Bing rankings question
-
Hi,
We just wrapped up a website redesign about a month ago. The content stayed primarily the same. Once we launched the new site all of our rankings in Google stayed the same but we lost rank for all competitive keywords on Bing. I looked in Bing Webmaster tools and it doesn't show any penalties but it does show that we have too many H1 tags. I don't think the H1 tag thing is the issue but maybe. Do you know what could be causing this?
-
That sounds like it. You need to add both versions of your site (http and https) to WMT and see if there is data in the https. Then make sure that you pick one (if you go https, make sure you have the right certificates set up) and redirect any requests for the other to the right one.
-
Hey thanks!
It's really strange. In GA when I break it down by search engine it shows no drop in organic traffic from Google. On July 22nd Webmaster went from showing an average of 600 clicks a day to 100 clicks a day. During that same time period Google Analytics remained steady at about 900 clicks a day. I'm interested in HTTPS vs HTTP. Right now Google has some of our pages in https and others as http in our index. Could that be what's causing it?
-
Hi BT,
About WMT vs Analytics, it depends on how you are looking at the data. Can you tell me the specific reports and time ranges? Remember, organic traffic in GA is not just Google, there are a number of other SEs out there. It could have to do with a number of things outside of that as well. Are you looking at the right profile in WMT? HTTPS vs HTTP and www vs non-www, plus subdomains in all of that can make a BIG difference. Same thing with Analytics, it depends on where the code is installed.
-
Thank you everyone! You gave me a lot to think about. I will look at this further. Just wondering if you could answer one question for me? In Google Webmaster Tools clicks from search dropped dramatically, around 95 average clicks a day. However Google Analytics shows about 800 organic clicks a day on average. What could be causing the difference in data?
-
Hi ATP,
There are a some post here on the forums, unfortunately with somewhat different points of view about multiple H1's. I have a feeling nobody knows for sure. However if we take Matt Cutts' word on it, you don't have much to worry about for 2-3 H1 tags on a page on Google. I can't say much about the other search engines. Apple.com uses multiple H1 tags.. but then again when has Apple ever followed the norm.
Post 1 (3 years old, okay multiple h1's for html 5)
Post 2 (1 year old, not so great multiple h1's)
Post 3 (1 year old, mixed point of view's staff endorsed)I know all search engines behave in their own way. With that in mind, it is of course advised you always use you best judgement. If Bing drove 90% of our traffic I would be very leery of pushing the envelope with them, and if I did I would watch the results very closely.
I am not currently developing any HTML 5 site, but I do try to stay up to date on the current SEO trends. Recently a user asked about his site and view points, which I answered in similar fashion here.
Hope that helps you as well,
Don
-
Cracking response Don, can say honestly say i've learnt something today.
I have done work with HTML5 and heard of this concept but never gave it any attention as every major SEO site always talks about a single H1 being best due to the variation in different SERPS, the rise in bing traffic etc etc.
Would you say you have had good results, across multiple SERPS, with multiple H1's implimented with HTML5? Or in google only?
Are SERPS activly distinguishing different page sections with HTML5 yet or is there still the danger of H1 dilution with over use?
The article is nearly 2 years old, is there any more recent discussion on the subject (google searches lead me to the same article).
P.S: Apologies i guess im high-jacking the thread, so if don responds I will leave it there so the original poster can get the answers he wants.
-
Hi BT2009,
While ATP's advice is generally the accepted advice there is reason to actually use more then one H1 tag. Most specifically in HTML5 pages which actually uses the H1 tag to break up sections of content within an article tag. This is an important distinction to the old rule. You can read a lot about this new methodology here on Tutsplus.
There are other cases in which one may use more then one H1 tag, like when changing view points for multiple devices. The basic rule of thumb in such case is the purpose of the additional tag for the users benefit? In both of these cases I still would lean more towards minimal use of multiple H1 tags.
Okay so now that we know that lets move on to the question about Bing. First, we all know that Google has way more invested in the search engine software & hardware than any other company including Bing. Bing may still be using the 1 tag rule. This may not actually be a direct penalty but as ATP points out a simple confusion point that the search engine hasn't yet adapted too. Google has flat out said it does not penalize for multiple H1 tags, but I have not seen the same comments from Bing.
Whats more is each search engine will act in its own way to a website redesign, most focus on Google since it drives most people's traffic, but in fact Bing, Ask, Yahoo, Baidu all treat new content, urls, design differently. I have seen cases were a site redesign takes a couple months before traffic gets back to normal and another few weeks before I know for sure if the redesign actually helped.
There may also be some other issues we didn't discuss here, however since you mentioned the multiple H1 tags is was obviously a concern of yours so I hope we addressed that adequately for you.
Don
-
Hey there,
A very important point to make is that you should have 1 and only 1 h1 tag per page. This is of vital importance on one of the most crucical SEO ranking factors. If your design has changed this I would address it immediately.
When you do a redesign like this and your rankings drop you should ask yourself 2 questions
- Has google, bing or any other SERP changed their algorithm and could it have affected me? - if no...
- What have I changed ?
If the SERP's havn't updated their algorithms then you have changed something for the negative. Look at your pages from before and now, what has changed? Make a list and cross them off 1 by 1 as you eliminate them. If you only had one h1 before and now you have multiple then this is your starting point.
Without seeing the site, the best advice I can give is to give your new design the SEO checklist.
