Google won't index my site?
-
Hi, I've just signed up and am new to SEO. I placed my site live around mid December 2013. Initially I got 2 pages indexed but now not even they show up for site:www.traditional-cleaning.co.uk. According the Moz analytics I have 3 pages with duplicate content which are:
http://traditional-cleaning.co.uk/http://traditional-cleaning.co.uk/index.htmhttp://traditional-cleaning.co.ukProblem is I have no idea how to fix this, don't know whether Google isn't indexing my site because of this and generally am a bit stuck! Can anyone have a quick look at my site and give me a push in the right direction?
-
Hi thanks for getting back. Yes got it sorted though you're right about even the smallest error causing major issues - left a [ character in the file which brought everything to its knees...one other small issue is that the Moz analytics tool is saying that I have duplicate content on 3 pages, but they're all the same page? See attached. any ideas how to solver this?
-
Are you still having issues with this? The .htaccess file is quite powerful and can easily bring down a site with even the smallest mistake. Let me know if you are still having problems and I will try my best to help you out today.
-
Err, right this is turning into a bit of a disaster. I told Google that non-www was preferred since that was what seemed to be indexed. I then went to the htaccess file and copied in the code exactly as specified, but now it won't load? I went back and deleted it but there's still a problem, made worse by the fact I've told google to specifically look for a page that doesn;t work. Any help much appreciated!
-
Hi, would simply attaching this to my htaccess file inside Godaddydo sort things out (I have specified non-www in webmaster tools also):
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^traditional-cleaning.co.uk$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://traditional-cleaning.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]Thanks
-
Hi Nick, yes its Godaddy
-
You can definitely youtube some advice. Is your hosting provided by a big name provider or do you manage your own server?
-Nick
-
Hi thanks, that's really helpful. I'll give those suggestions a bash and let you know if I run into any issues. due to the fact that I only submitted this about a month ago and have zero links, I guess it's optimistic to assume I'll get any traction any time soon?
-
Thanks Nick, yes I have submitted an XML map through webmaster tools. I assume I'll be able to youtube some examples on how you do the htaccess thing?
-
Hi Edward,
The first thing I would do is sign up for google webmaster tools if you haven't already. The next step is to submit a site-map to google tools to help get your content indexed.
Also it appears that your content is indexed, try searching for "www.traditional-cleaning.co.uk" or "traditional-cleaning.co.uk", you'll see your content is being displayed by google. The site looks fantastic by the way!
The next step on your SEO adventure is going to be picking www.traditional-cleaning.co.uk OR traditional-cleaning.co.uk. Depending on your hosting setup you can have www redirected via .htaccess or change www to a cname record in your dns to point to the non-www version. The opposite is also an option if you'd like to keep the www but you don't want to use both interchangeably because it will created duplicate content.
That should give you some good things to get started on. Let me know if you have any trouble.
Thanks,
-Nick
-
Hi there!
I just searched Google for site:http://traditional-cleaning.co.uk and I see 26 pages indexed, so it is good news that your site is being indexed! Google considers the www version and the non-www version of the URLs to be different sites, so it's best to pick one and stick with it. You can do this by 301 redirecting all of your URLs that start with "www" to the root. I usually recommend using an .htaccess file for this as long as your server is compatible. Here is some more information - http://301redirects.net/non-www-to-www-301-redirect-urls.php
You will also want to redirect the index.htm file to the root URL. Here is how you can do this (with .htaccess) -
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /redirect html pages to the root domain
RewriteRule ^index.html$ / [NC,R,L]
These two steps should resolve your issues with both Google and Moz. I also highly recommend using Google Webmaster Tools and designating your preferred URL just to be safe. Let me know if you need any other help!
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
-
Google My Business: Company listing is showing in search instead of division address - similar names/same city
Hi! I have a client whose company name is very similar to one if their company divisions. This division has multiple locations but its main location is in the same city as the parent company. The problem is that when you search for the division, the parent company shows up. The parent company has a physical address, but most users searching need to be going to the division address which takes customers. They are having problems with customers coming to the parent company address instead. I have made the Google My Business parent company page to show service areas instead of their business address. Yet, their listing still comes up first when searching for the division location. This is because of part of the parent company name is in the division name. My client wants users to be able to find the division more so than the parent company. Anyone had this issue before? Any tips would be great!
Local Listings | | agrier0 -
Found a yelp review by unknowing client of webdesigner who made a one page site. bad seo
One page sites are fine and dandy, but if you are a local biz...Just no! Here's my story with a few questions. I did a search on google site:http://eatfullbellydeli.com/ and it resulted in four pages: Main; menu; hello world; category; uncategorized. I'm not a web designer...I do seo. 1.) How rude would it be for me to reach out to the designer to comment and give suggestions? 2.) or should I reach out to the owner. 3.) Or just close my eyes and say "i hate people that take advantage of others"
Local Listings | | Ohmichael0 -
Google Local Result- Competitor Ranks without an Address. Why is this happening?
