Freshness Index?
-
Hi, I've been a member for a few months but this is my first entry.
I typically build small portal websites to help attract more customers for small business approx. 5-7 pages and very tightly optimized around one primary keyword and 2 secondaries. These are typically very low competition. I do no link building to speak of. I don't keyword stuff or use poorly written content. I know that may be subjective but I believe the content I am using is genuinely useful to the reader.
What I have noticed recently is the sites get ranked quite well to begin with e.g. anywhere from the bottom half of the first page to page 2-3 and they stick for maybe 2-3 weeks, and the client is very happy, they then just vanish. It's not just the Google dance either these sites don't typically come back at all or when they do they are 100+ I was advised this was due to the freshness index but honestly these sites are hardly newsworthy...just wondering if anyone had any ideas?
Many thanks in advance.
-
It's typical for new websites, i have few case's that new website on low competition keywords rank very well for few weeks and then boom! Can't see them in first 100. Bonus at the start
I would do some basic link building, few directories(only high quality), few links from social network and it should help. This can also help you: http://www.seomoz.org/directories
-
Thanks for your reply William, much appreciated.
I do use Word Press but have the option to remove meta which I always do, so there is no page date identification. Interesting you mention pages as opposed to posts, I will definitely try this, thanks again.
-
Congrats on your first post!
As you titled this post, freshness is indeed very important. I am assuming you are using a CMS like WordPress, and if you are using these articles as 'Posts' then freshness/ranking could vary. However, it might be more worth to have them as 'Pages' instead.
This is just if you are using WordPress.
Overall, my advice is to make sure your articles are static pages with no date identification. But if you plan on always posting fresh content, putting dates on them could be helpful as long as you post often.
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
-
URL indexed but not submitted in sitemap, however the URL is in the sitemap
Dear Community, I have the following problem and would be super helpful if you guys would be able to help. Cheers Symptoms : On the search console, Google says that some of our old URLs are indexed but not submitted in sitemap However, those URLs are in the sitemap Also the sitemap as been successfully submitted. No error message Potential explanation : We have an automatic cache clearing process within the company once a day. In the sitemap, we use this as last modification date. Let's imagine url www.example.com/hello was modified last time in 2017. But because the cache is cleared daily, in the sitemap we will have last modified : yesterday, even if the content of the page did not changed since 2017. We have a Z after sitemap time, can it be that the bot does not understands the time format ? We have in the sitemap only http URL. And our HTTPS URLs are not in the sitemap What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ZozoMe0 -
Google not indexing images
Hi there, We have a strange issue at a client website (www.rubbermagazijn.nl). Webpage are indexed by Google but images are not, and have never been since the site went live in '12 (We recently started SEO work on this client). Similar sites like www.damenrubber.nl are being indexed correctly. We have correct robots and sitemap setup and directions. Fetch as google (Search Console) shows all images displayed correctly (despite scripted mouseover on the page) Client doesn't use CDN Search console shows 2k images indexed (out of 18k+) but a site:rubbermagazijn.nl query shows a couple of images from PDF files and some of the thumbnails, but no productimages or category images from homepage. (product page example: http://www.rubbermagazijn.nl/collectie/slangen/olie-benzineslangen/7703_zwart_nbr-oliebestendig-6mm-l-1000mm.html) We've changed the filenames from non-descriptive names to descriptive names, without any result. Descriptive alt texts were added We're at a loss. Has anyone encountered a similar issue before, and do you have any advice? I'd be happy to provide more information if needed. CBqqw
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Adriaan.Multiply0 -
URL Index Removal for Hacked Website - Will this help?
My main question is: How do we remove URLs (links) from Google's index and the 1000s of created 404 errors associated with them after a website was hacked (and now fixed)? The story: A customer came to us for a new website and some SEO. They had an existing website that had been hacked and their previous vendor was non-responsive to address the issue for months. This created THOUSANDS of URLs on their website that were then linked to pornographic and prescription med SPAM sites. Now, Google has 1,205 pages indexed that create 404 errors on the new site. I am confident these links are causing Google to not rank well organically. Additional information: Entirely new website Wordpress site New host Should we be using the "Remove URLs" tool from Google to submit all 1205 of these pages? Do you think it will make a difference? This is down from the 22,500 URLs that existed when we started a few months back. Thank you in advance for any tips or suggestions!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tosten0 -
Date of page first indexed or age of a page?
Hi does anyone know any ways, tools to find when a page was first indexed/cached by Google? I remember a while back, around 2009 i had a firefox plugin which could check this, and gave you a exact date. Maybe this has changed since. I don't remember the plugin. Or any recommendations on finding the age of a page (not domain) for a website? This is for competitor research not my own website. Cheers, Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney0 -
Why is a site no longer being indexed by Google after HTTPS switch?
A client of ours recently had a new site built and made the switch to HTTPS. We made sure to redirect all of the HTTP pages to HTTPS and submitted a new sitemap to Google. GWT says the sitemap was submitted successfully but only 4 pages have been indexed where there should be over 2000. This has led to a plummet of organic traffic and we can't find the issue. Has anyone else had issues/success with doing a HTTPS switch that knows how to fix this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Huge google index with un-relevant pages
Hi, i run a site about sport matches, every match has a page and the pages are generated automatically from the DB. pages are not duplicated, but over time some look a little bit similar. after a match finishes it has no internal links or sitemap entry, but it's reachable by direct URL and continues to be on google index. so over time we have more than 100,000 indexed pages. since past matches have no significance and they're not linked and a match can repeat and it may look like duplicate content....what you suggest us to do: when a match is finished - not linked, but appears on the index and SERP 301 redirect the match Page to the match Category which is a higher hierarchy and is always relevant? use rel=canonical to the match Category do nothing.... *301 redirect will shrink my index status, some say a high index status is good... *is it safe to 301 redirect 100,000 pages at once - wouldn't it look strange to google? *would canonical remove the past matches pages from the index? what do you think? Thanks, Assaf.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stassaf0 -
Should you stop indexing of short lived pages?
In my site there will be a lot of pages that have a short life span of about a week as they are items on sale, should I nofollow the links meaning the site has a fwe hundred pages or allow indexing and have thousands but then have lots of links to pages that do not exist. I would of course if allowing indexing make sure the page links does not error and sends them to a similarly relevant page but which is best for me with the SEarch Engines? I would like to have the option of loads of links with pages of loads of content but not if it is detrimental Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | barney30120 -
Pop Up Pages Being Indexed, Seen As Duplicate Content
I offer users the opportunity to email and embed images from my website. (See this page http://www.andertoons.com/cartoon/6246/ and look under the large image for "Email to a Friend" and "Get Embed HTML" links.) But I'm seeing the ensuing pop-up pages (Ex: http://www.andertoons.com/embed/5231/?KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=370&width=700&modal=true and http://www.andertoons.com/email/6246/?KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=432&width=700&modal=true) showing up in Google. Even worse, I think they're seen as duplicate content. How should I deal with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andertoons0