Having possible problems with rankings due to development website
-
Hi all,
I've got an interesting issue and a bit of a technical challenge for you.
It's a bit complicated to explain, but please bear with me.
We have a client website (http://clientwebsite.com) which we are having a hard time ranking in the past few months. Main keywords simply don't show up in Top100 searches, even though we are constantly building backlinks through Guest Posts, Citations, Media mentions, Profile links etc.
Normally, we use ahrefs to look at the client's website backlinks, but just today we used Majestic to look at the backlink profile and one backlink stood out.
This is a backlink from a development server (http://developmentwebsite.com) which redirects to http://clientwebsite.com
The developers who were working on the redesign of the client website, put it up on their server and forgot to delete it.
Also, the content inside the development website is almost identical with the client website.We then checked to see if http://developmentwebsite.com is indexed.
It's not.Although, inside the robots file http://developmentwebsite.com/robots.txt there's:
User-agent: *
Allow: /
The funny (and weird thing) is that http://developmentwebsite.com/ and all development website inner pages are not indexed in Google.But if we go to http://developmentwebsite.com/inner-page, it doesn't redirect to the corresponding http://clientwebsite.com/inner-page, it's the same development website page URL and the pages even have links to the client website, but like I said, none of the pages of the development website are indexed, even though crawlers are allowed in the robots.txt's development website.
In your opinion, could this be the reason why we are having a hard time to rank the client website?
Second question is:
How do we approach in solving this issue?
Do we simply delete the whole http://developmentwebsite.com with all the inner pages?
Or should we do 301 redirrects on a per-page basis? -
the problem, might be about your template .
-
Thank you Jake, will definitely give this some thought.... Appreciate the help.
-
Recommending link development would be difficult without knowing more about your specific industry, competitive advantages, etc.
Generally speaking, you want to focus first on ensuring you have valuable assets capable of justifying new links to your site. This would be a variety of content types depending upon your business, but can range from Free Advice and How To Guides, Data Insights, Tools/Widgets, Detailed comparison/reviews, Interviews and insights from industry through leaders, etc. You can use methods like broken link building to identify new content opportunities that you can capitalize upon, or look at top linked pages on competitor sites to see the types of content that has earned their links.
Once you have established your linkable assets, you can begin the process of outreach and amplification to bring attention to those assets and earn natural links. Of course, you can always reach out to other thought leaders, cited sources, etc... to encourage some additional sharing, linking, etc.
You can also do link profile comparisons to see if there are reputable outlets citing your competitors but not mentioning you.
Those are just a few examples off the top of my head. If you have the resources to do link dev internally and just need strategy guidance, you should check out the Moz recommended list, as many of those agencies (I know ours does) will offer ad-hoc consultation to help your team get the systems in place to be successful with your link dev efforts.
Cheers,
Jake
-
Thanks, Jake. We've had the dev site removed.
As a side note, what link-building would you recommend if you think we should not be doing outreach / guest posting?
Cheers!
-
You have to search and replace the new sites URLs with the same consistent URL not from the dev server then block the dev server.
- search and replace the URLs in the new site.
- block the developer site with a password
First things first take Make sure you have all the images and code on the http://clientwebsite.com/
Then go to the new site and do a search and replace on all the URLs including the database.
Search for http://developmentwebsite.com & replace with http://clientwebsite.com
- https://www.funduc.com/search_replace.htm
- https://interconnectit.com/products/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/
After doing this.
Go on to the development site and block URLs by password-protecting your server directories
Place a password on the site preventing it from being indexed by anything or even accessed without using the password.
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93708
- https://blogvault.net/how-to-block-google-from-indexing-your-wordpress-site/
You might want to check the header tags in the development site URLs. This would only be for curiosity you really want these things gone.
Did you check for
_(…)_ **X-Robots-Tag: noindex** _(…)_
Or no index meta tag in the section of your page:
Lastly, remove the offending URL's from Google if you must & follow this guide when launching sites.
