's very hierarchical) and I would like to have a look at some great articles about this to consolidate some ideas and have some new ones. I've read some but I would like some recommendations 🙂 Some articles about information architecture would be appreciated as well! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | jorgediaz0
