Blog Not Ranking Well at All in Search Engines, Need Help!
-
Hi Mozers,
Need some help on a CMS I've been working with over the last year. The CMS is built by a team of guys here in Washington State. Basically, I'm having issues with clients content on the blog system not getting ranking correctly at all.
Here's a few problems I've noticed: Could you confirm and scale these problems based upon being, "not a problem" "a problem" and "critical must fix"
1. The title tag is pulling from the title of the article which is also automatically generating a URL with underscores instead of dashes.
- Is having a duplicate URL, Title, and Title tag spammy looking to search engines?
- Are underscores on long URL's confusing google? Where shorter one's are fine (i.e. domain/i_pad/
(i.e.http://www.ductvacnw.com/blog/archives/2013/05/20/5_reasons_to_hire_a_professional_to_clean_your_air_ducts_and_vents),
2. The CMS is resolving all URL's with a canonical instead of a 301 redirect (I've told webmaster tools which preferred url should be indexed).
- Does using a canonical over a 301 redirect cause any confusion with Google? Is one better practice then the other?
3. The H1 tags on the blog pull from "blog category" instead of the title of the blog post.
- Is this is a problem?
4. The URl's are quite long with the added "archives/2013/05/20/5".
- Does this cause problems by pushing the main target keyword further away from the domain name?
5. I'm also noticing the blog post is actually not part of the breadcrumbs where we normally would expect that to populate after the blog category name, Problem?
These are some of the things I've noticed and need clarification on. If you see anything else please let me know?
-
I understand from where you are coming from,
did you try to run the website on screaming frog or Moz Crawler? did u see certain anomalies ?
-
Agreed,
since I'm seeing these issues across all sites that use this CMS with all the above issues I mentioned could it be that these are all causing a critical issue with the indexing/ranking issue. I must say, I've had a much easier time ranking the pages with the CMS which give me more control then I have had with ranking the blog articles of the websites using the CMS.
As this issue seems to be consistent across all sites using the CMS I'm trying to figure out the problems that need to be actually fixed within the CMS (as the programming costs us lots of dough).
-
Great Keith,
I just want you to take what i said and go a lil broader.
ie. Google is not quickly indexing or knowing about your content when you hit publish. which indicate:
- Low authority
- Crawlers is not used to / not trained to come to your website regularly to check for updates.
- Trust Issues
fixing these 3 bullets points will help your problems that you are facing
Sincerely,
-
The ranking issues were happening before any content was syndicated elsewhere. However, you do make a good point. I just wanted to clarify that the issue has been happening before any syndication occurred on all sites using this specific CMS.
-
All Problems you mentioned are opportunities that you can make you blog "better" but there is no "critical must fix" that is preventing google from indexing and rankings your website.
but what i see in the serps that you are syndicating your blog through blogger and wordpress and it seems that google is discovering the content on blogger and wordpress before your site(your site cache is on 21st the wordpress/blogger it shows may 20th).
what i will do is try to disable that syndication and try to submit your rss feed to google under sitemaps (http://www.ductvacnw.com/blog/latest.atom)
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
-
Canonical Tag help
Hello everyone, We have implemented canonical tag on our website: http://www.indialetsplay.com/ For e.g. on http://www.indialetsplay.com/cycling-rollers?limit=42 we added canonical as http://www.indialetsplay.com/cycling-rollers?limit=all (as it showcase all products) Our default page is http://www.indialetsplay.com/cycling-rollers Is canonical tag implementation right? Or we need to add any other URL. Please suggest
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Need some help/input about my Joomla sitemap created by XMap
Here is my current sitemap for my site http://www.yakangler.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&view=xml&tmpl=component&id=1 I have some questions about it's current settings. I have a component called JReviews that xmap produces a separate link for each category. ex: http://www.yakangler.com/fishing-kayak-review/265-2013-hobie-mirage-adventure-island 2014-09-03T20:46:25Z monthly 0.4 http://www.yakangler.com/fishing-kayak-review/266-2012-wilderness-systems-tarpon-140 2014-06-03T15:49:00Z monthly 0.4
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mr_w
http://www.yakangler.com/fishing-kayak-review/343-wilderness-systems-tarpon-120-ultralite 2013-11-25T06:39:05Z monthly 0.4 Where as my other articles are only linked by the content category. ex: http://www.yakangler.com/news monthly 0.4
http://www.yakangler.com/tournaments monthly 0.4
http://www.yakangler.com/kayak-events monthly 0.4
http://www.yakangler.com/spotlight monthly 0.4 Which option is better?0 -
Do I need to update my previous blog posts with my new SEO strategy'?
Hi Everyone, I have published 46 articles so far on my blog. Recently I changed my SEO strategy including changing main page titles, changing the targeting pages for each keyword, ... . Do you think it is a good thing to go back through all of my blog posts and change the internal link building and modify them accordingly. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlirezaHamidian0 -
Homepage is losing rankings...need help!
Hi folks, Our company has been doing SEO for www.3dincites.com since October. Since the website hadn't been optimized at all, one of the first things we did was to add keyword-optimized page title and meta description to the homepage. The person who implemented didn't do it right the first time so we needed to change the page title again after a week or so. We also changed the preferred domain in GWT. Ever since those changes were implemented, the homepage has been decreasing in rankings for the the keywords we optimized it for. This is very surprising as the website has high-quality unique content and pretty solid backlinks. Moreover, the search traffic to other pages is through the roof (2K increase since October) so the client is happy, however, this decrease in rankings for the homepage (from 3d to 6th page for "3d IC technology" which is the main keyword) doesn't let me sleep well at nights. Any ideas why this is happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zoomzoom0 -
Blog Integration
I have a blog and website, .. I have it under the same domain but it has its own login and dashboard ect..I would like to fully integrate it to my website so it becomes a part of my main navigation... If anyone know's how to do this or even has an idea on where to start it is greatly appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach0 -
Author rank
Can anyone tellme how to know my author rank. Is better to gain authority on my author rank +dariopropdental And if it is better to gain authority as author or as page +propdental And if a do a new post on my web every day should i place every link to the post on my profile and my page. Doenst it look spammy. Should all post have a link from my profile.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
How come I get different rankings on same word in local search results of Google?
Dear fellow Mozzer's, for one of my clients I get different local results in Google. My client is a real-estate broker and when I search on "real-estate agent" + the city name we are on top. So whoohoo you would say BUT when Firefox has the exact city name determined as the location I am in and I only use "real-estate agent" I get also the local results but we are listed as number 8?? Hope anyone can give me insights as I have no idea what's causing this. Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | newtraffic0 -
I rank well in google but poorly in Yahoo
Why is this the case? If there is a filter or penalty on my site from yahoo, how do I ask yahoo to correct this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidS-2820610