I hope this helps,
Tom
-
You can also use Moz's Open Site Explorer to look at the spam scores of your incoming links.
-
Zakkyg, as previously mentioned, the problem may be the "building backlinks through Guest Posts and Profile links, and the type of links that you're building to the site. I would take one step further and run the site's links through Link Research Tools' Link Detox to make sure that the links to the site are good links and you're not building any toxic links.
I would also immediately take down the development site completely. Make it deliver 404 error pages, with all URLs. There's no need to set up redirects at all. Since it is an old dev site, it really shouldn't have any traffic or links to it--so I would just remove it.
-
Great question..
First... some of your rankings problem may be around this - "Guest Posts, Citations, Media mentions, Profile links etc."... at least 2 of those items carries some decent risk, the consequences of which would be "not ranking". Have you checked search console to see if any manual actions exist? Did you have rankings and they disappeared, or have you been unable to secure rankings in general? Does the site currently get organic traffic, but just maybe on terms that you aren't targeting?
As far as the development site, this could easily be a separate issue from your rankings, and I would doubt this would cause significant rankings drops if the dev site isn't being indexed by Google. Would you be lucky enough to have any type of access to this through a CMS login? If so, you could easily verify the site in search console and see where things stand in terms of indexing. Additionally, if you could access through the CMS, you might be able to change a few settings, such as canonical tags, "website" or discourage indexing (if wordpress), etc. .that would cause the site to begin redirecting to your clientwebsite.com or at least give the indication that it is a known copy.. Did you check the individual pages of the site to see if a meta tag is in place on the pages blocking robots?
Ultimately the easiest thing regarding the dev site would be to simply ask the dev company to remove the site...
Cheers,
Jake
-
I would do the redirect to be safe then in the future make sure you run noindex on any development sites.
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
-
I want to use a photo from an official website for my own website.IF YES HOW?
Lets suppose i downloaded a photo from a XYZ website and want to use it on my own website, and also i want to rank for same keyword, and would like to rank just below XYZ site, i know there could be copyright issue. what can be done to avoid this issue. Can i manipulate the picture in a such way that it is usable. if yes how? How can i use that official websites picture for my website, i mean, can i cite that website as a source? what is the best practice in this case? i dont want to use stock photo,i really like xyz sites pics.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam09schulz0 -
Someone redirected his website to ours
Hi all, I have strange issue as someone redirected website http://bukmachers.pl to ours https://legalnibukmacherzy.pl We don't know exactly what to do with it. I checked backlinks and the website had some links which now redirect to us. I also checked this website on wayback machine and back in 2017 this website had some low quality content but in 2018 they made similar redirection to current one but to different website (our competitor). Can such redirection be harmful for us? Should we do something with this or leave it, as google stop encouraging to disavow low quality links.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kahuna_Charles1 -
Do Website Engagement Rates Impact Organic Rankings?
Hello Experts, 1) Do Website Engagement Rates Impact Organic Rankings? What does Website Engagement Rates means? Is it a visitor stay on my page long time? Can anyone guide me what things we can include in website engagement rates Specifically for "Ecommerce Sites" ? Can I consider - 1) Reviews 2) Video's 3) Good Images and informative description 4) video's 5) highlighting relevant blog posts at category pages 6) email subscription etc as website engagement? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wright3351 -
Homepage not ranking for main keyword, all other pages ranking slightly for their own keyword phrases.
