Google not index main keyword on homepage in 2 countries same language, rest of pages no problem
-
Hello,
Two the same websites, two countries, same language
http://www.lavistarelatiegeschenken.nl / http://www.lavistarelatiegeschenken.be
The main keyword "relatiegeschenken" in top 10 of netherlands (steady position for 2 years) and in ** belgium** not in top 15****0 the main keyword "relatiegeschenken| but other keywords good positions, thats so strange
I didn't understand and now every thing turned around suddenly:
Now the main keyword "relatiegeschenken suddenly " not anymore in top 10 in the netherslandsits gone and other kewyords still good positions , now **main keyword suddenly in top 10 of belgium 2 years was not **other pages still ok.
It are exactly the same websites and the same language. So double content
But my programmer told me in google webmaster tools settings are right, so no problem with double content ?
I really dont understand first main keyword in netherland in top 10 and in belgium not, now changed, now in belgium top 10 and not findable in the netherland on the main keyword.
Maybe problem in code ?
Maybe problems in code because websites are identical and active in two different countries wit same language ?
No message about a penalty message in WMT, no spam links
week i delete two strong but according to Linkdetox a bad links.
I can not find a solution but its really important keyword that my customer want back in top 10 in netherland, like it was. All other positions and visitors are the same.
Befor i have had this with belgium site, also main keyword google not index homepage. But suddenly no google show in belgium in top 10
Its turned around
Kind regards,
Marcel
-
Hi Marcel,
Content duplication shouldn't be an issue if you are using ccTLDs targeting to each country (as you are already doing with The Netherlands & Belgium), the geolocalization feature is disable in the Google Search Console already when you are using ccTLDs as they are "automatically" geolocated to the country of the extension. In fact, this is the "ideal" way to internationalize your web if you're targeting to countries (and not languages) and give the best possible signal to Google that you are targeting to different countries, as in this case.
Nonetheless, additionally you should also implement hreflang annotations: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en in order to avoid the situation that due to a higher authority -with stronger link profile- one of the domains rank instead of the other in the non-relevant country. I've seen that you are already including hreflang annotations on your sites pages, however these are not correctly implemented because you are only pointing to the other country URL and specifying its language and country.
You need to always specify the language and country of the own page where you are adding the annotation as well as its alternative (check out the specification I included above). Please read: https://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool and use this tool to see the type of tags you need to add: http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/international-seo-tools/hreflang-tags-generator/. This is how you're going to avoid showing a result for the NL in BE and viceversa.
However, the problem that you describe though sounds like if you have suffered from a lost of organic search visibility due to other reasons that don't have to do with internationalization: whether being affected after an update, a configuration change or issue on your site, etc. since I went to check your SEO visibility profile on SEMrush for NL: https://www.semrush.com/nl/info/lavistarelatiegeschenken.nl+(by+organic_positions)?positions=lost that show a few keywords with a negative trend and an overall negative visibility behavior on the site: https://www.semrush.com/nl/info/lavistarelatiegeschenken.nl+(by+organic) since January specifically.
My recommendation is that you run a full SEO audit, instead of just focusing on international configuration that is very unlikely to cause this -unless you had release a new international version that wasn't correctly targeted, but is not your case- and verify especially if this coincides with a recent update (in January there were a few that you can see here: https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change and https://www.seroundtable.com/google-fluctuations-continue-likely-not-penguin-21489.html) and if you are suffering from content optimization issues for example that could have triggered this.
If you have any other question just let me know!
-
two identical webpages in different countries with same content in same language, everything is ok only the homepage got a problem
We do the settings in google webmaster tools and the rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”
So only 2 solutions:
-
Can create an url http://www.lavistarelatiegeschenken.nl/relatiegeschenken and create a link building profile with good links on that. At the end belgium will find this page for the main keyword and in netherland homepage will come back
-
Create unique content on the categorie webpages and also in the navigation, so google will see this as two different companies. Product pages can be the same in both countries.
That was the solution i hope
-
-
Hello Chris,
Thanks for the answer !
As well as in holland as in belgium we have from all subpages good rankings, .be and . except from the homepage, that only in one country a time.
We wanted that people in belgium see our belgium site and in holland the dutch website, so we make those settings in google webmaster tools.
But than have the double content issue, we have solved it to implentate this tag: rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” ta for both countries.
According to me it must be possible and also i see the competitor has also an identical website, but rank in both countries top 10.
AS told subpages rank same in booth countries, its only the homepage
https://www.google.be/?gws_rd=ssl#q=kaasprikkers
https://www.google.nl/?gws_rd=ssl#q=kaasprikkers
We have tried also to seperate both sites so no connection between the websites, own virtual adress and phonenumber, google places, no links to each other, own social media, no dofollow outgoing backlinks etc. So google will see it as different companies.
