Blog not showing up when searching for exact post/META titles
-
I am working on a blog http://www.possessionista.com which is a very popular fashion blog. It is very well established with a 100% natural link profile and zero spammy stuff. The blog ranks #1 for random fashion terms like "kourtney kardashian cat eye sunglasses" and "emily maynard boots".
The problem I am experiencing is that none of the actual titles of her posts or any of the content in the post results in her blog showing up if searched.
EX: http://www.possessionista.com/2011/10/pippa-middletons-zip-jacket.html
When you search "Pippa Middleton's Zip Jacket" on google her blog is nowhere to be found. Try searching allintitle:"Pippa Middleton's Zip Jacket" and she's nowhere to be found either. Even search "The other day, I met with my friend Kiran for our monthly mutual admiration society" on google and she's nowhere to be found even thoguh this is a unique snippet from her post.
This post is already indexed and cached with the above mentioned details. i've also tested dozens of older posts as well. Same issue.
You can actually do this to see a more clear picture:
Do a google search for: allintitle:Bachelorette Fashion: Episode 2 - Ashley Hebert Brown site:possessionista.com
That will bring up her blog which means google recognizes that the phrase is in her META title. Now do a google search for: allintitle:Bachelorette Fashion: Episode 2 - Ashley Hebert Brown without the site: included. She does not pop up but other people do.
I did find that she had a duplicate title tag for a few weeks, but I've fixed that. Her posts used to pop up #1 when you search the title, but now obviously not. I am kind of at a loss and have tried a bunch of options with no success.
Oh, one other thing is that some people do scrape her content, but only a few like maybe 10 and they've always been doing it even when she used to rank for her own post titles.
Have you guys experienced this issue? Do you have any ideas of how to fix it?
-
This was a panda issue. It's fixed now. We lowered the outbound link count and cleaned up the site as a whole. Traffic is at about 70% of what it was.
-
Have you checked the sitemaps? Are they getting updated as she posts fresh content?
If the site's getting scraped a lot, does she employ canonical tags to claim her stuff?
-
Thanks Ryan. I just updated the meta descriptions to all be unique. I just started working with this blog so we've done no optimization yet besides fixing the duplicate title tag issue.
Webmasters shows no issues except of course the duplicate description tags, 1700 in all.
I've just never seen this before. How can someone rank really well for semi-competitive terms that their posts are about, but you can do searches on their Titles or Exact Text Snippets from their posts and find them on google. It kind of seems like a contradiction.
Any other suggestions?
-
Hey guys, just some more info:
We're talking about a blog here that has a 100% natural link profile, no link building efforts. The blog gets tens of thousands of visits per day from search. It's well established. I'm also a SEO consultant so i know my stuff. I've covered all the basics. This is an advanced question if you know what i mean. Webmasters reveals no issues. Traffic suddenly drop by about 50% 10 days ago. All of the sudden you couldn't search her title and find her even though you could find her doing this two weeks ago before the sudden drop off.
-
It does look like the archived posts get an _archive added to them. It would be better to keep the original URL intact, and not create this separate one in the archive process.
-
That brings up an interesting thought, when you "archive" the blogs does a /archive get added to the url?
-
I did a site:possessionista.com search. For the first several SERP pages, I'm seeing all your archive pages. I had to go to page 15 before I saw any actual posts. I could be wrong, but it looks like the Googlebot favors your archives over your individual posts.
I also did this advanced search: site:possessionista.com pippa middleton - the zip jacket post was #2. So I'd say you are getting crawled and indexed.
For the post in question, the meta description currently reads as: Celebrity Fashion and Style from TV and movies: The Bachelor, Pretty Little Liars, 90210, Glee, Entourage, Lying Game. I doubt it will fix the issue you raise, but it is something that probably ought to be addressed.
Have you claimed the blog in GWT? It's a good place to check to see if there are any major errors that need to be addressed.
-
How does your link profile compare to the ones that are popping up in search?
You mentioned that the Title tag has the phrase, but does it also appear within the body?
How many links are going out from the page?
How many levels from the home page is the blog?
Do you have links pointing at these individual posts?
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 redirect off topic blog posts?
We launched a store on top of a popular blog. The blog had nothing to do with the store. The blog has a lot of backlinks and traffic, but our store is now our primary business. I am concerned that the off topic blog content may be affecting or ability to rank better for the core store business. Should we delete or redirect the old blog content to another website to improve the SEO for our store?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo-mojo1 -
Tool to help find blog / news pages?
Do you guys know of any tools where if I have a list of Url's it can help find blog and news pages and let me know which ones have these.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Good to Internal Link from Old Blog Posts?
