Website Not Ranking Organically - Not Links, Not Domain Authority...
-
This is regarding the domain: http://lesliekays.com
We got a new client about 5 months back who had a website that was hacked. It took several months, but we've cleaned up most of the spammy links and completely rebuilt their website. We have been successful with every other client that we have ever done getting our customers to rank well organically, but we just can't figure this one out. I'm willing to offer a REWARD to the single person who can figure this out for us. (Let's not get carried away, a small reward). This customer has great quality links to their site too.
We are looking for answers other than:
1. Backlinks
2. Content
3. Malware
4. Domain or Page authority
5. 404 errors
6. We have utilized Googles Webmaster tools endlessly
It is something else and we can not identify it! Let me know what you think! I will give a public shout out to the person who helps us identify this issue!
-
For anyone stumbling across this we were able to identify the issue. We had a WordPress installation that had a hidden database full of SPAM and bad links/images etc. The Database could not be located in MySQL which was interesting, so we had the client agree to allow us to delete ALL content and start from scratch. (They had previously been hacked with another vendor but owned their WordPress website). We were migrating the database because they had hundreds of blog posts. We all agreed since they weren't doing any good we would start from scratch.
Deleted entire website off of server, reinstalled WordPress and we've seen a 745% improvement in keyword rankings. We have over 20 keywords now ranking on page 1. Woot!
-
Hi Dirk,
Again, appreciated the second set of eyes on this. Unfortunately, nothing changed. In fact, it got mildly worse with all the changes! I'm at a loss. I'll keep poking around at it. If you have any revelations, please shoot them my way!
-
The 3 errors listed are for a pop-up chat feature we have running by a company called, Olark. Can this cause issues with Googlebot? This code is embedded into the footer area of the site.
-
I see errors with Googlebot:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flesliekays.com
and Mobile Friendly test uses Googlebot.You need to go in Search Console -> Crawl -> Crawl errors just to see what results are return to Googlebot.
-
Thanks Dirk,
Worked on much of what you recommended. We'll wait a week and see what happens. This client had an old blog that we moved over, but it was a mess. She has given us permission to remove these old blogs with broken links and missing images from here site. Your time on this was very much appreciated. Let's see what happens! I am marking this as answered.
-
The reward is not important - it's solving your issue which is the thing that matters. I don't know Wordfence - but I'm getting suspicious if a tool from Google (Pagespeed Insights) renders a 503 error. This could indicate that Google bot also might encounter troubles when checking your site. The best way to check is go over your logfiles & check for the responses you serve to the Googlebot.
Removing the country blocking now seems to enable pagespeed insights to work properly. Score is not great (50/100 - mobile) so more or less confirms the test by Webpagetest.org. Try to enable caching for static resources like images and enable gzip to compress data transfer. On top of that - compress your images (some of them are really heavy - check http://www.lesliekays.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/brake-hand-position.jpg . The other elements are probably more difficult to do - but these things could already get your score around 70%.
I would try to keep the Wordfence disabled for a week or two - to see if situation improves. Without the log files it's difficult to be sure - but my gut feeling is that this is the main reason why the site isn't ranking. Working on site performance can only help with this - the suggestions above shouldn't be that difficult to implement.
Some other issues - your internal links are not optimal - you have about 600+ links going to 404 (a lot of them = images) - 7 with wrong formatted url (without .com) - 600+ url's which are redirected (in your internal linking you are mixing both www & non-www versions) - so might want to clean up a bit on these ones as well. It shouldn't be a reason for not getting indexed but it's something you should have a look at - especially if the site has some issues before.
I ran a crawl - but it seemed to go on forever - so it's possible you have some kind of eternal loop as well. I stopped at 1781 URI's crawled.
I would recommend you to invest the 99 GBP in Screaming Frog - which would really help you in identifying / solving these issues.
Dirk
-
Screaming Frog... excellent resource!
-
Hi Dirk,
I have removed the Country Blocking from Wordfence so you could take a look at it closer. Thank you for your response and time looking into this! Yes, we run Wordfence on all of our sites (over 80 of them) and haven't had any issues with Googlebot accessing them. We started blocking foreign IP addresses about 3 months ago in an effort to curb some of the hacking and brute force attacks we get.
And I'm serious about this small reward! I value your time.
Taber
-
Really? We have WordFence running on 80 of our sites and don't see any issues with the other sites, all the same type of client as well. Do you have a better suggestions besides WordFence? Perhaps I'll disable it and see if that clears the issue. And, are you saying that you are seeing a return from Googlebot error or that it CAN cause issues?
-
True - i just joining and #WTF seeing such results.
-
Sorry Peter - I was first - the reward is mine
-
Wordfence? RU serious?
This plugin can serious hit your SEO performance because their settings. For example - you return error to GoogleBot...
-
Bonus: You indicate that you don't have problems with 404's - but your site isn't exactly clean concerning the internal links. Can't crawl using Screaming Frog given the 503 I get - but manually checking few pages it seems you have mal formatted links:
Classic Car Insurance (the .com is missing) - it's not a 404 but DNS lookup error
I would do a full scan with Screaming Frog to check what other technical issues you have on the site.
-
Just added the screen copy from the Pagespeed Insights result for sake of completeness.