My client is in a fairly competitive local market and there is a competitor who has ranked locally for around 2 years, but they have no actual address on their Google business listing. Just city and state. The listing is always top three and it does have their website listed, but directions aren't even available as there is actual no address. The listing is extremely keyword dense (basically spam but they actually created a business with the spam name). Citation Example: Keyword dense business name, phone number, city and state only Have you seen this? Can you explain why this is happening? Is this against the rules/anything I can do? Thanks!
Local Listings | | mgordon0 -
Has Google Local search algorithm changed in the last 6 months?
My organic search results have increased, but I noticed that my Google local search results have dropped drastically. I haven't changed anything on the local side. I consistently get reviews. In my industry, I have more reviews (all 5 star) than anyone else. It actually shows weird results, like competitors that have no reviews and don't even have all of their information filled out. It is even showing competitors that are out of business. I have a lot of citations with the same NAP. I use Moz local for this purpose as well. So, I am wondering if the algorithm has changed and if I need to update my profile to match it. Thank you in advance!
Local Listings | | CalicoKitty20000 -
Is the new local 3-pack the death of Google+ as factor?
So now we have the new 3-pack local results, which obviously cut the listings Google+ link from the results. What I find strange is that is now even when searching the business name alone, there is no sign of the associated Google+ page in the results. I still get other local third party listings like Facebook, Yellowpages, and Yelp – but no link anywhere for the Google+ page. I noticed this today when I wanted to verify something on a client’s page. There was nothing I could do search wise to bring up this business Google+ page. I finally got it by clicking the link through Moz local. After exploring this with some other clients, when I do get a Google+ page in the search results some have produced a 500 error when clicked on. If Google wasn’t killing off Google+, why would they completely omit the pages from their own search results? Another extremely strange thing, the majority of my clients are independent local businesses inside a large national company. Their Google+ listings have always been managed corporately using a bulk listing feed. We could never gain access to these pages and would always manage our listings to match that of the corp. controlled page. Well the last week of July they announced they were giving us the option to take control of the page. This happened with two different companies, MAJOR national competitors in the same industry, within a couple days of each other. They now treat it just like another version of social media, instead of a major factor within search. I find it hard to believe that something isn’t going on…
Local Listings | | masonrj0 -
Questions about On-site Location Content for Service Area Businesses
Hello all, I've got a couple tough questions about how to go about creating locations pages for my business, and I'm wondering if you can give me some much needed direction. I'm about to launch a professional house cleaning business which will serve Philadelphia and a couple surrounding counties. I plan on aggressively expanding to other large cities, and while I plan on building a Philly locations page, I'm unsure of how to rank organically for all the individual towns/municipalities in the surrounding counties in the middle without having a physical business location there. Should I even hope to rank for these smaller towns? Would a page where the county is in the h1 tag, and say the top 10 largest towns in that county listed underneath in h2 tags help me reach searchers in those top 10 largest towns? How about paying ~$100 for a physical street address in each county and submitting that NAP to local directories of the larger towns, as well as getting a Google My Business page and using the service radius option? Is there some other strategy that I'm missing? I'm just at a loss for how to compete without AdWords for the people searching in the smaller towns when my competition is businesses with NAP/citations and their main page dedicated solely to that smaller town. Google seems to have made it even harder with Pigeon coming out recently. I serve those areas just as readily as my competition, yet the customer will predominantly see them SOLELY due to the fact that most of my competition are incapable of serving or choose not to serve wide areas. I understand that these businesses are dedicating a lot of resources to those small towns, but it does seem a sad fact that it doesn't mean they're any higher quality of a company than mine, yet they get a leg up. ANY advice or direction would be greatly appreciated, and would come with a huge internet bear hug.
Local Listings | | PTHerrington0 -
Google Maps Spam
Has anyone had any luck with the Google webspam team getting spammy results taken down or changed? If so can you please tell me how you did it.
Local Listings | | apittsburghplumber.com0 -
Can't Change My G+ Pages Address?
Our zipcode is wrong on our Google Plus page for one of our offices. Exactly, one month ago I corrected it, but it immediately reverted to the wrong one. Then, I think I read the change can take 4 weeks...we'll it still hasn't changed. Two weeks ago, someone from Google Places even called and I told him to change it manually, he said he would...still not changed. What can I do to get this zip code corrected? Thanks, Ruben
Local Listings | | KempRugeLawGroup0