Lost ranking once optimised a page
-
Hello, we're a new member of SEOMOZ and love it but have a problem. Obviously the reason for joining is to learn more about SEO and hopefully get our website ranked a lot better than it currently is.
However, one particular page we've chosen to optimise (based on your tips) has since lost ranking and we can no longer find it in the searches. Is there a reason for this? We've only made the on page changes you suggested and also added more external and internal links so I can't understand why it would no longer be listed in the searches?
I look forward to your reply/feedback.
Many thanks
Peter
-
Hi Ryan,
Looks like you're using Wordpress. To take care of those redirect issue, try the following in your .htaccess file. Test thoroughly on a demo site before going live with this. Wordpress plugins that you're using might have options that reach the same effect, so look into that as well.
RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymLinks#Force trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www.)?mybabyradio.com/$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$
RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.mybabyradio.com/$1/ [R=301,L]
#Redirect non-www to www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mybabyradio.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mybabyradio.com/$1 [R=301,L] -
Hi Peter.
I am not clear what you mean by "swapped around". If the position of the href and rel properties were reversed, that is fine.
As far as which version of your link is used, with or without a trailing slash, that is up to your preference. I tend to think that a trailing slash represents a folder while a lack of a trailing slash represents a page. My preference for the conjunctivitis would be without the trailing slash.
The canonical tag, like most tools, can be used correctly to help your results. If used incorrectly, your results can worsen. It is a very important piece of code along with 301 redirects. I highly recommend taking a bit of time learning about both. My best advice is google "Matt Cutts canonical" and reviewing some of the results, along with "Matt Cutts 301".
-
I had a very similar problem with my own site disappearing from the SERPS, but showing as it should on any other PCs (that I hadn't previously used.)
The problem then related to Google's personalised search. Essentially, I had accidentally deleted my site and prevented it showing up in personalised search - though it still worked in any other browser that wasn't displaying my personalised results. ( See this article: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-test-lets-users-vote-add-and-delete-sites-in-serps/6031/ )
To remove personalised search take a look at: http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=54048
This sounds to be a likely suspect for the issue you are having.
Personalised Search can also provide false results as you are seeing personalised results, based on your search history, activity and preferences, rather than the non-personalised results as they actually appear without personalised bias in the SERPS.
You can see your web history settings here: https://www.google.com/history/
Hope that helps!
-
Any unsafe sites will be removed from the pages. So if you are 15 and there are 2 unsafe sites between 1 and 15 your rank will move up 2 spots to replace the pages that cannot be shown and so your rank will show 13.
-
The canonical do help as they funnel the links to provide rank for the http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis page. If you leave it out and follow Google webmaster tools you will see duplicate content errors showing up with the 4 urls Ryan mentioned highlighted.
-
Hi Ryan, for now, I'm gonna take the canonical tag off as I'm not sure it's right or if they're even helping sites. Just read some horror stories about these tags. Look forward to your reply in due course.
Many thanks
Peter
-
I agree, strange but more testing is required me thinks. In regards to the canonical tag this is what it looks like in our source:- Thinking on shouldn't it look like this
-
Hi Ryan, I've added the canonical tag, but when I've saved it it's swapped around the the way you've listed it. Check it out in the source and let me know what you think? Also, all the URLS should be like this http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis/ How do I do a 301 redirect?
-
You used to see the search result at #13, I see it at 13, and your iphone sees it there as well. I am going to go with the ranking of 13.
The other search results can be affected by numerous factors. Search Safe, your location, which Google search engine is used (uk vs .com vs others), past browsing history, and numerous other factors can be used to adjust the search results. These changes can happen even if you are not logged into Google.
With the above noted, the results are jumping around too much for my taste. I would suggest you perform additional tests, try clearing cache, try other browsers ( ie / chrome ) on the same pc and see what you come up with.
Good luck.
-
Your htags look good to me.
The code for a canonical tag looks like:
The canonical tag can go anywhere within the tag of your page.
Once you decide upon a URL style, be consistent throughout your site. You can decide on www vs non-www, and whether pages should end with a trailing slash.
-
Oh, and as another slant. I've just done a Google search on my iPhone and it appears at number 13. Obviously there's a discrepancy somewhere?
-
Also, just been downstairs and done a search for the term on two separate PC's on a variety of browsers with different IP's than what we use upstairs and our searched term didn't appear in google's searches. Now I'm baffled.
-
Hey Ryan, thanks for the on page assessment above I will narrow down the keyword to 6 in the article. I take it I'm ok with it in the htags. Not sure how to do these canonical tags though. Where do you put them and how do they look?
Now, just gone into IE and seen our listing ranked at number 4. This is getting a bit weird now.
-
Peter, I am using FF and tried private browsing. The result is the same.
Rather then troubleshoot FF, can you try opening up a IE or chrome browser and checking your result?
You can also try FF or any browser from another pc.
-
An additional note. You did a good job of optimizing the page for your keyword. There are a few opportunities for improvement.
1. Add a canonical tag to your page. There are at least 4 URLs which lead to the same page:
http://mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis
http://mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis/
http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis
http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis/
Those are considered 4 separate URLs, each of which can be linked to and divide your page's ranking. Adding a canonical tag will ensure all of your link juice flows to the correct page.
2. Decide which version of your URL is preferred for your site, www or the non-www. Once you decide, add a 301 redirect to enforce your decision, then take a look at your site and ensure all your links use the correct URL.
3. Optimizing is a great idea, but using "conjunctivitis" 24 times on a page goes far past anything needed for a search engine. There is not any exact number but I would say using the term four times should be sufficient, and six times is very safe. I would advise adjusting the content for the best readability and resist the urge to use the keyword at every opportunity.