I am working on a site which has good amount of content pages & blogposts. All blog posts & content pages have been indexed in google already since a long time. Will this be a good practice if I internally link to new pages from old pages or a few important pages from those old indexed content pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Https://www.mywebsite.com/blog/tag/wolf/ setting tag pages as blog corner stone article?
We do not have enough content rich page to target all of our keywords. Because of that My SEO guy wants to set some corner stone blog articles in order to rank them for certain key words on Google. He is asking me to use the following rule in our article writing(We have blog on our website):
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlirezaHamidian
For example in our articles when we use keyword "wolf", link them to the blog page:
https://www.mywebsite.com/blog/tag/wolf/
It seems like a good idea because in the tag page there are lots of material with the Keyword "wolf" . But the problem is when I search for keyword "wolf" for example on the Google, some other blog pages are ranked higher than this tag page. But he tells me in long run it is a better strategy. Any idea on this?0 -
Can't seem to get traffic back post Panda / Penguin. WHY?
I have done and am doing everything I can think of to bring back lost traffic after the late 2012 updates from google hit us. I just is not working. We had some issues with our out of house web developers which screwed up our site in 2012 and after taking it in house we have Eden doing damage control form months now. We think we have fixed pretty much everything. URL structure filling up with good unique content(under way. Lots still to do) making better category descriptions redesigned homepage. Updated product pages (CMS is holding things back on that part otherwise they would be better. New CMS under construction) started more link building(its a real weak spot on our SEO as far as I can see) audited bad links from dodgy irelavent sites. hired writers to create content and link bait articles. Begun making high quality video's for both YouTube (brand awareness and viral) and on site hosting (link building and conversions) (in the pipeline not online yet). Flattened out site architecture. optimise internal link flow (got this wrong by using nofollows. In the process of thinking of a better way by reducing nun wanted Nav links on page.) i realise its not all done but I have been working ever since the drop in traffic and I'm just seeing no increase at all. I have been asking a few questions on here for the past few days but still can't put my finger on the issue. Am I just impatient and need to wait on the traffic as I am doing all the correct things? Or have I missed something and need to fix it. you anyone would like to have a quick look at my site and see if there is an obvious issue I have missed It would be great as I have been tearing my hair out trying to find the issues with my site. It's www.centralsaddlery.co.uk Criticism would me much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mark_baird0 -
How can this site rank post panda/penguin?
I am doing link building for an adult dating comparison website. One of the main competitors though, having checked their backlink profile have anchor text that is not varied at all. In fact many, many links that are all the same. How can they possibly rank in the post panda/penguin era? In fact they're at number 2! The site is an adult site and it www.f hypen buddy.co.uk if anyone wants to runa backlink check on OSE. Any help greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Quick Survey - How much would you pay for a blog post?
Hi, I would be very grateful if you could answer a short question I have related to a project I am working on - I am trying to build up a bit of market research as to where the market lies with regard to the market rate for blog posting. The answers are pretty subjective as there are other factors in involved but for the purposes of this question, it would be helpful to have simple answers that assume: ASSUMPTIONS:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James77
a/. The blogs/websites are of AVERAGE quality for the domain authority given, and are genuine niche website (with their own full domains) and not sites which are haunted by spammers (ie NOT anyone can post anything sites such as article directories and Squidoo like sites etc, )
b/. The articles are of AVERAGE quality you would associate with a domain of that authority IE the articles would be better as you go up the DA scale as you would expect. Each article contains a couple of links to your target website. **QUESTION:** In $ how much would you pay for an article both **written AND posted** on a website with the following domain authorities? 1/ DA 20 2/. DA 30 4/. DA 40 5/. DA 50 6/. DA 60 7/. DA 70 8/. DA 80 9/. DA 90+ I'll start off with my answers as follows: 1/ DA 20 - $15
2/. DA 30 - $30
4/. DA 40 - $50
5/. DA 50 - $80
6/. DA 60 - $120
7/. DA 70 - $200
8/. DA 80 - $350
9/. DA 90+ - $600 What would you pay?0 -
Local Searches done from outside of local area better than searches from within local area
Here's a strange one: I am working on a site for a local business and targeting local searches. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Various keyword position tools show the site ranking very well for searches like "Anytown Widget Store". Doing the same Google search from a browser in Anytown, the site shows up much lower. So I tried changing the location in Google to other cities, using a variety of browsers and it comes up much higher out of town than in town. I have seen plenty of geographic discrepancies before, but usually they went the other way - searches from the actual local area did slightly better than the same searches done elsewhere, which would make sense. Any thoughts on why this would happen?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nick_Ker0