Why are my pages de-indexed?

RafeTLouis

Hello all,

I am very new to SEO.

For some reason many of the pages on my site were de-indexed.

Specifically the ones linked from this page:

However other pages, like the ones linked from this page and this page were not de-indexed.

http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/practice-areas/car-accident-injury-lawyers/[1]

However the pages linked from this page were not de-indexed: http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/practice-areas/slip-and-fall-lawyers/[2]

http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/podcastresources/[3]

That first page itself was not de-indexed, just the site that it links to.

It just happened today, so maybe I am jumping the gun but I doubt it.

When I enter the page into google webmaster tools again and press fetch, one of the child pages, it re-indexes.

What could be the problem here? I had someone re-write the content for every city but I have a feeling that there is less differences in the car accidents pages?

Is this considered duplicated content do you think? Am I making some other mistake I can't think of? Is it just a one day blip (I doubt it)

Let me know, thanks.

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PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

These pages don't appear to be deindexed. Are you thinking this because you are not appearing in your searches?

[1] [2]
[3]

RafeTLouis

Hmm do you see the ones that I said look like they've been de-indexed? I think they were! Why would that be?

Let me know thanks.

ClaytonJ

Over Optimization may appear to google as an attempt to rank for terms by spamming or repeating unnecessary words. That is how in the past online companies ranked easily.

Google has changed the way their algorithm reviews sites and they look for spamming or over use of keyword phrases.

Now no-one is suggesting you are doing it it on purpose as it often happens by accident. Hence all the URL's that Patrick has highlighted appear to have that ominous "over optimization" look. The URL's are all the same except the city or the town at the end of the URL.

If still a bit muddy ask away happy to clear up, a good question...

RafeTLouis

I appreciate the help. What is "Over Optimization?"

So here's why I think they're de-indexed. I'm tracking google rankings and all my "Car accident lawyer-City" totally disappeared today.

If I go to google and I search:

http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/car-accident-injury-lawyers-in-oshawa/ or

http://www.lawyerconnection.ca/car-accident-injury-lawyers-kingston/

It doesn't come up. Yesterday it definitely did. This is why I think it's de-indexed.

Also my impression was I couldn't do Google My Business for all the different places because I don't have have brick and mortar locations in all of those cities.

Thanks and I appreciate the help.

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

I am not exactly sure what you're asking here. According to my search, your site is being indexed, including the pages that you mentioned above. 164 pages out of the 168 I was able to crawl, in fact.

Now, I ran a ScreamingFrog, and a couple of things concerned me. You have a LOT of heavy optimization going on. Particularly around these pages:

And also...

While I understand that you do do work in different communities, are other ways of capturing this type of local traffic, particularly through a strategic local SEO campaign. I would take advantage of listing opportunities through Moz Local, Whitespark, and Google My Business if you have multiple practices. There are also service area opportunities available through Google.

Have you checked to see if you have a manual action of any kind? Have you seen your organic traffic at all?

I would take a look at geo-targeting your site as well in Google Search Console.

If you are new to SEO, I highly recommend checking out the following:
Moz's Beginner Guides
Moz Academy There are a ton of learning resources above that will help you get off on the right foot with SEO. Right now - I would focus on your on-site SEO, information architecture, and also your content. You have a lot of room for improvement on your website, but with proper research of your audience and keywords, you will be off in no time.

Again, I don't see any reason why you may feel you've been removed from the index, but I am definitely not seeing a whole lot of reasons for your site to rank either. Not that's not a knock against you at all, there is just a lot of work to be done!

Hope this all helps! Good luck!

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