I have deleted some toxic links on the .nl domain with linkresearch tools, maybe something to do with it
answer 1: .be ranks better in .be and .nl ranks better in .nl
answer 2: i can make the navigation unique content. But there are so many products that is impossible, but as told a competitor has also identical website and ranks on main keyword "relatiegeschenken" in both countries with different domains top 10.
There are upcoming good quality links to the .nl name.
Its strange its only the homepage not the subpages and the homepage has diffierent unique content and the subpages all have duplicate content.
Hope somebody knows the answer, i never had befor
Grtz
Marcel
-
Hi Marcel,
I don't know German at all so I may have missed a few things but from what I can see, there are a few elements that may be causing this.
Your .nl site has the stronger link profile with 197 referring domains and a Domain Rating of 48 compared to 36 referring domains and a Domain Rating of 37 for the .be site.
As you pointed out, the two sites are almost exact duplicates of each other as well. Unless I'm missing something, there is nothing to mitigate this duplication so Google is typically going to rank the strongest of the two duplicates and almost ignore the other.
So, for the question of why you were seeing the .ne site ranking before and not .be, I would expect this is because they're both duplicates and .ne was the strongest.
As for why this has reversed now, I can see you've dropped a lot of links and referring domains from the .be domain recently, perhaps this was an intentional removal of low quality backlinks? If so this will have improved the strength of the profile.
On the other hand, the .ne site has picked up a large volume of links recently and only a handful of new referring domains which suggests these new linking domains are very low quality. Since you seem to have lowered the quality of the .ne profile and improved .be, I would expect to see the situation reverse, which is exactly what has happened.
Suggestions to Fix the Problems Assuming I am correct, there are a couple of ways to go about it:
**1. **Use only 1 website instead of 2. I realise they're for difference countries but the two locations are only 90 minutes apart. This could be dealt with by having 2 location pages on the one site. It removes the duplication you're currently struggling with and means you only have to work on a backlink profile and content for one site instead of two.
**2. **Alternatively, if you have a large budget or a lot of time available, you could tidy up those low quality new links to your .ne site and start writing some unique content for one of the domains so they're no longer duplicate.
So long as Google is seeing 2 identical websites, you're never likely to see them both rank well at the same time. Quality signals may go up and down over time which sees them trade rankings, but you're never going to see them both at #1 while they're duplicates of each other.
I hope that helps!
-
sorry, 2 same websites in two countries
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
-
Which pages should I index or have in my XML sitemap?
Hi there, my website is ConcertHotels.com - a site which helps users find hotels close to concert venues. I have a hotel listing page for every concert venue on my site - about 12,000 of them I think (and the same for nearby restaurants). e.g. https://www.concerthotels.com/venue-hotels/madison-square-garden-hotels/304484 Each of these pages list the nearby hotels to that concert venue. Users clicking on the individual hotel are brought through to a hotel (product) page e.g. https://www.concerthotels.com/hotel/the-new-yorker-a-wyndham-hotel/136818 I made a decision years ago to noindex all of the /hotel/ pages since they don't have a huge amount of unique content and aren't the pages I'd like my users to land on . The primary pages on my site are the /venue-hotels/ listing pages. I have similar pages for nearby restaurants, so there are approximately 12,000 venue-restaurants pages, again, one listing page for each concert venue. However, while all of these pages are potentially money-earners, in reality, the vast majority of subsequent hotel bookings have come from a fraction of the 12,000 venues. I would say 2000 venues are key money earning pages, a further 6000 have generated income of a low level, and 4000 are yet to generate income. I have a few related questions: Although there is potential for any of these pages to generate revenue, should I be brutal and simply delete a venue if it hasn't generated revenue within a time period, and just accept that, while it "could" be useful, it hasn't proven to be and isn't worth the link equity. Or should I noindex these "poorly performing pages"? Should all 12,000 pages be listed in my XML sitemap? Or simply the ones that are generating revenue, or perhaps just the ones that have generated significant revenue in the past and have proved to be most important to my business? Thanks Mike
Technical SEO | | mjk260 -
My website's pages are not being indexed correctly
Hi, One of our websites, which is actually a price comparison engine, facing indexing problem at Google. When we check “site:mywebsite.com “, there are lots of pages indexed which are not from mywebsite.com but from merchants websites. The index result page also shows merchant’s page title. In some cases the title is from merchant’s site but when the given link is accessed it points to mywebsite.com/index. Also the cache displays the merchant’s product page as the last indexed version rather than showing ours. The mywebsite.com has quite few Merchants that send us their product feed. Those products are listed on comparison page with prices. The merchant’s links on comparison page are all no-follow links but some of the (not all) merchant’s product pages are indexed against mywebsite.com as mentioned above instead of product comparison page of mywebsite.com How can we fix the issue? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | digitalMSB0 -
Google not show results for my domain as keyword
Hello seomoz! The problem My issue is that from around 28-7-2014 when i search on google "domain.com" it doesn`t return any webpages of my website. What is working as it should I get results for the homepage if i search any other keywords. For example if i search "site:domain.com" i get many results including the homepage. Other helpful information On Google webmaster tools i didn`t receive any message regarding this, or a penalty.
