Can a homepage have a penalty but not the rest of the pages?
-
I've got an unusual issue.
I set up a new website with new content and moved old (blog) content to the new site.
On the old site, most of the blog content wasn't ranking after the Oct update. On the new site it all started ranking again after I redirected old URLs to new URLs.
However while all the blog content ranks, the homepage doesn't rank for the new brand term.
There are multiple articles in press that refer to the new website using the branded terms as anchor text, but it's still not ranking.
Is it possible that the redirected homepage (and only the hompage) from the old site is carrying a penalty?
If so, should I not redirect the homepage of the old site but all of it's sub pages?
-
Check the homepage to see if it ranks for some other things;
- the domain name without the www
- the domain name with the www
- the title tag with the title: operator
- cut and paste a string of text (maybe 12-15 words) and search for it in quotes
- the OLD brand term (you said this was a re-brand as well?)
- the OLD domain name
What do those all return? Further;
- Does the homepage show as a landing page in webmaster tools?
- Does it show getting traffic from search in analytics?
- Does it rank for anything in Bing or Yahoo?
It sounds like more diagnostics are needed before we can conclude anything
-
I don't have the answer for you, but wanted to give you some of my thoughts. I used to tell people that Penguin affected a site on a page level, but I was wrong. John Mueller has said in many webmaster forums that Penguin is a sitewide issue in which Google does not trust the links to the entire site. Similarly, Panda is a sitewide issue as well.
It is possible for a site to get a manual penalty that just affects one page or one or a few keywords. If you have a manual penalty, you'll see it in Webmaster Tools under Search Traffic --> Links to your site. But, in my experience this type of penalty is not common.
If just one page is not ranking I'd be looking for technical issues such as a noindex tag or the wrong canonical being used. OR, you may want to check that you haven't abused keywords. The keyword stuffing algorithm can certainly affect just one page. If this is the case, then removing the keyword stuffing can sometime produce good results in even just a few days as this algorithm updates every time Google crawls your site.
Regarding the redirect question, I think no one can really answer that without knowing what the specific problem is and that's going to be hard to diagnose.
-
Daniel,
Yes, it is very possible (and that's a lot of the penalties we see lately). The penalties are only given to certain page on the site, usually because of the over-optimization of anchor text links pointing to those pages that are penalized.
So, I would do a thorough review of all the links pointing to the site and make sure that the anchor text isn't over-optimized. There should be more "brand" phrases and compound phrases rather than exact-match keyword anchor text links pointing to the page.
In Google Webmaster Tools, when sites get manual actions, they're either site-wide or partial matches when it comes to the link penalties that are applied to sites.
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
-
Has anyone seen a recent drop in Page Authority?
We have seen a sizeable drop in Page Authority for three of our key category pages over the last one week.The total number of linking root domains has increased for all the three pages. We have disavowed a few spammy links but we doubt that would cause a drop in page authority. The domain authority is unchanged.Is there any way we could figure out the cause of the drop? Has anyone else also noticed a drop in page authority for their pages? Hello,We have seen a sizeable drop in Page Authority for three of our key category pages over the last one week.The total number of linking root domains has increased for all the three pages. We have disavowed a few spammy links but we doubt that would cause a drop in page authority. The domain authority is unchanged.Is there any way we could figure out the cause of the drop? Has anyone else also noticed a drop in page authority for their pages?
Link Building | | vikassocialbeat0 -
'Too many links' on our pages.
This figure includes links that sit within our navigational menus. Is there a way to block this somehow so that Google and Moz do not read them as 'internal links'? Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | Ashley-Jacada0 -
Link to page in SERP or page with good on-page optimisation
Hi, Some friends are happy to link to my site. As I am focusing on a particular search term is it best to have them link to the page that already appears in the SERP for that term or the one with better on page optimisation? Thanks Billy
Link Building | | Brighton-Soundsystem0 -
#1 with grade F page optimization
For a specific keyword we rank #1 in Google. Nevertheless, I got a Grade F on SEOMoz regarding page optimization. All comments were certainly true. On another keyword (keyword 2) we got a grade A, on this keyword we rank #3. Strange enough I did linkbuilding on keyword 2 to the page regarding this keyword. I did not do linkbuilding for the first keyword. How can this be explained? Both keywords have average competition.
Link Building | | Onlinq0 -
What are the chances of an infographic penalty?
Suppose that you created a great infographic and the embed code included an exact match link. For example: This infographic was created by Shoestore, a leading provider of speed boosting shoes. If the infographic is embedded on 100 domains with an anchor text link (and say you previously had 100 linking domains) is there a risk of penalty for too many exact match links in a short period?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
What pages to nofollow?
We are doing a homepage redesign on our site and as I was going through the code I noticed no links are nofollow links. We have pages such as policies, contact us, links, about us and FAQ that we are not really concerned if anyone visits or if they are indexed. Would it be smart to nofollow these links? Also what other types of links would you recommend we no follow? We would like to get as much link juice as possible to our top categories, but don't want necessary pages to get forgotten. Also, do links higher up on the page get more link juice than items on the bottom of the page? Any knowledge or suggestions on the topic is greatly appreciated!
Link Building | | ClaytonKendall0 -
Do you think my homepage can still be optimized ?
Hi all ! Do you think my homepage can still be optimized ? Here is the URL : http://www.proximeety.com Of course I'm not only speaking about the home page but I also think about the pages structure, links, etc. The fact is that my collegues and I are working hard on our SEO since 7 years and the result is that we still see our websites going down in the SERPS during months... What are we doing wrong ? Our opponents don't seem to be more backlinked or more optimized... I personnaly think that there should be a big mistake on our site that penalize us and our SEO but I can't find what it is... Can you help us ? Thank you in advance !
Link Building | | B-CITY0 -
Too many internal links to a particular page?
I have read all the data regarding the number of links per page, but my question has to do with the number of internal links to a particular page. After looking at some of the competition inside Open Site Explorer I can see that the competitor in question has a much smaller number of links going to the desired page then the site I am comparing. The competitor is outranking a page that should be ranking higher due to higher page authority and external root domain links. Internal Links to Page: 9,950 Competitor Page Internal LInks: 208 Is this a situation where the sheer number of internal links is discounted because of page rank distribution throughout the site? Just want to get some clarity here. Thank you for your responses.
Link Building | | jmsobe0