Need help with my "ghost" blog...
-
...when I fired my original web designer, did they sabotage coding? I have never checked my Alexa/Google Analytics, or any blog ranking until last night. Subsequently, I have spent the last 24 hours googling away, and finally joining MOZ b/c I'm desperate to find out WHY I'm not ranking. I've googled and found many answers to a problem directly opposite of mine: (How to increase traffic with a high ranking), but I already have quite a bit of traffic (via Wordpress Stats), but can not be found on any ranking system. So, fiddled with some NoFollow/NoIndex boxes in Genesis SEO settings thinking maybe when my domain name changed it messed everything up? Most the boxes HAD been checked, so I unchecked them all. Anyhow, basically signed up for the monthly service so i could ask this question on the forum. My site is hellowhitney.com
**it's so weird---i have a LOT of organic direct hits coming directly to my blog (for instance a celebrity re-posted a post which gained a lot of traffic from Twitter to the page), but Google nor another ranking is seeing it. IN FACT, it stops any and all ranking data back to FEBRUARY 2016 when I changed my domain name from Myscriptedreality.com to HelloWhitney.com
Ignorance is NOT bliss in this case--would appreciate any help! #ForeverGrateful
-
When I go to "myscriptedreality.com", it doesn't redirect to your new site. (No login credentials needed to see that.) Also, social traffic is generally not a ranking signal... so getting traffic from Facebook is great, but it's not going to have a direct impact on how well you rank with search engines. (But it's a great argument in favor of diversifying your traffic sources!)
Here's what I would do first:
- Stop fiddling with boxes in the WP admin if you're not sure what they do. For instance, I can tell you for certain that NOODP and NOYDIR will have zero impact on ranking since they're rather obscure meta description directives that you probably do actually want to keep checked, and which have no impact on Google ranking. But you didn't know that, and some of those other options can affect site indexing. You don't know what you don't know, and that worries me a bit.
- **If you don't still own the old domain, repurchase it immediately. This is absolutely imperative. **
- Apply a 301 redirect** from each page of your old domain to the most relevant page on the new one. You'll probably need to hire someone to do this for you. It may require some time and research to reconstruct the old site enough to pull a complete list of its URLs, which is really what needs to be done. Hard to say how much work that will be without really digging into it.
- It seems like you're getting overwhelmed by a lot of technical details without a good understanding of SEO's most basic concepts. So while your hired gun is working on the 301 issue, read the Beginner's Guide to SEO.
I wouldn't expect this to be a miracle resurrection, but it would be a solid start, and you're about to learn a lot about how this all works. Good luck, and keep us posted.
**In layman's terms, a 301 is basically a signpost that says "the page you're looking for is over here, and now I'm going to take you there." It's the technical name for what happens when you type one URL and it takes you to a different one. A 301 redirect is not just for users, but also for search engines. My guess is that when you moved your site, because the 301 redirects were never set up, it's basically like you left no forwarding address. You didn't get to take any of your backlinks or domain authority with you, and all of that is hugely important for maintaining rankings after a site move.
-
Hello--not sure how to assign your credentials vs giving you my administrative credentials...make sense?
-
I think I would need to look at the backend to help you further. Do you mind sending me your WP credentials to hello@solvid.co.uk?
-
Thank you so much for your in depth explanation. I wanted to further expand on some of your points with some links to social media. AGAIN--I appreciate so much you taking the time to look deeper into my site set up: (let me know if I should post this as a new thread, OR contact MOZ or SEO professional for paid service explanation.
these are all things I did LAST night from the Genesis SEO settings:
1.SITEWIDE SETTINGS: Section Headlines - checked "use semantic HTML5", Document Title-checked "add site name to <title>"</p> <p>2. HOMEPAGE SETTINGS: <strong>Document Title - </strong>field blank, but checked "add site description (tagline)...<strong>Meta Description, Meta Keywords = </strong>nothing. <strong>Robot MetaTags</strong> - I UNCHECKED no-index,no-follow, no-archive (all 3 WERE checked from previous designer set up)</p> <p>3. DOCUMENT HEAD SETTINGS: left <strong>Relationship</strong>, <strong>Windows Live</strong>, and <strong>Shortlink</strong> blank</p> <p>**4. ROBOTS META SETTINGS: <strong>Indexing</strong> were all checked, I CHECKED no index to TAG ARCHIVES per your advice, <strong>Archiving</strong> <strong>all </strong>unchecked, **<strong>DIRECTORIES</strong> were ALL CHECKED, but i unchecked both <em>noodp</em> and <em>noydir </em></p> <p><em>-just set up Google Analytics last night. Not sure why it stopped completely in February, before my site traffic picked up and I was never optimized or changed settings like i just did per your advice. </em></p> <p><em>-What ar H1 and 301? </em>again, sorry for my lack of knowledge, but my blog manager left me high and dry after setting everything up. Hence, me signing up on site, paying, and hoping to get some answers on whats wrong...I've included a screenshot of my WP stats so you can see real time organic traffic. </p> <p>Here's my FB page that shows all the views on posts. I can't attach the image of WP stats, but i have over 5,000 unique visitors thus far in April. Not great, but surely enough to put me on map. Unless sabotage from back end of WP site SEO settings. </p> <p>https://www.facebook.com/hellowhitney1/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel</p> <p> </p></title>
-
Hi,
I did a quick check, your website is indexed by Google and you don't seem to have nofollow/noindex issues nor robots.txt issue with your Home Page. However, I can see that you are using noindex tags on some other pages like life, style and health. This may be the cause.
