PageRank from 5 to N/A
-
Hi there,
I do SEO for .. and it's a great site with all very valuable (and unique) information and resources. It was previously a PageRank 5 but recently (in the past week) it has gone to PR N/A across the entire website.
The website is still being indexed in Google and our rankings are still the same. And although I'm aware PageRank means very little these days, I'm a little concerned this may be the start for a decrease in rankings due to something being wrong on the website.
Have other people seen this?
Would love some input in case you see something that I'm not or what may be causing the issue.
Thank you for you time.
-
Absolutely, would love their insight too. It certainly has me stumped as to why it has happened and I've only give a few potential causes, nothing definite. So would love to see as well!
-
Yes, potentially it could. It always used to be the way that it didn't matter who linked to you, you wouldn't be penalised for it. But that all changed with the Penguin update. Now who links to you, where they link from and how are all very relevant.
I have seen these things sort of "fix themselves" in a few days, but it's a good idea to stay vigilant. If you ever need a hand, just drop me a line.
-
Hi Chris
That's a bit odd to say the least. Normally a loss or PR that dramatic means that Google might be penalising the site - although this normally means it goes to 0, rather than N/A.
You're right in thinking that there are much better metrics out there, but I think this certainly worth investigating. I'd advise you to keep a close eye on your traffic in analytics and your rankings - it may be penalty related. Only briefly looked at your link profile but there does seem to be one or two links that are a bit unnatural (such as this one) - but like I say, haven't checked fully so could just be the exception to the rule.
Has your hosting or domain expired or renewed recently? I've seen PR fall because of that on some occasions. Also, have a look at your webmaster tools for errors - specifically for any crawl errors that may have occurred, like 403s. Check for any spike there. If there is one, it may reoccur, so you'd obviously want to remedy any problem there. You might also want to check your robots.txt hasn't had anything added to it by mistake.
Failing that I can't really think what may have caused your toolbar PR to fall. My advice would be to watch your site very closely over the next week. Hopefully, everything will be fine and the PR may return. Worse case scenario, however, will be a penalty. Look for any sharp traffic or ranking falls. If you have the time, you may want to go through your backlink profile and make a note of any poor quality or suspicious links, just to give you a head-start should you need to remove them.
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
-
Is new created page's pagerank 1 ?
Hey I just want to know,
Technical SEO | | atakala
If I create a web page, is the pagerank of the page would be 1?1 -
<sub>& <sup>tags, any SEO issues?</sup></sub>
Hi - the content on our corporate website is pretty technical, and we include chemical element codes in the text that users would search on (like S02, C02, etc.) A lot of times our engineers request that we list the codes correctly, with a <sub>on the last number. Question - does adding this code into the keyword affect SEO? The code would look like SO<sub>2</sub>.</sub> Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Jenny10 -
Setting title tag with javascript/jquery
Hi there, I'm looking for some advice. I've recently implemented a few jQuery functions which gets specific content from the page and then sets the title and description. See working example here. It seems to work fine but my question I have is whether Google bots can read it and whether it might actually hinder my SEO efforts? Any advice would be really appreciated! Peter
Technical SEO | | peterallen0 -
Duplicate content / title caused by CAPITALS
What is the best way to stop duplicate content warning (and Google classing them as duplicate content), when it is caused by CAPITALS (i.e www.domain.com/Directory & www.domain.com/directory ). I try to always use lower case (unless a place name then i use Capitals for the first letter), but it looks like i have slipped up and got some mixed up and other sites will also be linking to Capitals Thanks Jon
Technical SEO | | jonny5123790 -
Difference between changing sitename.com and sitename.com/ info?
