Oh crap.... Just got de-indexed
-
Hey fam.
So I'm a content creator and halfway SEO for a Locksmith company here in Oregon. As probably a lot of you know, the Locksmith industry is known for being super spammy. This company was no different. In 2009 they had like 50 urls for 5 metros. All ranking on page one or close.
Well, when I came on I helped them clean up this mess and get honest. It's been quite a journey but we have 301'd almost every Url back to their one and only brand domain.
We use wp-engine (whom I love) and we have never had an issue redirecting anything. But last week, we were finally ready to redirect one of their highest ranking domains back to a proper landing page on the main site. Everything looked clean and we were literally ranking number one in that metro.
Then we get this email:
| Hello Meier,
Your SSL/TLS certificate order for locksmithplusincbendor.com had a domain validation error, so we could not successfully set up your certificate for lpibend.
The most common cause for this error is that your domain is not pointed to the correct WP Engine install or IP address. To fix this error and prevent it in the future, we recommend using a CNAME record for your domain instead of an A record.
If you have further questions about configuring your domain, please start a chat in the User Portal and a support tech will be glad to help. |
and the next day we just disappeared from all rankings. I called wp-engine, they said they fixed a problem with the cdn the ssl.
I requested reindexing in search console.
Is there anything else I can do? How long should we expect to be out of the game?
Thank you so much gang, it's pretty embarring to have this happen, I can't even begin to explain how livid they are with me.
-
It depends.
If it was deindexed for many days its possible that rankings will not be exactly the same.
If the time off is not that much it will probably return with no harm.All this taking in consideration that the redirects, https and all that stuff is correctly done.
-
Hi Meier,
I've just googled that site and IT IS INDEXED! Check the attached image.
What bad day you've had. That's a journey none of us SEO's want to have.
Best luck
GR.
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
-
Should I disable the indexing of tags in Wordpress?
Hi, I have a client that is publishing 7 or 8 news articles and posts each month. I am optimising selected posts and I have found that they have been adding a lot of tags (almost like using hashtags) . There are currently 29 posts but already 55 tags, each of which has its own archive page, and all of which are added to the site map to be indexed (https://sykeshome.europe.sykes.com/sitemap_index.xml). I came across an article (https://crunchify.com/better-dont-use-wordpress-tags/) that suggested that tags add no value to SEO ranking, and as a consequence Wordpress tags should not be indexed or included in the sitemap. I haven't been able to find much more reliable information on this topic, so my question is - should I get rid of the tags from this website and make the focus pages, posts and categories (redirecting existing tag pages back to the site home page)? It is a relatively new websites and I am conscious of the fact that category and tag archive pages already substantially outnumber actual content pages (posts and news) - I guess this isn't optimal. I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks wMfojBf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCN-SBWD0 -
Why did Google cache & index a different domain than my own?
We own www.homemenorca.com, a real estate website based in Spain. Pages from this domain are not being indexed: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.homemenorca.com&oq=site%3Awww.homemenorca.com&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58j69i59l2.3504j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8Please notice that the URLs are Home Menorca, but the titles are not Home Menorca, they are Fincas Mantolan, a completely different domain and company: http://www.fincasmantolan.com/. Furthermore, when we look at Google's cache of Home Menorca, we see a different website: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.homemenorca.com%2Fen&oq=cache%3Awww.homemenorca.com%2Fen&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58j69i59.1311j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8We reviewed Google Search Console, Google Fetch, the canonical tags, the XML sitemap, and many more items. Google Search Console accepted our XML sitemap, but is only indexing 5-10% of the pages. Google is fetching and rendering the pages properly. However, we are not seeing the correct content being indexed in Google. We have seen issues with page loading times, loading content longer than 4 seconds, but are unsure why Google would be indexing a different domain.If you have suggestions or thoughts, we would very much appreciate it.Additional Language Issue:When a user searches "Home Menorca" from America or the UK with "English" selected in their browser as their default language, they are given a Spanish result. It seems to have accurate hreflang annotations within the head section on the HTML pages, but it is not working properly. Furthermore, Fincas Mantolan's search result is listed immediately below Home Menorca's Spanish result. We believe that if we fix the issue above, we will also fix the language issue. Please let us know any thoughts or recommendations that can help us. Thank you very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CassG12340 -
Question about getting domain name re-indexed
I recently swapped my domain from www.davescomputers.com to www.computer-help.com . Originally www.computer-help.com was 301 re-directing to www.davescomputers.com ...however my long term goal is to eventually rebrand my business so I decided to utilize the other domain by swapping the main domain. Is consistant blogging the best way to get Google to re-index the entire website? My focus has been quality posts and sharing them with vairus social profiles I created.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidMolnar0 -
Recovering from index problem
Hi all. For a while, we've been working on http://thewilddeckcompany.co.uk/. Everything was going swimmingly, and we had a top 5 ranking for the term 'bird hides' for this page - http://thewilddeckcompany.co.uk/products/bird-hides. Then disaster struck! The client added a link with a faulty parameter in the Joomla back end that caused a bunch of duplicate content issues. Before this happened, all the site's 19 pages were indexed. Now it's just a handful, including the faulty URL (<cite>thewilddeckcompany.co.uk/index.php?id=13</cite>) This shows the issue pretty clearly. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Athewilddeckcompany.co.uk&oq=site%3Athewilddeckcompany.co.uk&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.2178j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 I've removed the link, redirected the bad URL, updated the site map and got some new links pointing at the site to resolve the problem. Yet almost two month later, the bad URL is still showing in the SERPs and the indexing problem is still there. Any ideas? I'm stumped!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Google Sitemap only indexing 50% Is that a problem?
We have about 18,000 pages submitted on our Google Sitemap and only about 9000 of them are indexed. Is this a problem? We have a script that creates a sitemap on a daily basis and it is submitted on a daily basis. Am I better off only doing it once a week? Is this why I never get to the full 18,000 indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Webpages look like they have been de-indexed
Hi there, My webpages seem that they have been de-indexed, I have no page rank anymore for my webpages, my homepage which was a PR4, is now saying N/A, plus lots of my rankings have dropped, what check should I been making to identify that this is the case? Kind Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
How can we get a site reconsidered for Google indexing?
We recently completed a re-design for a site and are having trouble getting it indexed. This site may have been penalized previously. They were having issues getting it ranked and the design was horrible. Any advise on how to get the new site reconsidered to get the rank where it should be? (Yes, Webmaster Tools is all set up with the sitemap linked) Many thanks for any help with this one!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | d25kart0 -
Problem of indexing
Hello, sorry, I'm French and my English is not necessarily correct. I have a problem indexing in Google. Only the home page is referenced: http://bit.ly/yKP4nD. I am looking for several days but I do not understand why. I looked at: The robots.txt file is ok The sitemap, although it is in ASP, is valid with Google No spam, no hidden text I made a request for reconsideration via Google Webmaster Tools and it has no penalties We do not have noindex So I'm stuck and I'd like your opinion. thank you very much A.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | android_lyon0