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development contains all the basics. It may sound simple but go through and check them off 1 by 1 making sure your design takes these in mind or improves on what you had before.
My gut feeling is that something has changed (such as more than 1 h1 tag) that bing has noticed and dropped you for it. Google may not have dropped yet but could do should you not address it.
Edit: I forgot
If it is only your competitive keywords that have dropped rankings it could well be something simple like too many H1 tags. Before those pages were screaming
IM ABOUT THIS
now they are saying
im about this
and this
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
-
General SSL Questions After Move
Hello, We have moved our site to https, Google Analytics seems to be tracking correctly. However, I have seen some conflicting information, should I create a new view in analytics? Additionally, should I also create a new https property in Google search console and set it as the preferred domain? If so, should I keep the old sitemap for my http property while updating the sitemap to https only for the https property? Thirdly, should I create a new property as well as new sitemaps in Bing webmaster? Finally, after doing a crawl on our http domain which has a 301 to https, the crawl stopped after the redirect, is this a result of using a free crawling tool or will bots not be able to crawl my site after this redirect? Thanks for all the help in advance, I know there are a lot of questions here.
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
Eligible To Rank For Few Queries
I can't figure out why this site (www.liveathomeseniors.com) is eligible for so few search queries on Google Webmaster Tools. I know there is a lot of work to be done, but this is my biggest puzzle right now. What am I not seeing? 379 pages are indexed and yet the site is has only been deemed eligible to rank for 3 queries over the past 3 months. Is it all the repetition in the way the content has been structured? I'd appreciate people's thoughts on this. I can't see the forest for the trees. Donna
Technical SEO | | DonnaDuncan0 -
Exact URL Match For Ranking
Has anyone else run into this issue? I have a competitor that purchases domain names for popular inner pages we are trying to rank for. We are trying to build a brand, our competitors have a lower domain authority but rank higher for inner pages in the serps with VERY little content, backlinks/seo work, they host a single page and do a re-direct to their main site. Would this be a good long term strategy? EX. We sell golf clubs our brand name is golfcity (Ex only) and we carry callaway clubs, our competitor is also building a brand but they purchased callawayclubs.net and do a re-direct. They rank on page one for keywords callaway clubs. If I do try to do this does one have an advantage over another? .com. net .org. because Ive seem them all used and rank on page 1. Thank you!!!
Technical SEO | | TP_Marketing0 -
Not ranking on Google
Hi all, I am optimising a site which is a hotel directory for a small island in the Mediterranean - Malta. The site is www.maltahotelsonline.com. I did a keyword research and optimised the page. However I am now at link building stage. Since we do not have many links the site is still not ranking very well for the desired keywords (ranking fine on Bing and Yahoo yet not on Google). As a result there isn't much traffic on the site. 1. Is there any particular issue that you can spot on this site that is not allowing it to rank well on Google? 2. Any suggestions on link-building please?
Technical SEO | | ICON_Malta0 -
Rankings for Google Play Pages
Hey all, I'm relatively new here and certainly new to posting in the forums and interacting with the community but I hope to be much more active in the coming months. I have what might be a silly question regarding search results for a Google Play store-specific query. The company in question has their main North American app that's been out for a month and a half and then an International version that was released just a few days ago. If you run a Google search (NOT a search witin Google Play) for 'Google Play Company Name' the more recent (but less used and ultimately less important, at least for the time being) International app is higher in the SERP than the more used and reviewed North American app. I'm guessing that this is something that will correct itself over the next week as the North American app establishes itself as the more important of the two, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask just in case there's something they can do to affect the results a little quicker. Any advice, input or just a verification of my guess would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | JDMcNamara0 -
Google Places Question......
Hi Guys. I am working with a photographer they do not have a studio they shoot on location. However I noticed many photographers within their industry have their home address listed in their google places, and they too shoot on location. My client doesn't want their home address listed so I wondered what options there would be? Do you think renting mail forwarding address would suffice?
Technical SEO | | RankStealer0 -
Domain Crawl Question
We have our domain hosted by two providers - web.com for the root and godaddy for the subdomain. Why SEOMOZ is not picking up the total pages of the entire domain?
Technical SEO | | AppleCapitalGroup0 -
Sudden ranking drop, no manual action
Sort of a strange situation I'm having and I wanted to see if I could get some thoughts. Here's what has happened... Monday morning, I realized that my website, which had been showing up at the bottom of page 2 for a specific result, had now been demoted to the bottom of page 6 (roughly a 40 spot demotion). No other keyword searches were affected. I immediately figured that this was some sort of keyword-specific penalty that I had incurred. I had done a bit of link building over the weekend (two or three directory type sites and a bio link from a site I contribute to). I also changed some anchor text on another site to match my homepage's title tag (which just so happened to be the exact phrase match I had dropped in) - I assumed this was what got me. I was slowly beginning to climb up the rankings and just got a bit impatient/overzealous. Changed the anchor text back to what it originally was and submitted a reconsideration request on Tuesday. This morning, I get the automated response in Webmaster Tools that no manual action had been taken. So my question is, would this drop have been an automated deal? If that's the case, then it's going to be mighty hard to pinpoint what I did wrong, since there's no way to know when I did whatever it was to cause the drop. Any ideas/thoughts/suggestions to regain my modest original placement?
Technical SEO | | sandlappercreative0