Blog posts outranked for Title a String searches in content...why?
-
Site Pages: When I wrap a page title, or a string of several words in quotes, and GG search, my client's page shows up first. My understanding is that this shows general health of site, and acknowledgement as the original source of the content.
Blog Posts: When I wrap a blog page, or post, title or string of words in quotes, and GG search, Feedblitz, Facebook, and other scraper sites appear before the blog home page, and also the actual blog post. The blog is in a separate directory. Does this suggest that the /blog/ is being penalized or demoted in any way? Does it indicate the /blog/ directory does not have authority?
Both the static site pages, and the blog pages, are using rel=canonical tags.
What causes this, what does it indicate, and how can I fix it?
Thanks,
Greg -
The site is 10 years old, the blog 4 or 5 years old, and has held top positions for extremely competitive keyword phrases such as 'health insurance quotes' and 'individual health insurance'. The site was hit by penguin, a panda, and subsequent pandas. I successfully recovered the site from an 'unnatural links' penalty, which required the removal of a lot of links. The site began to rank for primary keywords, but not great. Top 50. I saw this as an accomplishment.
I hope that helps. I left out details initially because I was hoping someone could be able to tell me if what I am experiencing is indicative of a known issue. Thanks for your help, happy to add more detail.
-
We need more info. A major question is site age. If the /blog directory is fairly new, your results are not atypical. Also if the /blog directory is fairly new and changing the URL wouldn't damage existing SERPs too much, you might try a more descriptive directory name like /location-business type-blog.
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
-
SEO Title Length
Hi Everyone. I have a few pages being flagged with "Title Too Long". However, these are page 2, page 3, page 4, etc of category pages. They obviously have "| Page x of x" at the end of the title. Can these be ignored or is there a more SEO friendly way of handling this issue? Thanks. Michael
Technical SEO | | nomad_blogger0 -
Best way to handle Breadcrumbs for Blog Posts in multiple categories?
The site in question uses Wordpress. They have a Resources section that is broken into two categories (A or B). Underneath each of these categories is 5 or 6 subcategories. The structure looks like this: /p/main-category-a/subcategory/blog-post-name /p/main-category-b/subcategory/blog-post-name All posts have a main category, but other posts often have multiple subcategories while some posts also fall into both main categories. What would be the easiest or most effective way to auto-populate the breadcrumb based on from where the person reached the blog post? So for example, a way to set Home -> Main Category -> Subcategory 1 as the breadcrumb if they reach it from the Subcategory 1 landing page. Or is this not possible and we should just set the breadcrumb manually based on where we feel it best lives? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Alces0 -
What is the process for allowing someone to publish a blog post on another site? (duplicate content issue?)
I have a client who allowed a related business to use a blog post from my clients site and reposted to the related businesses site. The problem is the post was copied word for word. There is an introduction and a link back to the website but not to the post itself. I now manage the related business as well. So I have creative control over both websites as well as SEO duties. What is the best practice for this type of blog post syndication? Can the content appear on both sites?
Technical SEO | | donsilvernail0 -
Image Search
Hello Community, I have been reading and researching about image search and trying to find patterns within the results but unfortunately I could not get to a conclusion on 2 matters. Hopefully this community would have the answers I am searching for. 1) Watermarked Images (To remove or not to remove watermark from photos) I see a lot of confusion on this subject and am pretty much confused myself. Although it might be true that watermarked photos do not cause a punishment, it sure does not seem to help. At least in my industry and on a bunch of different random queries I have made, watermarked images are hard to come by on Google's images results. Usually the first results do not have any watermarks. I have read online that Google takes into account user behavior and most users prefer images with no watermark. But again, it is something "I have read online" so I don't have any proof. I would love to have further clarification and, if possible, a definite guide on how to improve my image results. 2) Multiple nested folders (Folder depth) Due to speed concerns our tech guys are using 1 image per folder and created a convoluted folder structure where the photos are actually 9 levels deep. Most of our competition and many small Wordpress blogs outrank us on Google images and on ALL INSTANCES I have checked, their photos are 3, 4 or 5 levels deep. Never inside 9 nested folders.
Technical SEO | | Koki.Mourao
So... A) Should I consider removing the watermark - which is not that intrusive but is visible?
B) Should I try to simplify the folder structure for my photos? Thank you0 -
How to avoid duplicate content when blogging from a site
I have a wordpress plastic surgery website. I have a wordpress blog on the site. My concern is avoiding duplicate content penalties when I blog. I use my blog to add new information about procedures that have pages on the same topic on the main site. Invariably same keywords and phrases can appear in the blog-will this be considered Duplicate content? Also is it black hat to insert anchor text in a blog linking back to site content-ie internal link or is one now and then helpful
Technical SEO | | wianno1680 -
Home page indexed but not ranking...interior pages with thin content outrank home page??
I have a Joomla site with a home page that I can't get to rank for anything beyond the company name @ Google - the site works fine @ Bing and Yahoo. The interior pages will rank all day long but the home page never shows up in the results. I have checked the page code out in every tool that I know about and have had no luck....by all account it should be good to go...any thoughts/comments/help would be greatly appreciated. The site is http://www.selectivedesigns.com Thanks! Greg
Technical SEO | | DougHosmer0 -
Avoiding Duplicate Content in E-Commerce Product Search/Sorting Results
How do you handle sorting on ecommerce sites? Does it look something like this? For Example: example.com/inventory.php example.com/inventory.php?category=used example.com/inventory.php?category=used&price=high example.com/inventory.php?category=used&location=seattle If not, how would you handle this? If so, would you just include a no-index tag on all sorted pages to avoid duplicate content issues? Also, how does pagination play into this? Would it be something like this? For Example: example.com/inventory.php?category=used&price=high__ example.com/inventory.php?category=used&price=high&page=2 example.com/inventory.php?category=used&price=high&page=3 If not, how would you handle this? If so, would you still include a no-index tag? Would you include a rel=next/prev tag on these pages in addition to or instead of the no-index tag? I hope this makes sense. Let me know if you need me to clarify any of this. Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | AlexanderAvery1 -
Could Having Blog Posts as Home Page Cause Keyword Dilution?
Something I've never been a fan of is having a blog as the home page of a site. I've always thought that it's a bit like walking into someone's house through the kitchen out back.
Technical SEO | | WilliamBay
If it's a vistors first time, it can be a little disconcerting or ackward even if they are not familiar with the writers style. But something just dawned on me, and I'd love a second opinion on this. For websites that focus on multiple keywords (in my most of my client's case it's usually a mix of Wedding Photography, Engagement Photography, Portrait Photography, Family Photography, etc). A lot of these clients will include the photos in a blog post along with a snippet of text that may talk about the people they're photographing and maybe a bit about where they photographed. But they're usually optimizing for the overarching keyword (Wedding... Portrait..., etc as per above). Now I'm wondering if having three or 5 posts on the home page, where most of them are focusing on a specific keyword like New York Wedding Photographer, is actually diluting the keyword they are trying to rank for. My theory is that if I have them move their blog to a domain.com/blog, and solely focus on the desired keyword on the home page, that they would do substantially better in the SERPs. Can anyone subtantiate this? Thanks!0