Poor Google.co.uk ranking for a UK based .net, but great Google.com
-
I run an extremely popular news & community website at http://www.onedirection.net, but we're having a few ranking issues in Google.co.uk.
The site gets most of its traffic from the USA which isnt a bad thing - but for our key term "one direction", we currently don't rank at all on Google.co.uk.
The site is located on a server based in Manchester, UK, and we used to rank very well earlier this year - fluttering about in position 5-7 most of the time.
However earlier this year, around July, we started to fall down to page 2 or 3, and at the start of this month we don't rank at all for "one direction" on Google.co.uk. On Google.com however we're very strong, always on page one.
We're definitely indexed on .co.uk, just not for main search term - which I find a bit frustrating.
All the content on our site is unique, and we write 2-4 stories every day. We have an active forum too, so a lot of our content is user-generated. We've never had any "unnatural link building" messages in Webmaster Tools, and our link profile looks fine to me.
Do we just need more .co.uk links, or are we being penalised for something? (I can't imagine what though). It certainly seems that way though.
Another site, "www.onedirection.co.uk" which is never updated and has a blatant ad for something completely unrelated on its homepage, ranks above us at the moment- which I find quite frankly appalling as our site is pretty much regarded as the worlds most popular One Direction news and fan site.
We've spent the last few months improving the page-load times of our site, and we've reduced any unneccesary internal linking on the site. Approx 2 months ago we launched a new forum on the site, 301'ing all the old forum links to the new one, so that could have had an impact on rankings - but we'd expect to see an impact on Google.com as well if this was an issue.
We definitely feel that we should be ranking higher on Google.co.uk.
Does anyone have any ideas what the iproblems could be?
Cheers,
Chris.
-
"the US rankings are still very strong, so for any Penguin penalisation wouldnt it be applied equally across all indexes?"
I'm not sure - I think the updates are usually language based as Google phrases it along the lines of "1% of English language queries will be affected" - but tapshop321 is UK-based so who knows...
"With the explosion of the band, again if this was a a major factor, wouldnt we have dropped equally on Google.com ?"
It's just a hunch but I'd say no, perhaps based on the above, quality of links from either country and potentially hundreds of other factors.
If I was you I'd write occasional guest articles, with a link back to onedirection.net, for other related UK websites - fansites or official sites of similar bands perhaps. I wouldn't bother too much with getting exact match anchor text - if you use your URL you have the match anyway and you don't want your link profile to be too heavily waited towards one phrase, just in case (even though you should naturally get 'one direction' matches). Mix it up a bit if you go ahead, with URL links and phrases like 'one direction fansite'. Even just a mention of One Direction in these articles could help.
Have you interviewed One Direction or similar UK bands? If you could, they're likely to link to the interview on your site.
If you haven't already, perhaps setting up Google+ Authorship would help too.
-
With SEO, you can never be certain. Since I don't have firsthand experience in it, I can't promise anything and neither can anyone else who doesn't(have firsthand experience). However, it never hurts to try. It's all about giving google the correct signals and hoping it picks up on them and it is what it's looking for.
-
I'll take a look at Ahrefs - never used it before, thanks.
Press release might be a good idea. So looking at everything as a whole, the main issue just might be the percentage of .com links compared to .co.uk links?
Chris.
-
We did have a drop in traffic in April from Penguin, but the US rankings are still very strong, so for any Penguin penalisation wouldnt it be applied equally across all indexes? Ah, well spotted on that site - we'll get that link removed straight away - in fact I thought that was already gone.
With the explosion of the band, again if this was a a major factor, wouldnt we have dropped equally on Google.com ?
Thanks for your help.
-
I personally prefer Ahrefs due to the more frequently updated and larger sized index, plus the interface and graphs are great.
If they have only dropped on google.co.uk, while I don't have personal experience with it and it's just theoretical hear-say and common sense, google has been moving in a direction to personalize search results even more, in which case it might be explained by your small percentage of backlinks from UK websites. (https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/subdomains/onedirection.net)
You can do a press release targeted to UK, and see if that makes any difference. Make the Press Release LSI related to one direction, UK, and have your website mentioned in there, preferably in a link and in a sentence containing UK.
-
That could be an issue. Was it targeted to the UK before?
Looking further into it, the Penguin updates throughout the year (the first in April) don't match directly with the timing of drops you mentioned, but some of your "one direction" exact match anchor text links could have been devalued. The site-wide footer link here for example, on a completely unrelated website (that's a big no-no in Google's eyes): http://www.tapshop321.com/blog/
How about the explosion in popularity of the band? Your Domain and Page Authority is lower than most of the results on the first 3 pages. This is worldwide but illustrates the point - there will be a lot more competition from other sites now: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=one%20direction&cmpt=q
-
Hi Bernita,
Rankings for other keywords have also dropped too, only on Google.co.uk though.
