My homepage doesn't rank anymore. It's been replaced by irrelevant subpages which rank around 100-200 instead of top 5.
-
Hey guys,
I think I got some kind of penalty for my homepage. I was in top5 for my keywords. Then a few days ago, my homepage stopped ranking for anything except searching for my domain name in Google.
sitename.com/widget-reviews/ previously ranked #3 for "widget reviews"
but now....
sitename.com/widget-training-for-pet-cats/ is ranking #84 for widget reviews instead.Similarly across all my other keywords, irrelevant, wrong pages are ranking.
Did I get some kind of penalty?
-
hello Ian.
Here is my DMCA
To do this, you need to pay the Copyright office to register your choice.
My DMCA agent is a lawyer, but you can do it yourself, if you want,
as long as there is correct address information that can be served with letters or papers.
What this does is give you a small amount of protection. If you are allowing third party submissions of stories or comments or photo uploads or you outsource content creation, you need this. It gives anyone with a complaint against you, a guaranteed way to contact you - but they have to comply with the rules too, so it can't be a frivolous complaint.
-
Thank you for the suggestions - I will implement those today. One thing I don't get though is how to set up a DMCA page. Can you tell me more about that? I researched but I can only find info on how to file dmca complaints etc.
What's a DMCA page?
-
Nope I haven't bought links but I have asked people for links and written them articles in return or done other odd jobs for them. I just checked my links and I see some weird stuff that looks like scraper sites or something, linking to me. Could that cause a homepage to stop ranking at all?
-
Apart from thje usual wordpress problems that would not accoubt for a sudden loss of rankings i could not find anything wrong, I thonk youir problem may lay off page, did you ever buy links?
-
Ian,
The site looks good.
This isn't the problem, but you should redirect index.html and .htm to the home page, as you do with .php
Your home page author and description are both empty
- actually, you have two descriptions - the first one is empty, the second is OK
If you have blogs, remember to set up a DMCA page.
-
You're right Alan. The URL is www.ipage-reviews.com and I must explain that it's much higher quality content than my competitors. It's a relatively new site so it's not my favorite or highest quality of the sites I work on... So please don't just say oh your site is filtered because it's not high quality.... The competing sites make this look like wikipedia...
-
Great idea - I have checked that way, and my main page is not in the results.
I did see that someone I know personally to have done some weird shady things to me before has filed a DMCA notice to have a site removed from results. I checked it out on ChillingEffects.org and it doesn't include details about what site was removed, etc.... Also I checked in my webmaster tools and there is no message about it.
-
Really do need a url to help
-
Ian,
what happens if you search for your keyword, go to the very end of the SERPS and click the link that searches again, but this time allowing the hidden results?
Does your main page appear then, and is it about the same position it used to be?
-
Already done but good idea, thanks! No duplicate content detected by copyscape.
-
I would be checking the SERPs to see if there is duplicated content on a more powerful domain.
-
Hi Keri!
I did have a potential buyer of the site who cursed me out because I didn't accept his lowball price... Maybe something could have happened, but seems unlikely that one person could sabotage my site... I hope.
I haven't received any notices in webmaster tools. In fact this happened to another site of mine as well after I did a redesign. All my rankings disappeared after about 2 weeks of the new design, and instead google started ranking irrelevant subpages instead of the homepage which was in top 3 or #1 for many keywords.
I can confirm that there is no wrong caninical or noindex, etc.
-
Knowing your URL would help, but I can understand if you don't want to share it here (you can create a private question and share it there if you like). Have you checked Google Webmaster Tools for any notices?
Has anyone recently done work on your site, where there might have been an unnoticed change to the code that put in the wrong canonical tag, or added a noindex tag?
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
-
Can't support IE 7,8,9, 10\. Can we redirect them to another page that's optimized for those browsers so that we can have our site work on modern browers while still providing a destination of IE browsers?
Hi, Our site can't support IE 7,8,9, 10. Can we redirect them to another page that's optimized for those browsers so that we can have our site work on modern broswers while still providing a destination of IE browsers? Would their be an SEO penalty? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dspete0 -
Google doesn't index image slideshow
Hi, My articles are indexed and images (full size) via a meta in the body also. But, the images in the slideshow are not indexed, have you any idea? A problem with the JS Example : http://www.parismatch.com/People/Television/Sport-a-la-tele-les-femmes-a-l-abordage-962989 Thank you in advance Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Julien.Ferras0 -
Why isn't the Google change of address tool working for me?
Last night I switched my site from http to https. Both sites are verified in Webmaster Tools but when I try to use the change of address it says- Your account doesn't contain any sites we can use for a change of address. Add and verify the new site, then try again. How do I fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Google Not Seeing My 301's
Good Morning! So I have recently been putting in a LOT of 301's into the .htaccess, no 301 plugins here, and GWMT is still seeing a lot of the pages as soft 404's. I mark them as fixed, but they come back. I will also note, the previous webmaster has ample code in our htaccess which is rewriting our URL structure. I don't know if that is actually having any effect on the issue but I thought I would add that. All fo the 301's are working, Google isn't seeing them. Thanks Guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Should I include www in url, or doesn't it matter?
Hello Mozzers, I was just wondering whether Google prefers www or non www URLs? Or doesn't it matter? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
.net has replaced our .com rankings - what the heck?
We have a www.domain.net that domain forwards to www.domain.com. About 5 days ago, when searching for our brand term, I noticed that www.domain.net took the top position, and most of our www.domain.com rankings have dropped. The www.domain.net is set to forward to www.domain.com. Any ideas what could cause something like this to happen?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crapshoot0 -
I've seen and heard alot about city-specific landing pages for businesses with multiple locations, but what about city-specific landing pages for cities nearby that you aren't actually located in? Is it ok to create landing pages for nearby cities?
I asked here https://www.google.com/moderator/#7/e=adbf4 but figured out ask the Moz Community also! Is it actually best practice to create landing pages for nearby cities if you don't have an actual address there? Even if your target customers are there? For example, If I am in Miami, but have a lot of customers who come from nearby cities like Fort Lauderdale is it okay to create those LP's? I've heard this described as best practice, but I'm beginning to question whether Google sees it that way.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley2 -
Is it possible for a multi doctor practice to have the practice's picture displayed in Google's SERP?
Google now includes pictures of authors in the results of the pages. Therefore, a single practice doctor can include her picture into Google's SERP (http://markup.io/v/dqpyajgz7jkd). How can a multi doctor practice display the practice's picture as opposed to a single doctor? A search for Plastic Surgery Chicago displayed this (query: plastic surgery Chicago) http://markup.io/v/bx3f28ynh4w5. I found one example of a search result showing a picture of both doctors for a multi doctor practice (query: houston texas plastic surgeon). http://markup.io/v/t20gfazxfa6h
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CakeWebsites0