Dear Mozzers, We have an ecommerce website (www.pashmina-boutique.com), we want to rank the homepage for the keyword "pashmina". Problem is, we are nowhere to be found, not even in the top 100 search results of Google. It is indexed, we have no crawl errors, except that we had some problems with our hosting (503's), the crawler of Google bumped in a few of those. And we are fixing it. Our other pages, e.g. (http://www.pashmina-boutique.com/15-white-pashminas) ranks for "white pashminas" 24th and "white cashmere pashminas" 23rd. We have done no linkbuilding, in Majestic, you can check that. We have been offline for a long time (over 6 months) and about 3 weeks ago, we did a redesign (SEO). We relaunched, everything is looking fine except the homepage isn't ranking for the main keyword. Could you guys check it out? Is it over-optimization? It can't be Penguin, Panda would be a surprise too. Or do we still have to wait for the monthly Panda data-refresh? We are currently busy with this issue, once this is solved - that the homepage is ranking - we will start linkbuilding. Mr.1000
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mr.10000 -
Author rank
Can anyone tellme how to know my author rank. Is better to gain authority on my author rank +dariopropdental And if it is better to gain authority as author or as page +propdental And if a do a new post on my web every day should i place every link to the post on my profile and my page. Doenst it look spammy. Should all post have a link from my profile.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Panda recovery. Is it possible ?
Dear all, To begin, english is not my native language, so I'm very sorry if I make some mistake. On the 23th march 2012, Panda penalized my website (a coupon website) Avec-Reduction (dot com for the url). At this date, I have lost more than 70% of my traffic. The structure of the website was like an e-commerce website. Categories -> merchant page -> coupon page. The content was to thin for Google, I'm agree wit that. So, in may, I have made a new version. Here you can see the most important modifications : A smallest header (-100px height). 2 columns website (the oldest website had 3 columns) I have deleted the category menu with the list of all categories and the alphabetical menu. less ads on the website (since few days I have also deleted the 2 adense blocks) The coupons was promoted with the thumbs of the merchant on the home listing. Now I have few top lists in text only. I have deleted all the categories pages (one page by category of merchant, with the listing of all the merchants of the category). Now I have only one page for this. Same thing with the alphabetical pages. All these deleted pages have a 301 redirect. The 2 new pages (categorie page and alphabetical page) are on noindex. I have deleted all the promo codes pages, all the coupons are now on the merchant page (301 redirect used). I have create an anti-spam system for the review codes (I have a lot of spam on these forms, even if I cleaned every day/2days). Now, I have no spam. Visitors have now the possibility to put a note and a review for each merchant. This fonctionality is new, so not a lot of reviews for the moment. All the merchants pages without promo codes have a noindex on the robot tag. Since july, I have the possibility to use the "title" of each promo code. I can personnalised the promo code. On the same time, to have more content, I have the possibility to add sales or great promos for each merchants, not only promo codes. Affiliate links are created on JS which open a new window (a redirect page with noindex). That's the end of the most important changes on my website. I have a better speed page (/2 since july) because I have optimized my images, CSS, JS... At the end of july, I had health problem and the website has no update until the first days of october. Now, the website is updated every day, but between july and october I have no panda recovery. I have no duplicate content, I try to add the most content I can. So I don't understand why Google Panda penalized me again and again. Some of my competitors have a lot of keyword stuffing (4, 5, 6, ... 10 lines of KS on each merchant pages). Some of them have only affiliate merchants, automatic script to put coupons on websites), few "same" websites... I have less than 30% of affiliated merchant, I validate all the coupons or promo manually, I personalized all my coupons... So I don't understand what to do. I will appreciate all help. If you see problems on my wesite or if you know tips to have a panda recovery, I will be very happy to have informations. Many thanks for all. Sincerely, Florent
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Floroger0 -
Someone To Review My Website
I want someone to review My Website as I'm tired of doing everything but its not getting ranked, one day its in top 50 and on the very next day it jut gets disappear, Website URL: http://goo.gl/duJPf I'm trying to get my inner pages rank in google, http://goo.gl/Ha1Vm http://goo.gl/913DR Can someone please review it and tell me if m doing something wrong or if m missing something! Please suggest Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AnkitRawat0 -
How would you optimise a news website?
I have been asked for advice on how to optimise a news website whose keywords, almost by definition, change every day according to the articles being written. How would you, for example, do SEO for the NYtimes.com? Great content and subsequent links I'm sure take care of themselves. Just onsite then? If so.... what?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seomasters0