my crawl is showing duplicate content between my sitename.com and sitename.com/ i remember the beginner's guide referencing that these are separate websites - but how do you modify their title info on a wordpress.org blog, and what's the difference between getting to these two sites? also, are there any wordpress.org plugins to mass fix meta descriptions, and not founds, retroactively? i have all in one seo, but not sure how to apply the changes retroactively. a new crawl shows too many to fix manually (89+) missing metas, mostly due to multiple pages on categories, etc. and other time consuming, tedious generations.. any help appreciated, thanks
Technical SEO | | prospects0 -
Thin/Duplicate Content
Hi Guys, So here's the deal, my team and I just acquired a new site using some questionable tactics. Only about 5% of the entire site is actually written by humans the rest of the 40k + (and is increasing by 1-2k auto gen pages a day)pages are all autogen + thin content. I'm trying to convince the powers that be that we cannot continue to do this. Now i'm aware of the issue but my question is what is the best way to deal with this. Should I noindex these pages at the directory level? Should I 301 them to the most relevant section where actual valuable content exists. So far it doesn't seem like Google has caught on to this yet and I want to fix the issue while not raising any more red flags in the process. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DPASeo0 -
Domain Transfer Process / Bulk 301's Using IIS
Hi guys - I am getting ready to do a complete domain transfer from one domain to another completely different domain for a client due to a branding/name change. 2 things - first, I wanted to lay out a summary of my process and see if everyone agrees that its a good approach, and second, my client is using IIS, so I wanted to see if anyone out there knows a bulk tool that can be used to implement 301's on the hundreds of pages that the site contains? I have found the process to redirect each individual page, but over hundreds its a daunting task to look at. The nice thing about the domain transfer is that it is going to be a literal 1:1 transfer, with the only things changing being the logo and the name mentions. Everything else is going to stay exactly the same, for the most part. I will use dummy domain names in the explanation to keep things easy to follow: www.old-domain.com and www.new-domain.com. The client's existing home page has a 5/10 GPR, so of course, transferring Mojo is very important. The process: Clean up existing site 404's, duplicate tags and titles, etc. (good time to clean house). Create identical domain structure tree, changing all URL's (for instance) from www.old-domain.com/freestuff to www.newdomain.com/freestuff. Push several pages to a dev environment to test (dev.new-domain.com). Also, replace all instances of old brand name (images and text) with new brand name. Set up 301 redirects (here is where my IIS question comes in below). Each page will be set up to redirect to the new permanent destination with a 301. TEST a few. Choose lowest traffic time of week (from analytics data) to make the transfer ALL AT ONCE, including pushing new content live to the server for www.new-domain.com and implementing the 301's. As opposed to moving over parts of the site in chunks, moving the site over in one swoop avoids potential duplicate content issues, since the content on the new domain is essentially exactly the same as the old domain. Of course, all of the steps so far would apply to the existing sub-domains as well, IE video.new-domain.com. Check for errors and problems with resolution issues. Check again. Check again. Write to (as many as possible) link partners and inform them of new domain and ask links to be switched (for existing links) and updated (for future links) to the new domain. Even though 301's will redirect link juice, the actual link to the new domain page without the redirect is preferred. Track rank of targeted keywords, overall domain importance and GPR over time to ensure that you re-establish your Mojo quickly. That's it! Ok, so everyone, please give me your feedback on that process!! Secondly, as you can see in the middle of that process, the "implement 301's" section seems easier said than done, especially when you are redirecting each page individually (would take days). So, the question here is, does anyone know of a way to implement bulk 301's for each individual page using IIS? From what I understand, in an Apache environment .htaccess can be used, but I really have not been able to find any info regarding how to do this in bulk using IIS. Any help here would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!!
Technical SEO | | Bandicoot0 -
Should I try to optimize for SEO a site that lives only for 5 days
Hi, we are actually building a new microsite that will live on promo.domain.com. The site will have a promo for about 5 days and will be changed for a new promo after 5 days. Considering that the site www.domain.com has a high autority (67) and is well indexed in search engine, should I try to optimise this site for keywords such as promo "keyword" rebate "keyword" cheap "keyword" even if the site will be optimized for those keywords only for 5 days. We are already doing PPC campaign on these keywords but I am wondering if Google will have the time to rank us in the top 10 results in those 5 days or if I am loosing my time. My other option is to leave the TITLE of this site always the same like Groupon is doing and focus on very generic keywords. Which option do you think is the best?
Technical SEO | | Adviso0