Need Advice - Google Still Not Ranking
-
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.
-
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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!
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
-
How long does google takes to crawl a single site ?
lately i have been thinking , when a crawler visits an already visited site or indexed site, whats the duration of its scanning?
Algorithm Updates | | Sam09schulz0 -
About porn sites and ranking
Hello, I'm thinking to extend my website into porn. At the moment there is no pornography on it, although we do talk about sex related topics and products (from dating to tutorials, to toys etc.) Would it be dangerous to keep the porn section on the same domain as the rest? Would this negatively affect my non-porn content as Googlebot would "flag" my website as being pornographic (although only a few pages would be)? Or simply Googlebot would leave the current non-porn pages ranking as they are now, just fine, and plus it would rank the porn pages if they "deserve" to? I hope my question is clear. I don't want to create a subdomain.
Algorithm Updates | | fabx0 -
New Google Update - weird ranking
Hi I wanted to get your thoughts on this keyword ranking. This page - https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/albatross-heavy-duty-office-chairs-24-stone is now ranking for heavy duty office chair 30 stone We don't mention 30 in the content anywhere, apart from the USPs at the top of the page - could this be it?! I don't know how to change this, or I guess Google is still figuring things out and maybe this will drop off? Love to get some thoughts on this! Becky
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Best practice for cleaning up multiple Google Places listings and multiple Google accounts when logins were lost.
We are an inbound marketing agency, most of our clients are not relying on local seo. I have a pretty good understanding of it when starting fresh but not so much in joining a "movie in progress" kind of scenario. Recently we've brought on two clients who have had their websites in place for awhile, have made small attempts at marketing themselves online over the years and its resulted in multiple Google places listings, variations of the company names (one of them changed their name), worried there are yet more accounts out there they aren't aware of, etc (analytics, and others from well intentioned employees and past service providers - no internal leadership at the company level). In reading Google help forums I'm seeing some recently having their accounts suspended when they try to clean things up - in one case a person setup a new Google account thinking he would start fresh and in trying to claim listings, get rid of duplicates, etc. his account was suspended. What is the CURRENT recommended course of action in situations like these? With all the changes going on with Google, I don't know which route to take and have combed the Internet reading articles about this (including Google's resources) - would like some current real world advise.
Algorithm Updates | | rhgraves651 -
How to follow up Google search in a Joomla website
Hello ! I'm facing a stupid issue but cannot solve it. Google Analytics can track the seach into a website. When I try to activate it I need to add some more parameters that I do not know. http://awesomescreenshot.com/03f1bnau8d Has anyone ever tried to configure Google analytics search for a Joomla website ? Tks a lot !
Algorithm Updates | | AymanH0 -
Top of Google Places but not Organic
Hi There, My website www.drivingbrighton.co.uk is number 1 for Google places for my area, however I'm not on page 1 of google organically. Is it possible to do this, or does Google not let you have a places and organic links? Any opinions welcome! Ant
Algorithm Updates | | Ant710 -
Can Google display a diffrent page title?
Hi if I search google UK for the phrase car leasing, google returns my listing as Car Lease Deals However the same search on Yahoo or Bing bring back Contract Hire | Vehicle & Car Leasing Deals | Car Lease Deals this is the real page title. Why would this happen? Thanks Andy
Algorithm Updates | | First-VehicleLeasing0 -
Google changing case of URLs in SERPs?
Noticed some strange behavior over the last week or so regarding our SERPs and I haven't been able to find anything on the web about what might be happening. Over the past two weeks, I've been seeing our URLs slowly change from upper case to lower case in the SERPs. Our URLs are usually /Blue-Fuzzy-Widgets.htm but Google has slowly been switching them to /blue-fuzzy-widgets.htm. There has been no change in our actual rankings nor has it happened to anyone else in the space. We're quite dumbfounded as to why Google would choose to serve the lower case URL. To be clear, we do not build links to these lower case URLs, only the upper. Any ideas what might be happening here?
Algorithm Updates | | Natitude0