I've hit a wall. What's next?
-
I've been working on creating content and optimizing my website for the past 18 months, and have seen decent gains in organic traffic. Recently my keyword ranking increases have slowed dramatically, despite adding additional content. I'm hoping a fresh set of eyes can spot something that may be holding me back. I appreciate any feedback the MOZ community is able to provide.
One area of concern/confusion is the number of pages indexed according to GSC. The number tends to go up and down, and I can't figure out why. Of the roughly 8,000 pages that are submitted through the sitemap, it says only around 1,100 are indexed (sitemap page). The index status page says I've got 7,500 pages indexed. Kind of confused on that one.
Anyway, my website is MetroAtlantaHome dot com. Thanks everyone!
-
Matt,
Thank you for taking a look at my site. I really appreciate the feedback.
I had noticed the search results with parameter tags being indexed as well. I tried limiting Google's crawler to non-parameter pages about 8 months ago, but didn't seem to do much. I was afraid one of my settings was messing things up so I deleted it and selected let GoogleBot decide for all of them. Not sure why the paginated pages are being indexed too. I thought I'd read where the paginate tag was similar to the canonical tag and Google would treat it as a signal not to index. I would think if GoogleBot can crawl and index the paginated search pages, it could also crawl the listing results on all those pages. I do have a large portion of listing pages on my site no-indexed since they don't fall within my service area and I used to get a ton of calls about them. Maybe that is causing issues for all the listing results pages to not be indexed.
In regards to Screaming Frog, which settings did you use? I use the preset user agent GoogleBot Regular and have thousands of pages that it crawls. Wish I could replicate your scan to see what might be holding things up.
Regarding the Wistia sitemap, I put it in the robots.txt file to try and get the videos embedded on my site indexed. I didn't realize this was hurting more than helping.
Thanks again for your feedback and taking the time to review my site.
-
As far as the discrepancy in numbers, Google is indexing a lot of ?search= parameter results (as well as /listing/ results) but the search ones are not in your sitemap. Your site doesn't crawl all the way very well - I put it in ScreamingFrog twice and only came up with about 400 pages - some listings pages but not the thousands Google has in the index.
You have a number of paginated pages:
- http://www.metroatlantahome.com/contemporary-style-homes/300000-400000/?p=5
- http://www.metroatlantahome.com/contemporary-style-homes/300000-400000/?p=3
Your canonicals take care of this issue for the search index but your search page results seem to be "indexed" even though they aren't in your sitemap. See the attachment.
So I think you're gaining indexed pages from the search parameter but losing them from /listings/ that aren't indexed and harder to crawl. I would suggest submitting sitemap_0.xml directly to Search Console as a start. Then trying to figure out why those pages don't crawl very well.
The Wistia sitemap in your robots.txt is also NOT something I'd want Google to ever see but having it in robots.txt ensures they do. I'd try to remove that from robots.txt
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 is reporting a server error, but there's no server error.
Google is erroneously reporting a server error and I just can't figure out the source of the issue. My links work, and GoDaddy ensures me there is no server error. This issue arose when I moved from HTTP to HTTPS and CPanel hosting, but I've got no idea how to fix it. I thought maybe I have duplicate content, but it does not appear that way. Any suggestions? I'm at a loss. www.thedishmaster.com
Reporting & Analytics | | TheDishmaster0 -
Hey guys, any advice on why my 'search analytics' in Google Webmaster tools is blank with no data?
I have added all the website versions into Google web master tools and I have no crawl errors. When I click on Search traffic these pages are blank - search analytics, & Mobile usability. And When I fetch as Google the status is constantly saying me 'temporarily unreachable' - any help would be greatly appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | HLAS0 -
What's the best way to figure out which keywords are the highest converting?
We have a client using Google Analytics. They currently have 3 goals set up to track when website visitors fill out 3 forms: Form A, Form B, Form C. I can easily figure out what traffic sources have driven the highest number of conversions on each form (Search for Form A, for instance, or Referrals for Form B), but of course, when I try to drill down on search terms that have driven conversions to each form, I get stuck in "not provided" territory. I'd like to know what people are searching for when they ultimately fill out each form. This will answer questions like: are people familiar with us already when they convert, or did they randomly find our website when searching for something we sell? It seems like there must be a way, using Google Webmaster Tools, Analytics, or another third-party app, to answer the question: what keyword searches are responsible for the highest number of conversions? Especially on a website that has traffic of 10,000+/month and a healthy dose of search traffic. Right? Where am I missing this information?