Technical SEO | | vatraxos
Also at manual actions there is nothing. The traffic coming from google didn`t dropped. Actually the last weeks i have an increase on visits Any idea what could be wrong ? Any solution for this? Thanks a lot for your time!0 -
What is the best practice to re-index the de-indexed pages due to a bad migration
Dear Mozers, We have a Drupal site with more than 200K indexed URLs. Before 6 months a bad website migration happened without proper SEO guidelines. All the high authority URLs got rewritten by the client. Most of them are kept 404 and 302, for last 6 months. Due to this site traffic dropped more than 80%. I found today that around 40K old URLs with good PR and authority are de-indexed from Google (Most of them are 404 and 302). I need to pass all the value from old URLs to new URLs. Example URL Structure
Technical SEO | | riyas_
Before Migration (Old)
http://www.domain.com/2536987
(Page Authority: 65, HTTP Status:404, De-indexed from Google) After Migration (Current)
http://www.domain.com/new-indexed-and-live-url-version Does creating mass 301 redirects helps here without re-indexing the old URLS? Please share your thoughts. Riyas0 -
Changed cms - google indexes old and new pages
Hello again, after posting below problem I have received this answer and changed sitemap name Still I receive many duplicate titles and metas as google still compares old urls to new ones and sees duplicate title and description.... we have redirectged all pages properly we have change sitemap name and new sitemap is listed in webmastertools - old sitemap includes ONLY new sitemap files.... When you deleted the old sitemap and created a new one, did you use the same sitemap xml filename? They will still try to crawl old URLs that were in your previous sitemap (even if they aren't listed in the new one) until they receive a 404 response from the original sitemap. If anone can give me an idea why after 3 month google still lists the old urls I'd be more than happy thanks a lot Hello, We have changed cms for our multiple language website and redirected all odl URl's properly to new cms which is working just fine.
Technical SEO | | Tit
Right after the first crawl almost 4 weeks ago we saw in google webmaster tool and SEO MOZ that google indexes for almost every singlepage the old URL as well and the new one and sends us for this duplicate metatags.
We deleted the old sitemap and uploaded the new and thought that google then will not index the old URL's anymore. But we still see a huge amount of duplicate metatags. Does anyone know what else we can do, so google doe snot index the old url's anymore but only the new ones? Thanks so much Michelle0 -
Duplicate Homepage In Google
Hi Just found through my SEO dashboard, Google has two versions of the same homepage, the root page, plus the index.html page, causing duplicate content from both the pages. what is the best option to ensure google only have 1 version of the homepage listed?
Technical SEO | | rfksolutionsltd0 -
Dynamically-generated .PDF files, instead of normal pages, indexed by and ranking in Google
Hi, I come across a tough problem. I am working on an online-store website which contains the functionlaity of viewing products details in .PDF format (by the way, the website is built on Joomla CMS), now when I search my site's name in Google, the SERP simply displays my .PDF files in the first couple positions (shown in normal .PDF files format: [PDF]...)and I cannot find the normal pages there on SERP #1 unless I search the full site domain in Google. I really don't want this! Would you please tell me how to figure the problem out and solve it. I can actually remove the corresponding component (Virtuemart) that are in charge of generating the .PDF files. Now I am trying to redirect all the .PDF pages ranking in Google to a 404 page and remove the functionality, I plan to regenerate a sitemap of my site and submit it to Google, will it be working for me? I really appreciate that if you could help solve this problem. Thanks very much. Sincerely SEOmoz Pro Member
Technical SEO | | fugu0 -
How do https pages affect indexing?
Our site involves e-commerce transactions that we want users to be able to complete via javascript popup/overlay boxes. in order to make the credit card form secure, we need the referring page to be secure, so we are considering making the entire site secure so all of our site links wiould be https. (PayPal works this way.) Do you think this will negatively impact whether Google and other search engines are able to index our pages?
Technical SEO | | seozeelot0