Also, I can see that your website isn't really optimised, that includes page titles (they are too short and don't target specific keywords), some pages have very short meta descriptions and is missing on some pages, you have multiple H1 on some pages, etc.
Also, I can't see Google Analytics set-up on this new website. Did you or your developer put 301 redirect from the old site to the new one?
I would advise you to remove noindex tags, configure your GA, optimise your site internally and you should be good to go.
Please read Moz's beginners guide to SEO
I hope this helps!
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 Analytics Goal/Event/SOMETHING to show only Wordpress "Posts", not pages, etc
Hi all, Our site is build on Wordpress and formerly the post URL's had the typical date format at the beginning. This made it easy for me to look at, for example, all search traffic to the blog. I would just view URL's containing /2014/ and /2015/ and boom. We have since removed the dates from the URL's with proper redirects etc, which is great, but now I can't figure out a way to look at ONLY the blog in GA. I like to track a KPI of 'search visits to blog posts' and I can't figure out how to now. Can I set up a GA event that only fires when the post type template for blog posts loads? Some other solution? I'm lost here, and there's gotta be a good way to do it...
Reporting & Analytics | | 3DR0 -
Blog posts not appearing in Search
http://www.themorrisagency.co.uk/blog works well to index my niche terms. Looked at webmaster tools today and since today it has put my indexed pages from 900+ to 11 ??? I have recently added a new site format via a web designer and was all working fine. Now none of my posts are appearing.I have resubmitted site map for 993 pages Is there anything I can do to stop/ prevent this from happening again? and what do you think was the cause? Thanks everyone! Daniel
Reporting & Analytics | | Agentmorris0 -
Sudden dramatic drop in "some but not all" keyphrase rankings for client, 3 weeks ago
I noticed recently that 4 of my keyphrases which ranked on page one, and were climbing 3 weeks ago, have suddenly dropped to > 50. What could have happened? I did find an issue with my sitemap (yoast generated), but why would that suddenly change? And even more importantly, how do I fix it?
Reporting & Analytics | | chill9860 -
Has anyone had any success when requesting help from Bing?
For the past month I have been struggling to resolve a problem with an increasing number of 404 crawl errors in Bing. (Only Bing reports these error, not Google and not Moz.) I did receive email from them requesting a server log (which I have now sent 5 times.) Their response, please send a server log. The last email I sent (6/21) explained there should be server log attached, if they did not get it, not why not? Do they have a restriction on file size? What other compression types do they accept? It has been very frustrating to deal with them and all of their responses are between 9 PM and midnight. Almost a week later, no reply. Any suggestions how I can get out of this seemingly endless loop and get a helpful response during normal business hours (PDT)?
Reporting & Analytics | | PerriCline0 -
Do PPC clicks get attributed to "Organic" in Analytics?
Hey guys, This month I started running a PPC campaign for a client and have noticed that none of the click data is showing up in Analytics under "Paid". However, under the "Organic" section, I've noticed that we're gaining a lot more clicks through to the site for some of our targeted keywords than we have been in previous months. Is this just a coincidence or is the PPC click data being used under the Organic section of Analytics?
Reporting & Analytics | | Webrevolve0 -
Moved Up in SERPS & Traffic, Need Help Converting
Hello, After listening to the advice of many of you on this forum, I have managed to move my site up in the SERPS, close enough to where I want/need to be. My traffic has increased heavily, yet I am still not seeing a large increase in orders being placed. I am positive that I have the lowest prices on these items, and the most information available about them, yet I still can't seem to convert a lot of this traffic into sales. Can you guys please take a look at my site and provide some guidance on what I can/should do to help convert these visitors to customers? my site is : http://goo.gl/JgK1e Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Prime850 -
How do you eMail reports in the "NEw" version of google analytics
Bonjour from 9 degrees C Wetherby UK In google anlytics I want to export a monthly report to a client. Whilst I can do this in the old version where in the name of flying spacial jockstraps is it in the new version? Any insights welcome 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing0 -
Google analytics - help
Hello, What is meant by campaign expiration in Google analytics ? The default value is 6 months. what does it mean ?
Reporting & Analytics | | seoug_20050