-
Hi Ryan, very odd. I've just clikced your link and I still can't see it. I use firefox and whenever I want to get a clean search I go into > tools > private browsing. Is there something else that I need to do or plugin I need to use?
Cheers
-
I went to google.co.uk and searched for conjunctivitis and found you at...spot 13 just as you suggested.
If you are not seeing yourself there, perhaps you are using google.com, not google.co.uk? Or perhaps your browser is customizing your results based on other factors?
-
Hi Ryan, this is the URL it currently sits on:- http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis/ look forward to your reply.
Oh, the term is "conjunctivitis". Last time I checked it was appearing at number 13 in Google searches in the UK. Now, it's gone, where I haven't a clue. Or even why?
-
If you are willing to offer the URL of this particular page, along with the terms you optimized the page for, I am very willing to 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
-
Why are only a few of our pages being indexed
Recently rebuilt a site for an auctioneers, however it has a problem in that none of the lots and auctions are being indexed by Google on the new site, only the pages like About, FAQ, home, contact. Checking WMT shows that Google has crawled all the pages, and I've done a "Fetch as Google" on them and it loads up fine, so there's no crawling issues that is standing out. I've set the "URL Parameters" to no effect too. Also built a sitemap with all the lots in, pushed to Google which then crawled them all (massive spike in Crawl rate for a couple days), and still just indexing a handful of pages. Any clues to look into would be greatly appreciated. https://www.wilkinsons-auctioneers.co.uk/auctions/
Technical SEO | | Blue-shark0 -
Website ranking went from page one to not in top 50 overnight. Help/suggestions?
One of our customer's websites initially ranked very well. For approximately 3 months it sat atop of Google for their optimized keywords. Suddenly, on November 17th, the ranking dropped and they were no longer in the top 50 for any keywords. We went through Google Webmaster tools and found no violations, so we emailed Google to see if we violated something and if they would reconsider. They responded "We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google." This is a site built on WordPress, so we turned off a majority of plugins in case one was somehow affecting the site. They have an incredible amount of business partners that link their website from their partner's website menus, so they have about 15,000 links all with anchor text "insurance." (every page on partner site is seen as a different link). Think this is affecting it? Maybe Google sees it as artificial? (P.S. This has been set up this way for a while before they came on with us). The site ranks on page one of Bing and Yahoo, but nowhere in top 50 for Google. Any suggestions? Appreciate the help!
Technical SEO | | Tosten0 -
Page Not Found Help!
Hi, I recently (about 2 months ago) moved a blog from a separate domain name over to my eCommerce site to help with marketing. http://www.moondoggieinc.com/blog. I seem to have gotten it all to work right, but I'm getting tons of 404 errors and they all have " in them for example: http://www.moondoggieinc.com/blog/”http://www.moondoggieinc.com/custom_dog_tanks_and_tees.php” I'm not sure how this happened of how to fix it, but there are about 250 pages like this. I know how to redirect them all with a 301 in htaccess, but Im not sure if that's the appropriate course to fix this or if that's just putting a patch on something that's causing a more major issue. Or do i just need to write 250 301 redirects? Thanks! Kristy O
Technical SEO | | KristyO0 -
When Is It Good To Redirect Pages on Your Site to Another Page?
Suppose you have a page on your site that discusses a topic that is similar to another page but targets a different keyword phrase. The page has medium quality content, no inbound links, and the attracts little traffic. Should you 301 redirect the page to a stronger page?
Technical SEO | | ProjectLabs1 -
Too many on page links
Hi All, As we all know, having to much links on a page is an obstacle for search engine crawlers in terms of the crawl allowance. My category pages are labeled as pages with to many "one page" links by the SEOmoz crawler. This probably comes from the fact that each product on the category page has multiple links (on the image and model number). Now my question is, would it help to setup a text-link with a clickable area as big as the product area? This means every product gets just one link. Would this help get the crawlers deeper in these pages and distribute the link-juice better? Or is Google smart enough already to figure out that two links to the same product page shouldn't be counted as two? Thanks for your replies guys. Rich
Technical SEO | | Horlogeboetiek0 -
Sending signals to Google to rank the correct page for a set of Keywords.
Hi All, Out of all our keywords their are 3 that are showing our home page in the serps rather than the specific product page URL on Google.co.za (Google.com ranks the correct URL) Im not sure why this is happening as most links built using the anchor text are pointing to the correct page. Why would google prefer ranking our home page on local search and rank the correct page on Google.com? (only 3 keywords have this problem) I have tried to correct this by creating links from strong internal pages with anchor text pointing to the correct URL. I have also concentrated on building links from .co.za domains using the anchor text and correct URL but to no avail. It has been 2 weeks now, since i tried to sort it out, but im not sure what else i can do to tell Google to rank the correct page. Any ideas? Regards Greg
Technical SEO | | AndreVanKets0 -
We have Lost Ranking After Panda update
Hi, on the last Updates of google Panda in Europe, we hAve Lost Ranking. What to do now? where to Start! Which Things First and which Second..? Need help, Tell me how to fix issuess...
Technical SEO | | leadsprofi0 -
If you only want your home page to rank, can you use rel="canonical" on all your other pages?
If you have a lot of pages with 1 or 2 inbound links, what would be the effect of using rel="canonical" to point all those pages to the home page? Would it boost the rankings of the home page? As I understand it, your long-tail keyword traffic would start landing on the home page instead of finding what they were looking for. That would be bad, but might be worth it.
Technical SEO | | watchcases0