Reporting & Analytics | | timfrick1 -
What penalty might have hit here (screenshot attached)
I've had a spiky organic traffic profile for some time and wondered if anyone could suggest what penalty might have hit me. Something did in July but then when it recovered (not sure how) I ended up with double the traffic. Then it dipped, recovered a but and has slowly declined since. I've had no manual penalties so it must be algorithmic which means I can fix it. The problem is I don't know what the issues is! Any help appreciated! Ae00Lzl.png
Reporting & Analytics | | SamCUK0 -
Is it possible to use Google Tag Manager to pass a user’s text input into a form field to Google analytics?
Hey Everyone, I finally figured out how to use auto event tracking with Google Tag Manager, but didn't get the data I wanted. I want to see what users are typing into the search field on my site (the URL structure of my site isn't set up properly to use GA's built-in site search tracking). So, I set up the form submit event tracking in Google Tag Manager and used the following as my event tracking parameters: Category: Search Action: Search Value When I test and look in Google Analytics I just see: "search" and "search value." I wanted to see the text that I searched on my site. Not just the Action and Category of the event.... Is what I'm trying to do even possible? Do I need to set up a different event tracking parameter? Thanks everyone!
Reporting & Analytics | | DaveGuyMan0 -
Why are there url's in my np Keywords in google analtyics?
I have been scratching my head at this one. On my not provided keywords, there is a url. Keyword is the primary dimension. It doesn't makes sense why there would be url keywords for pages with a different url. For example, the keywords for page www.xyz.com/abc np - /someotherurl.com Thanks for your insights in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | konverge0 -
Do Google penalise you for having too many 404's?
Hi There I have been doing some work reducing the number of 404's displayed in the Crawl Errors found in Googles Webmaster Tools. We had a lot of products that were no longer available so have now been removed to reduce the number of 404s that had been found. However, there are a number of URLs that have been crawled that do not exist on our website and have been flagged in the list of Crawl Errors. I want to know if Google will penalise us for this, perhaps affecting our quality score or if they can see that this is something out of our control. This site for example: http://sibd.com/com_offers_unique_gifts.html has generated a lot of truncated URLs on its site that link to pages that don't exist on our site: http://www.arenaflowers.com/flowers/pri… That is the exact link that it is trying to locate. Here is the report for that particular link. As you can see the content has been scraped by other sites which has spread the problem further. Pages that link to http://www.arenaflowers.com/flowers/pri.. URL Discovery Date
Reporting & Analytics | | ArenaFlowers.com
http://www.justsearchit.com.au/for_flowers_offers,3.html
Sep 12, 2011
http://sibd.com/offers_unique_gifts_for.html
Sep 11, 2011
http://sibd.com/offers_unique_gifts.html
Sep 11, 2011
http://sibd.com/com_offers_unique_gifts_for.html
Sep 11, 2011
http://www.flexfinder.com/flowers_offers_unique_gifts.html
Sep 10, 2011
http://sibd.com/offers_unique_gifts_with.html
Sep 10, 2011
http://sibd.com/com_offers_unique_gifts.html
Sep 10, 2011
http://sibd.com/of_flowers_offers_from.html
Sep 9, 2011
http://arama.frmpc.com/for_flowers_for_less_ltd_includes.html
Sep 9, 2011
http://arama.frmpc.com/flowers_for_less_than_do.html
Sep 9, 2011 I have spotted a lot of these and currently have around 3.3K 404s in total, a majority are from sites we don't control. Is there an acceptable number of 404s a site should aim for and is the above something we should address or are Google smart enough to work out that we can't fix this ourselves? Thanks! Sam.0 -
Will Google start trimming 'stale' sites rank?
With the recent focus on Google to reduce rank of farms and low value sites, I am interested to get SEO view on if you think Google will start devaluing stale sites. I do find it a bit frustrating that in the top 5 for my main key phrase, there is one site that has NO content just an error and another blog that has not updated content in 2 years. How can blogs that do not blog be considered high enough value by Google to rank in the top 5? How can sites that just return 404 or 500 for ALL their pages be even considered a site let alone rank 2nd. I am interested so see others experiences and thoughts on 'user experience' clean ups by Google and why these types of sites get missed?
Reporting & Analytics | | oznappies0