Google serving wrong page...
-
Hi,
When you Google: "Los Angeles divorce attorney", you will see this site on the 5th page of the SERPS: www.berenjifamilylaw.com/blog/.
For some reason, Google is serving the BLOG page as opposed to the homepage. This has been going on now for several weeks.
Any tips on how to fix this? Obviously, the Homepage is more relevant and has more links going to it, so not sure why it's happening.
Would you just leave it alone? Would you use robots.txt to block Google from crawling the BLOG post page?
Thanks.
-
My advice here is to get a good strong Scotch, a pack of headache tablets and settle in for the night - it sounds like one holy mess!
The only thing I can really suggest is to just try and tackle one element at a time. The fact that so much has gone on with the sites, would suggest to me that Google has lost track of where it is all up to.
Start at the beginning (wherever that is!) and work through sorting one issue at a time.
-Andy
-
Hi Andy,
Great answer. There is definitely a "trust" issue going on. This client had two websites running in the past, and his previous marketing team did a lot of spammy stuff.
Moreover, he used his business name to promote two different types of law, family law and personal injury. Here's the weird part. On GWT, Google will serve his family law site for the personal injury related terms. That makes no sense to me because there is no PI content on the family law site. Perhaps Google serves it b/c of the company name association.
Even more strange, Google serves the HP for "Los Angeles divorce lawyer," but NOT for "Los Angeles divorce attorney" - (even though it serves the HP for divorce attorney Los Angeles).
As far as local search is concerned, that's a HUGE mess. Over the past 10 years they had different business names, different addresses, and the SAME phone number. Whenever they made a change, they wouldn't fix the old listings. They simply created a NEW layer of listings to go over it (does that make sense?).
So you will see his biz name and phone number associated with two different practice areas and two different addresses. You will also find his old business name associated with his new number.
I purchased MozLocal and Yext to help speed it up, but so far there's no movement.
Oh, and they also had multiple G+ business pages going at once.
Any more advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
-
You could noindex, follow the blog page, but I tend to see these issues fixed with some internal linking, just to remind Google which page you want to be prominent.
That said, the fact it is page 5 makes me wonder if there is a penalty / trust thing going on here as well. It wouldn't be the first time I have seen this happen.
I would also check your local search setup and make sure everything is completed.
- Keywords
- Google My Business
- Citations & Mentions
- Backlinks
- Reviews
- Local Directories & Business Listings
- Google Data Highlighter / Schema Markup
- Consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number)
-Andy
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
-
Google webcache of product page redirects back to product page
Hi all– I've legitimately never seen this before, in any circumstance. I just went to check the google webcache of a product page on our site (was just grabbing the last indexation date) and was immediately redirected away from google's cached version BACK to the site's standard product page. I ran a status check on the product page itself and it was 200, then ran a status check on the webcache version and sure enough, it registered as redirected. It looks like this is happening for ALL indexed product pages across the site (several thousand), and though organic traffic has not been affected it is starting to worry me a little bit. Has anyone ever encountered this situation before? Why would a google webcache possibly have any reason to redirect? Is there anything to be done on our side? Thanks as always for the help and opinions, y'all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TukTown1 -
Google Detecting Real Page as Soft 404 Error
We've migrated my site from HTTP to HTTPS protocols in Sep 2017 but I noticed after migration soft 404 granularly increasing. Example of soft 404 page: https://bit.ly/2xBjy4J But these soft 404 error pages are real pages but Google still detects them as soft 404. When I checked the Google cache it shows me the cache but with HTTP page. We've tried all possible solutions but unable to figure out why Google is still indexing to HTTP pages and detecting HTTPS pages as soft 404 error. Can someone please suggest a solution or possible cause for this issue or anyone same issue like this in past.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bheard0 -
Multiple pages optimised for the same keywords but pages are functionally different and visually different
Hi MOZ community! We're wondering what the implications would be on organic ranking by having 2 pages, which have quite different functionality were optimised for the same keywords. So, for example, one of the pages in question is
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrueluxGroup
https://www.whichledlight.com/categories/led-spotlights
and the other page is
https://www.whichledlight.com/t/led-spotlights both of these pages are basically geared towards the keyword led spotlights the first link essentially shows the options for led spotlights, the different kind of fittings available, and the second link is a product search / results page for all products that are spotlights. We're wondering what the implications of this could be, as we are currently looking to improve the ranking for the site particularly for this keyword. Is this even safe to do? Especially since we're at the bottom of the hill of climbing the ranking ladder of this keyword. Give us a shout if you want any more detail on this to answer more easily 🙂0 -
301 Externally Linked, But Non-Producing Pages, To Productive Pages Needing Links?
I'm working on a site that has some non-productive pages without much of an upside potential, but that are linked-to externally. The site also has some productive pages, light in external links, in a somewhat related topic. What do you think of 301ing the non-productive pages with links to the productive pages without links in order to give them more external link love? Would it make much of a difference? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Google is indexing the wrong page
Hello, I have a site I am optimizing and I cant seem to get a particular listing onto the first page due to the fact google is indexing the wrong page. I have the following scenario. I have a client with multiple locations. To target the locations I set them up with URLs like this /<cityname>-wedding-planner.</cityname> The home page / is optimized for their port saint lucie location. the page /palm-city-wedding-planner is optimized for the palm city location. the page /stuart-wedding-planner is optimized for the stuart location. Google picks up the first two and indexes them properly, BUT the stuart location page doesnt get picked up at all, instead google lists / which is not optimized at all for stuart. How do I "let google know" to index the stuart landing page for the "stuart wedding planner" term? MOZ also shows the / page as being indexed for the stuart wedding planner term as well but I assume this is just a result of what its finding when it performs its searches.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mediagiant0 -
Google cached pages and search terms
Here's something I noticed. We have a rank A page and it's ranking 10 on Google search results. When I hover my mouse over our search result, Google gives us a preview, but Google also highlights in red where the search keyword is present on the page. Reviewing our page, even though we have it as the h1 header and intro paragraph, Google is highlighting it half way down the page. Any ideas why? I review rank 1 - 5 and Google highlights the keyword on the intro paragraph and h1 header Have you guys experienced anything like this? It makes me think..Google could be crawling my site and thinking I haven't got it in the h1 or intro paragraph etc.. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Will Google bots crawl tablet optimized pages of our site?
We are in the process of creating a tablet experience for a portion of our site. We haven’t yet decided if we will use a one URL structure for pages that will have a tablet experience or if we will create separate URLs that can only be access by tablet users. Either way, will the tablet versions of these pages/URLs be crawled by Google bots?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbbseo0 -
Does a page on a site with high domain authority build page authority easier? i.e. less inbound links?
Is this also why people build backlinks to their BBB profiles, Yellowpages Profiles, etc. i.e. why do people build backlinks to other pages that link to them? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to just build that backlink directly to your target?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg0