Homepage not showing for searches
-
Hi
Looking for a bit advice our client - www.financial-wise.co.uk
We worked with this client on his old website www.mortgage-wise.co.uk we had him ranking for most local searches. The client then re-branded the full company and got another company in to do this, they did him new website www.financial-wise.co.uk, the company then launched the new domain with the old one still showing, some of the content was the same, including homepage.
Anyway the issue im having now is, for certain searches im struggling to get them ranking again and for searches such as financial wise, its inner pages showing instead of the homepage?
I have che checked and homepage is indexed, i have also re-written all the text on the homepage but still having some issue, its almost like the homepage has been penalised
any help would be great?
-
Please let us know if it bounced back after the next Panda! I'm guessing it will.
-
Hi Marie
Thanks for your feedback - it was something that I did think may be related to Panda and was one of the reasons I opened this question.
The homepage was straight copy of the old homepage - the other website design company launched both sites - both where indexed - when I took it back over, I did a 301 right away - I also did address change in webmaster tools and verified the new website that all went through and believe shortly after the old website was then removed from the index.
I hope with next refresh it comes back a bit, strange alot of keywords im working on for homepage are showing in google places but not on the organic serps, but some are.
-
"the company then launched the new domain with the old one still showing, some of the content was the same, including homepage."
There's a good chance that you've got a Panda issue. Here's what I see probably happened:
You launched the new site and it probably started to rank.
The next time Panda refreshed Google said, "Hey! This new site has several pages that are exactly the same as a site that already exists in our index. There's no point in showing this new site to people who search."
Even if the old site is now offline, it can still be in the Google index for a LONG time. If you do nothing, eventually the old pages will drop out and eventually your new site can start showing, but that could take ages.
Did you follow these steps to move to a new domain? http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83105
Now, if you don't want to 301 (for example, if the old site was affected by a linking penalty like Penguin) then do the following:
1. Noindex, nofollow all of the pages of the old site. (It's not enough to just do steps 2&3 in case other search engines have the old site indexed.)
2. Block the old site from search engine crawls via robots.txt
3. Use the Google url removal tool in WMT to tell it to remove the old site from their index.
Then, you'll need to wait until Panda refreshes. The new site should pop up with the rankings of the old. Panda tends to refresh about every 3-6 weeks.
With all of that being said, I see that the old site is no longer in the index. If you've already taken care of totally removing the old site from the index then you simply have to wait until Panda refreshes.
EDIT: I just saw that you did do 301s. This may be more complicated than I first thought. If the 301s weren't in place BEFORE you put the new site online then again, you likely need to wait for Panda. Once the Panda filter gets slapped on your site it doesn't get removed until Panda refreshes.
-
You definitely have a point. Deeper page content is much better than home page content.
-
To Google, though, it's not a random page. It's the page they have selected as the best representation. That's the other way you need to look at it. Are there more links, better content to your deeper page compared to your home page for the selected keywords, could that be part of the reason?
As a user, I rarely like getting the homepage; it's usually pretty generic compared to deeper page content so it gives me a better user experience.
-
Domain Age is also a factor that Google uses. So it's probably because it is a new domain and it needs to "age" a bit. Your old domain was probably older and had a bit more authority than your new domain.
-
I just felt their is something not quite right with regards to homepage - wasnt sure if it was because it was duplicate content before I put the 301 in place
just seems homepage not ranking as good as I think it should - when we did his old website he was ranking top 5 in organic serps (not google places) for most of the keywords
-
It doesn't matter where you are building links. Links aren't the only factor that Google uses to determine relevancy. If one of your inner pages has more keyword prominence for "Financial Wise", then Google will see that this page will provide it's users' with better, more relevant information about Financial Wise, than the home page.
Let's put ourselves in the searchers shoes again... I'm looking for a Mortgage Advisor in the West Lothian area. My first choice will be in Google places because I am looking for a physical business in the area. So Google shows me the areas first.
Now lets say I am looking for actual Mortgage Advice online. If you had optimized your home page to give me advice and your website is the "advisor", then your home page would probably be showing in the pure SERP and not Google Places.
I really hope this makes sense.
P.S If you add "in" to your phrase (Mortgage Advisors in West Lothian) you will see that your home page is ranked because you used the exact keyword.
-
an example without the in - its only showing in google places, other keywords aswell just showing in google places
if you search financial wise aswell few pages showing but not homepage
the homepage is the only place we have been building links to so far
-
The keyword "Mortgage Advisors in West Lothian" is ranking your home page though. I don't see the problem.
Which keywords are the ones that are going to your "inner" pages?
-
the links - articles we have been developing have anchors related to business like
mortgage advisors west lothian etc, some of the searches showing up in google places but not in organic searches
-
Unless you have a very popular brand, you shouldn't be focusing on your brand name (financial wise). You should focus on the services and products you provide like "Mortgage Advisors".
When you put yourself in a searchers shoes, you wouldn't search for Financial Wise. You would probably be looking for "Financial Advice" (blog article?) or "Mortgage Advisors".