-
Difficult to check - given the very strict firewall rules you apply (I get a 503 out of Belgium : Reason: Access from your area has been temporarily limited for security reasons)
I assume you are sure that your firewall is allowing Googlebot to access your site? (the sentence "For example, if you were blocked because it was detected that you are a fake Google crawler, then disable the rule that blocks fake google crawlers" scares me a bit)
When I use Pagespeed Insights I get the message that they are seeing a 503 as well (and this is Google after all). You might want to check your logfiles to see that Googlebot is indeed able to crawl your pages (with all the IP addresses it is using)
Other than the config of your firewall - you might want to check loadtimes - according Webpagetest you page takes 25sec to load so there is probably some room for improvement. (I know from other cases where very slow sites were the main reason for indexing issues)
Let me know how to get the reward
(if one of these reasons is causing the indexing issues)Dirk
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
-
Combining Two Sites With Similar Domain Authority
Hello, We run two sites with the same product, product descriptions and url structure. Essentially, the two sites are the same except for domain name and minor differences on the home pages. We've run this way for quite a few years. Both sites have a domain authority of 48 and there are not a large number of duplicate incoming links. I understand the "book" to say we should combine the sites with 301's to the similar pages. I am concerned about doing this because "site 2" still does about 20% of our business. We have been losing organic traffic for a number of years. I think this mainly has to do with a more competitive environment. However, where google used to serve both our sites for a search term it now will only show one. How much organic benefit should we see if we combine. Will it be significant enough to merge the two sites. Understandably, I realize the future can't be predicted but I would like to know if anyone has had a similar experience or opinion Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ffctas0 -
Link Types For Link Building
Hi i have a SEO agency we work with who are building quality guest post links for us, however they are also building forum, profile, blog comments
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spyaccounts14
and directory based links. 60% of their links they are building are high quality, relevant guest posts while the other 40% are the other link types. The 40% seem to be relevant directories, forums, blog comments, etc. They said they build other link types because it diversifies the link building and profile rather then just building high quality guest posts. As just building one link type can leave a footprint. What are your thoughts on this? Cheers.0 -
Google is alternating what link it likes to rank on wordpress site and
Hi there, I'm experiencing a problem where google is pick and choosing different links structures to rank my Wordpress site for my main keywords. The site had pretty good #1 rankings for a long time but recently I noticed Google is choosing to rank the page in one of two ways. Let me just say that the original way where it held good rankings looked like this for example: flowers.com/the-most-beautiful-wedding-bouquets/ this is just an example it' is not my site. And when google decides to switch it up it uses this link structure:flowers.com > weddings (this still points to this link flowers.com/the-most-beautiful-wedding-bouquets when I hover my mouse over it) however this link structure that never appeared before and now does, usually has much lower rankings. Please note it's not both link structures being ranked at the same time for the keywords. It's one or the other that google is currently alternating in ranking and I believe it's hurting the sites position.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | z8YX9F80
I'm not sure if this is a wordpress settings thats gone wrong or what the problem is but I do know when shows the expanded and descriptive link structure flowers.com/the-most-beautiful-wedding-bouquets the rankings are higher and in 2nd place. I'm hoping by rectifying this I can regain back my position. I'm very grateful for any insight you could offer on why this is happening and how I could fix it. Thank you. PS Wordpress site has several SEO plugins0 -
Practical steps to increase Domain Authority
Having read the Neil Patel's guide to DA, I am still at a loss as to practical steps, I can do to help improve my Domain Authority. This is a summary of findings / action plan so far: 1. Building quality incoming links by producing excellent content that people will love! 2. Having "related articles" to keep users on site for longer, and provide more information I am certain I am missing some more steps? More worryingly my DA has gone down from 8 to 5! I do not know how to improve it? Please help with real practical steps that I can use.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | propertysaviour0 -
Why domain authority increase
Hi all Our domian authority has increased from 39 to 42 last week. We have been improving our metadata and removing bad backlinks recently. Is there any other reason or updates last week that would have resulted in this increase? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gavinr
Gavin0 -
Page and Domain Authority
How much Page and Domain Authority we need to look for to secure a backlink.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ross254sidney0 -
Massive drop in organic rankings - but strange issues
Hi guys, We experienced a massive drop in organic rankings on Saturday 29 October, a drop of around 80%.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cashchampion
I have received no notifications in webmaster tools
The site still ranks for its name so we are not banned
The site has been around since 2007
My mozrank and trustrank are very high (higher than sites that now still rank while we don't)
The strange this is the homepage doesn't rank for the main keyword (which it always did), but now a deeper page ranks for the main keyword, albeit on page 4.
Quite a few of our sites were affected, even though they target different industries, different countries, with different hosts, different unique content, different links (for one we havent even started link building and it was getting 250 UV per day, and now 8). I am completely confused by this.
Any advice or direction would be extremely helpful. Thanks so much0 -
Website domain hosting and set-up for foreign domains?
Hi, I am just wondering what the best practice is for marketing a business in two separate countries? I have a new client that wants me to create their website targeted at the UK market which for me is normal but they also want to target Australia (Probably couldn't get any further away) My initial thoughts are that the business would need two separate websites. The first one in the uk and the second website hosted on servers in Australia with different content. Is this correct? or does anyone have any advice which may simplify getting this thing off the ground. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis
Ade.0