Did you look at this in OpenSite Explorer? We did remove a number of site-wide links that we thought might be causing a problem, and these were taken off about 3 months ago.
Wouldn't this also effect Google.com rankings though? This is what is confusing us.
-
Hi Alex,
Yes the site is registered on Webmaster Tools, and no it doesnt have any geo-targeting set. We did experiment with this a few months back, but it has been reset to nothing for the last 2 months.
We definitely don't want to lose US traffic.
Chris.
-
Did your rankings just start falling for "one direction" or related keywords as well?
I've noticed recently that google has started "penalizing" websites for specific keywords only, leaving the remaining keywords untouched.
I took a quick peek and your backlinks for "one direction" at a domain level are higher than "onedirection.net". I'd try and fix that by getting the anchors changed or building new links.
-
Is the site registered with Google Webmaster Tools? If so, is it geo-targeted to a particular country? Do you have links from other UK sites? Do you have a physical UK address you could list as a contact on the site?
Be aware you might lose some US traffic if you do decide to change/set a location, though you can still target a particular country and rank well in others.
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
-
How i rank in Latin America and Spain?
Hi everyone! I need to rank my site with Spanish content in Latin America and Spain. Do I choose a neutral Spanish to try to rank in every country or make content for each country? If you choose a neutral Spanish, which is the most indicated (Spain, Colombia, Mexico, other)?
International SEO | | Ewerton.RD0 -
.com versus local domains
Hi all, One of my clients has local domain websites in various parts of the world (co.uk etc. etc.) and there has always been a discussion about where a move from local domain (the current set-up) to a targeted .com domain (i.e. .com/uk) would benefit from a SEO perspective. The main reasoning (seo-wise) that keeps coming up is that there'd only be one domain to link to which would help with link juice being passed around. Any thoughts as whether this would actually be the case or if this possible benefit would be outweighed by other cons? Recent moves (local to .com) from a few websites (the Guardian newspaper in the UK being the most recent one off the top of my head) has made me start thinking about it again! Diana
International SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
Multiple Regional Domains - such as .co.uk / .de etc for one brand
Hello, We are in the process of building up our version 2 for our site, currently we have only one domain (i.e. xxxxx.com). Our target audience is distributed among various regions and speak different languages, we would like to know which will benefit us more: a) by having one root domain and then having folders based on automatic IP detection, for example the customer opening a website in Japan would see the domain as: www.xxxx.com/jp. B) or is it better to have different domains so in the above case it will be www.xxxx.co.jp. The content on the site will be different based on the regional demand, so of course the language will be Japanese and the content will also be aligned with the Japanese community. We plan to start with 5 different markets (UK/US/AU, Japan, China, Germany, Spanish speaking countries). We would appreciate if you can suggest us the best route to achieve the best results. Thank you, SK
International SEO | | sidkumar0 -
Recent Google Link Scheme Updated ? What's Your Reaction against Link Building, Link Exchanging ?
Many Bloggers and Webmasters are upset over this !
International SEO | | Esaky
Recent Google Link Scheme Updated ? What's Your Reaction against Link Building, Link Exchanging ? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en What will you Do, if we are good at traffic to our blog and advertiser link will be no-follow - will they accept it ! and guest post also. They need a do-follow link back to their blog or website they hired for !0 -
301 redirect .com to .nl
Hi guys, We have two job websites: one international job website (.com, PR5) and one Dutch job website (.nl, PR0). We have decided to focus on our Dutch job website and want to 301 redirect the international website to the Dutch website. Will this give us the boost we are hoping for on the Dutch site? Or does a .com redirect to .nl work different than a .nl to .nl redirect for example. We're hoping that the international juice will boost our Dutch website of course. Looking forward to your thoughts!
International SEO | | rodjer0 -
Country specific domains pointing to a .com site
Hello, I am new to seo so please be easy if this happens to be a "silly" question. My company has a .com site. We are expanding into global markets, focusing on specific countries right now. General question: Would I be penalized for duplicate content if I purchased country-specific domains and pointed them to the .com site? Thanks, Jim
International SEO | | jimmer0 -
Ranking local content against English content
Hi SEOMoz, If I have a site that has multiple language selection, how would it be possible for my site with localized content to rank higher than the default/English content? For example, in Google.co.th, my site with English content (http://www.xyz.com/en-us/) ranks higher than the localized content (http://www.xyz.com/th-th/). How is it possible for me to turn things around and ensure that for local markets like Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, China etc the localized content organically ranks higher than the default-English page? Thanks! Steve
International SEO | | sjcbayona-412180 -
Www.google.rs for SERBIA is mising in Engienes
Why you dont have SERBIA in engines for google - www.google.rs You have Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina and Slovenia and Serbia is missing 😞 Best regards kasa
International SEO | | stamparija2