The old way of doing SEO is over. You need to cater for your visitors. Ask yourself, "Is this page the kind of content I would be looking for if I searched fro this keyword?". If not then create it into one.
-
a full site 301 has been done, it was the first thing i went ahead and done
but keywords im pusing which are for homepage, are not showing or showing a random page
-
If you haven't done so already, you need to create a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new one.
Google wants to find the most relevant pages to show it's users so those "inner" pages you are seeing are probably the most relevant for the keyword/phrase. It's not a bad thing at all, so don't stress over it.
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
-
Homepage is deindexed in Google
Happened sometime on the 12th or 13th of Feb (is there a way to tell exactly besides referring to GA?).
Technical SEO | | Shinosky
I've been on the Google Webmasters Tools forums trying to nail this down - https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/webmasters/OgpmNCc3IFA/mmtgUilyXUUJ I can only think that Google is viewing this as duplicate content from an internal page for example: http://mudlifeled.com/shop Very frustrating because we were moving up on the first page for some good brand key words and traffic was climbing. Now I've got my hands up and am at a loss to what I can do.0 -
Inurl: search shows results without keyword in URL
Hi there, While doing some research on the indexation status of a client I ran into something unexpected. I have my hypothesis on what might be happing, but would like a second opinion on this. The query 'site:example.org inurl:index.php' returns about 18.000 results. However, when I hover my mouse of these results, no index.php shows up in the URL. So, Google seems to think these (then duplicate content) URLs still exist, but a 301 has changed the actual goal URL? A similar things happens for inurl:page. In fact, all the 'index.php' and 'page' parameters were removed over a year back, so there in fact shouldn't be any of those left in the index by now. The dates next to the search results are 2005, 2008, etc. (i.e. far before 2013). These dates accurately reflect the times these forums topic were created. Long story short: are these ~30.000 'phantom URLs' in the index out of total of ~100.000 indexed pages hurting the search rankings in some way? What do you suggest to get them out? Submitting a 100% coverage sitemap (just a few days back) doesn't seem to have any effect on these phantom results (yet).
Technical SEO | | Theo-NL0 -
Mobile site is not ranking in the mobile search results
I posted last month about problems with a mobile site, which is served from a separate URL (m.mydomain.com) as currently responsive design is not an option. The problem was that the mobile site was being returned in the desktop index along with the desktop site, and the desktop site was being returned in the mobile index instead of the mobile site. I have therefore implemented rel=canonical and rel=alternate as is advised by Google, but this has stopped the desktop site from appearing in the mobile index, but hasn't caused the mobile site to rank instead. What should I do now? One idea I have is to remove the rel=canonical and rel=alternate links so that the desktop site ranks in the mobile index again. There is a redirect in place anyway so when people click on a desktop link from a mobile search, they will still be redirected to the mobile equivalent. I could then set the m.mydomain.com to noindex to stop it from being returned in the desktop results and potentially causing duplicate content issues? What do you think about this as a work around?
Technical SEO | | pugh0 -
What I doing wrong when trying to search for links from external websites to my website
This is just the little frustrating question nothing important but I’m sure somebody will know the answer. In the white board Friday this week Rand suggested at one point that when you’re searching for results links to your website if you put a - followed by site followed by your url like –site:yourwebsite.com you get the results of pages with links on other websites but excluding your own webpages but it just doesn’t work I get no results just an error message, any idea why? If I remove the - I get tons of results but there on my own webpages……….
Technical SEO | | whitbycottages0 -
Incorrect name on search result
Hi, While auditing the website for a new client that i inherited just noticed that when i search for 'hyundai roswell georgia' on Google the dealership name appearing on Google search result is incorrect. The name of the business is Rick Case Hyundai. However, it appears as Rick Case Honda(see attached screenshot). Any recommendation on how to fix this and why is this happening? Regards Neil azJCR.png
Technical SEO | | neildomain0 -
Increase Search Ranking for CEO
Hi guys My company CEO is concerned that when her name is googled pictures of a glamour model appear in the image results area. The glamour model shares a second name with our CEO and this is why the model's images are appearing. I have been asked to rectify this situation. My CEO has a linked in page and twitter account which are underused but no personal page on our company website. I was thinking of buying the url for the CEO's name and optimizing a small site for her name with bio etc and links to twitter, lined in etc. Would this be the best strategy? Thanks Gavin
Technical SEO | | gavinr0 -
Is it Helpful to Add a Dynamic Blog Feed to Your Homepage?
Do you think it helps SEO significantly to add a feed on your homepage that shows a snippet of your latest blog posts? If yes, have you seen any results from doing this?
Technical SEO | | ProjectLabs0 -
Domain authority not showing on root domain?
I was going through our site earlier w/ the mozBar (still learning the tools, new here) and saw the attached image. There were far more links to the subdomain (#s on the left) than the root domain (#s on right). This is strange to me, because we are not using any subdomains. All links point to either our root domain or subfolders off our root domain. Is this hurting our ranking for the root domain? Not sure what's up with this. Zz9j0.jpg
Technical SEO | | askotzko0