Homepage Domain not Ranking, only subpages is?
-
What do you think can be causing issues that my main homepage is not showing on search results for the main search terms, only my sub-pages are showing up like the reservations page.
ps. I did not get a manual penalty action email.
Thanks,
-
Thanks guys, I have fixed the problem. and got the Root Domain back on the search results. The issue was over optimization and unnatural anchor text link profile.
We really appreciate the community for all the response.
-
Hi there,
You have two good answers here already from Andy and Dennis. If possible, could you provide examples of the site and the terms for which the internal pages are ranking? Feel free to PM them to me if you would rather they not appear on the thread. This should help me look at whether the internal pages are just more relevant to the queries, or whether it's truly strange that the home page doesn't rank.
Cheers,
Jane
-
Like Andy said, it's hard to really say without seeing it.
From my experience, it's usually just one of these:
1. The sub page is more relevant since your internal linking structure dictates that it is relevant to that keyword (plus your brand authority helps that page, even without links)
2. Something went wrong somewhere, in HTML problems, redirects and of course, overoptimised links (like a lot of domains with blogrolls pointing to the homepage) innocent looking links but they sometimes cause problems.
-
Thanks for the Respond,
The Root Domain/ Homepage was ranking for the the main search term until Feb 9th, then after that the Sub Page was only ranking for the same search term.
1. There is no duplicate titles or pages.
2. The Homepage is indexed, as it still ranking for other search terms, and I also search in google site:www.mysite.com
and still there.
3. There are no canonical issues. everything is Redirect to the Https, and the Https was ranking as for couple months until Feb 9,
4. No duplicated through index.html, default.html
5. 70% of the links are point to the Homepage.
6. Our Anchor Text distribution has only branded keywords, city name and the website, there is no commercial keywords.Thanks
-
There are so many possibilities for this.
Is the content on your sub pages, better matched to the search terms? Does the homepage say more about what you do in a generic way, or is it very targeted?
Do you have duplicate page Titles, or ones that are very similar? This can lead to keyword duplication (cannibalisation).
Is the homepage indexed by Google? It isn't excluded through the Robots file? Are there good links leading through to the sub pages, but the homepage is missing out?
Are there any canonical issues, or does your homepage get duplicated through index.html, default.html, etc.?
Sorry if these are vague, but there really are so many possibilities, it would be hard to guess without seeing it.
-Andy
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
-
Drop in Rankings
Hello Webmasters, My site has incurred a sudden dip in rankings across sections. We conducted an analysis and have observed the following two major issues: Unnatural Links Penalty: Our site was issued an Unnatural Links Penalty on May 23. Basically, we have both 'http' and 'https' versions of our website registered on Webmaster tools. Initially, the warning showed up on the 'http' version and thus we started a cleanup by extracting the linking domains and have also filed a reconsideration request once all the spammy domains were removed and rightly disavowed. Recently, we got another manual action warning on the 'https' version regarding the unnatural links. So we have started with the cleanup activity right away. While analyzing this issue, we came across another major problem regarding the two versions which is our next concern and is mentioned below. https Canonical Issue: For more insights, we went through our site’s content and found that our website is following the below pattern Our 'http' version of the webpages get 301 redirected to the 'https' version. This 'https' version again has a canonical pointing to the 'http' version thus creating a loop. To conclude, I request your valuable learnings and thoughts on the following: Which of these issues are likely to have affected our website’s ranking Which version is likely to be preferred by Google (https or http) in our case
Technical SEO | | Starcom_Search0 -
Rebranding: 404 to homepage?
Hello all!
Technical SEO | | JohnPalmer
I did a rebranding, [Domain A] -> [Domain B]. what to do with all the 404 pages? 1. [Domain A (404)] -> [Domain B (homepage)]?
2. [Domain A (404)] -> [Domain B (404 page + same url) - for example: xixix.com/page/bla What do you think ?0 -
Redirect effecting ranking?
I manage the SEO for several different regions which are also based on the same site e.g. example.com/au, example.com/us The /us site has pretty good rankings and changes I'm making to the site are having an impact. The /au site has really bad rankings, even though much of the content is the same. (The /uk site is also awful but we had an issue with 4,500 duplicate pages which were only resolved last week). Crawl diagnostics are only showing 1 major error for a 404 response, I'm receiving a domain authority of 43 and A grade page ranking for some of our targeted keywords. I could believe that this isn't necessarily going to get us a top 10 rating but I would have thought we would be in the top 50, especially for branded keywords. Could the lack of ranking be to do with how our domain redirects? If you go to example.com.au you are taken to the home page rather than being redirected to example.com/au. Once you head to an internal page the URL changes to example.com/au/page
Technical SEO | | ahyde0 -
Why does my site rank so badly
its my turn to ask the interminable question why does my site rank so badly? site is: marriagerecords.org.uk. it was #1 for 'marriage records' on google for about 6 months. then it was 5th to 10th for about 2 months. now it is nowhere for this phrase and anything else, none of the pages I have written rank for anything. I have spent hours upon hours researching original content and I have got some great backlinks from sites like wrexham.gov.uk and somerset.gov.uk (some dont show in opensiteexplorer yet). im guessing im over-optimizing something but i'd love some concrete fixes if anyone could suggest any. thanks, tom
Technical SEO | | lethal0r0 -
Domains and Hosting Question
I bought hosting for unlimited domains on Godaddy. It's not a dedicated server. It was just $85 a year. I have unlimited latency but a limited amount of "space." I don't know a lot about hosting servers etc... My question is relatively simple. When I go in GoDaddy to my hosting. There is a site that shows up as hosted, and all of the other sites show up under that site in it's directory. If you type the name of the site I bought the hosted package on, then type a forward slash and the name of one of the other sites on the hosting package, you will actually go to the other website. What is this relationship? Is it normal? Does that make all of my websites subdomains of the main site (that I bought the hosting package on)? I don't fully comprehend how this effects everything...
Technical SEO | | JML11790 -
Umlaut in domain
Hi, My client wants to expand it's business to Germany and logically we need a domain name to match. We've found a great one and regsiterd several variants to it. However I just found out that in Germany it is possible (while here it's not) to register a domain with an umlaut. My question is: will google assign more value to: schädlinge.de than schadlinge.de when users search for schädlinge? If yes, how large will the difference be? (I will use an umlaut in the title etc) Kind regards,
Technical SEO | | media-surfer
Jason.0 -
New domain
Hi, I have a domain with no keywords on it, and I´ve been using it for years. Now I bought another domain with the keyword on it. I whant to work on seo for the second domain, with the keyword. What is the better way to work this out? 301? Duplicate de site? redirect in another way?
Technical SEO | | mgfarte0 -
Redirecting an Old Domain
One of my clients has a newish e-commerce website that was just redesigned. Part of this new marketing push is shutting down an old yahoo store. The problem is that this old store's domain has a 10 year old link in DMoz and is there fore in about 200 other directories. Is pointing that old domain at the new website going to be enough to keep all of that link juice flowing?
Technical SEO | | Simple_Machines0