Need Advice - Google Still Not Ranking

[get4it]

Hi Team - I really need some expert level advice on an issue I'm seeing with our site in Google. Here's the current status. We launched our website and app on the last week of November in 2014 (soft launch): http://goo.gl/Wnrqrq

When we launched we were not showing up for any targeted keywords, long tailed included, even the title of our site in quotes. We ranked for our name only, and even that wasn't #1. Over time we were able to build up some rankings, although they were very low (120 - 140). Yesterday, we're back to not ranking for any keywords.

Here's the history: While developing our app, and before I took over the site, the developer used a thin affiliate site to gather data and run a beta app over the course of 1 - 2 years. Upon taking on the site and moving to launch the new website/app I discovered what had been run under the domain. Since than the old site has been completely removed and rebuild, with all associated urls (.uk, .net, etc...) and subdomains shutdown. I've allowed all the old spammy pages (thousands of them to 404). We've disavowed the old domains (.net, .uk that were sending a ton of links to this), along with some links that seemed a little spammy that were pointing to our domain. There are no manual actions or messaged in Google Webmaster Tools.

The new website uses (SSL) https for the entire site, it scores a 98 / 100 for a mobile usability (we beat our competitors on Google's PageSpeed Tool), it has been moved to a business level hosting service, 301's are correctly setup, added terms and conditions, have all our social profiles linked, linked WMT/Analytics/YouTube, started some Adwords, use rel="canonical", all the SEO 101 stuff ++. When I run the page through the moz tool for a specific keyword we score an A. When I did a crawl test everything came back looking good. We also pass using other tools. Google WMT, shows no html issues. We rank well on Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. However, for some reason Google will not rank the site, and since there is no manual action I have no course of action to submit a reconsideration request.

From an advanced stance, should we bail on this domain, and move to the .co domain (that we own, but hasn't been used before)? If we 301 this domain over, since all our marketing is pointed to .com will this issue follow us? I see a lot of conflicting information on algorithmic issues following domains. Some say they do, some say they don't, some say they do since a lot of times people don't fix the issue. However, this is a brand new site, and we're following all of Google's rules.

I suspect there is an algorithmic penalty (action) against the domain because of the old thin affiliate site that was used for the beta and data gathering app. Are we stuck till Google does an update? What's the deal with moving us up, than removing again?

Thoughts, suggestions???

I purposely, did a short url to leave out the company name, please respect that, since I don't want our issues to popup on a web search.

[Xtend-Life]

Hi Thomas,

I was wondering how you got on with this issue? Since it has been 5 months have you started to rank higher?

Also, what were the types of links to your site (e.g. www.domain.com/?id=123456)?

Thanks, Jason

[DirkC]

Hi Thomas,

I fear there is some additional clean up work to do. If I do a site:yourdomain.com - there are more than 5000 results. A bit surprising, because your site only has 30 pages that can be indexed.

If I go to page 4 of the results I see some strange stuff appearing like "madame alexander "travel with style" alex doll - yourdomain" - the link goes to a 400 Bad Request  page. If you click on the Google message 'show similar results' at the bottom of the results -  there seem to be several hundred of these pages. The vast majority of links in the index seem to be these old urls. As they all seem to be in one folder -you should request removal of this folder in Webmaster tools.

Apart from that, and probably less important, I would also consider removing your slogan in your page title - I fear you're overdoing it a bit with one of your keywords which also appears twice in your slogan. Check also the images - a lot of them are quite heave & could slow down the site.

Difficult to tell if you should continue on this domain or put it on another - I would first try to remove this light pages from the index, wait a month & see what it brings;

rgds,

Dirk

[get4it]

Thanks for the response. To clarify. We launched this site on this domain in Nov of 2014, so it's been a couple months now. I do understand that things take time, I tell my inbound clients 6 months to see real results. This is a bit different since we can't even get basic rankings.

"Have you resubmitted the site in every available fashion (sitemap, 301 redirects, URL fetching) to Google?" - Yes fetch done, a few times... Sitemaps submitted and auto updated with each new blog post, robots.txt includes a link to the sitemap. Google has recrawled the site multiple times since we launched. I can do a site: and see all our pages, they just won't rank us for keywords (even simple ones).

The other domains didn't add value. All social profiles are pointing to our main domain.

We've also done a couple PR's since the site launched, which of course rank too.

It's unfortunate, but I figure that I might just need to wait for an update, which they seems they are further apart now.

[David-Kley]

Wow, lots of info here lol. Lets begin with the basics.

It sounds like you have had a lot of domain changes, edits, moves etc. Does Google know that your site is the "final and latest" version? Have you resubmitted the site in every available fashion (sitemap, 301 redirects, URL fetching) to Google?

Also, since you have changed to domain, any of your other authority may have been lost, especially since you state that "with all associated urls (.uk, .net, etc...) and subdomains shutdown. I've allowed all the old spammy pages (thousands of them to 404)." Some of the other sites may have had weight or authority, even if they were a bit spammy. I doubt they were being as harmful as you think, or you would have gotten a warning / penalty.

Now you are in the position of essentially starting over fresh, with little to no links, or mentions. Even if you get good "seo scores" your competitors have years of links and mentions under their belt, not to mention domain stability. Here is a starting point:

1. See if any of the old domains had domain authority or pagerank. If yes, 301 redirect to your new site.
2. Look for any pages that are indexed highly for the old domains, and 301 to the appropriate places on the new site.
3. Look at any and all social profiles connected to any of the old domains. Make sure to update to include the new URL
4. Same with directories and citations. Makes sure all display the new URL. Also look for new citations and backlink opportunities. You need to create a push of new trusted (not spammy) link to send a signal the site and URL exist.

**Also wanted to add that sometimes you can see an initial spike in rankings after launching a new site. Generally, the real results will come at arount the 30-45 day mark, once things have had time to settle, and Google has had time to fully recrawl your site.

[K3v1n]

If there was no manual action, I can't see any option but to wait for the next update. In terms of whether to wait - or bite the bullet & bail on the domain, it's a gamble either way. If it were me I'd wait, but then how long do you wait... Tough one.

With regards a 301 passing on any penalization, I think that's a gamble too. In theory I think the answer is yes the good the bad & the ugly will follow the 301, but in practice the answer appears to be "sometimes."

Sorry I can't be more helpful!