Homepage refusing to show up in Google (rest of pages fine)
-
edit
-
Ah, I was wondering since they may have entirely different pricing based upon who you talk to.
-
SiteLock
-
So, on an invoice, do you or the client pay Incapsula or SiteLock?
-
Exactly, I've been told that these problems surfaced around the time the firewall was put up. I've just removed the timthumb file and I'm working on disavowing the spammy links pointing to us. I'm considering ditching sitelock in the next few days and seeing if that helps at all. We were also looking at Sucuri as a firewall option as well.
-
All of the header checks I've done come back with Incapsula. I don't really want to get much further into that for a number of reasons. But if you're actually paying SiteLock that's pretty interesting.
But you're saying the site ranked for it's brand term, at least, before implementing either SiteLock or Incapsula?
-
This is a huge help. I spent some time yesterday going through the site and updating my links to https where possible. Those don't all appear to have indexed yet. The bit about the timthumb exploit is particularly helpful. My theme lets me disable that, and I can get rid of the timthumb php file. I'm still concerned that sitelock could be exaggerating the problem though, we started having these issues with google around when it was implemented.
-
The site is using Incapsula as a CDN and web application firewall. The site still has a timthumb file. So I wouldn't recommend stepping out from behind that right now.
A wildcard search on the domain yields a lot of spam backlinks. Check ahrefs.
-
The entire site appears to index fine. As Patrick pointed out, it appears some of the pages in the index aren't https. But I don't know when you made the move, so things may be chugging right along.
The issue is ranking. But I know what you mean.
So what we have is (not all bad, per se - just what I see):
- Previously hacked site
- Timthumb file
- Some very spammy links
- HTTPS implemented on unknown date
- Moved to CDN / WAF
- Redirects
No doubt, you're going to have to disavow the bad links. Take down requests are nice and all, and you should note them in your disavow submission, but you don't have to manually contact each individual link/domain. It's not really a fire-and-forget process. You can submit it more than once.
I would bet a shiny nickle the attack/hack exploited the timthumb file. The site still uses it. Stop using it. Find an alternative. All it does is resize images.
The https migration (redirects... etc.) is just a confounding factor.
After you've removed the timthumb file, request a security review. Also consider the site may still have issues from the hack. So fetch as google from Webmaster Tools. If you see anything different than the real page, you still have a problem.
Read a little more about recovering from a hacked site here. I think that's more than likely the core of the problem right now.
-
Let me guess - you're using SiteLock after you were hacked to keep them out?
SiteLock creates this issue frequently (we solved it for another Q&A user about a month ago.)
Disable SiteLock, check your settings are all right in Webmasters Tools and Fetch the page in WMT. Add a link to it on Google+ so it gets recrawled quickly.
I only see 1 backlink to the site from Ahrefs (https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/overview/subdomains?target=www.newstaradhesives.com) and only 2 in Majestic (https://majestic.com/reports/site-explorer?folder=&q=www.newstaradhesives.com)
Very, very low authority & SiteLock - those would be the two I'd start with.
-
It absolutely was very hacked. I'm currently in the process of submitting takedowns manually for those spam posts in google's index. The site has been cleaned up and relaunched since. Could these be harming the indexing of the homepage as well?
-
I think Incapsula is throwing the false noindex tag. But yeah, that's just how Incapsula do. The home page shows just fine with a site: operator.
Judging by the anchor text I see pointed at the site... and the Timthumbs.php file... the site was very very hacked at some point.
Edit: Yep. It was hacked until late last year.
-
Hi Patrick
Thanks for taking a look. If I could ask, where are you seeing this noindex tag and what are you using to see it? I've got my homepage set up in the yoast seo plugin to index and follow, and I had also previously added a into my header just to make sure. My suspicion is that the sitelock firewall installed on our site right now is blocking robots. Does this make any sense?
Thanks again
-
I wanted to attach this image - in my crawl, I am getting a "noindex,nofollow" but your code isn't showing it. I would check with your web development team to see what exactly is happening and how this can be fixed.
-
Hi there
It appears your homepage has a "noindex,nofollow" tag - change this to "index,follow". Make sure this is fixed across the site.
If for some reason that doesn't work (which it will):
Have you checked to see if you have a manual action?
If you have multiple URLs going on with the same content - check your canonical tags and make sure you do a content audit to see if this information can be removed, consolidated, or updated. Your SSL seems to not be configured properly also.
I would also make sure that you do a backlink audit to see if any links can be removed or updated. Also, check your local SEO presence and that everything is on point and consistent. Same with on-site SEO.
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
-
Google Search Console Block
Am new to SEO. My clients site was completed using Yoast premium and then used Google search console to initiate the crawl. Initially setup an http:// property and all seemed good. Then i removed that under search console an created an https:// did the render and it appears google has put a block and placed their own robots.txt file which basically has rendered the site useless. Feedback most appreciated.
Web Design | | BoostMyBiz0 -
Dealing with the impending Google mobile compliance update - is bMobilized any good as a temporary measure?
We've been caught a bit off guard with the upcoming Google mobile compliance issue and received the warnings in webmasters about fixing mobile usability issues. It will still be some time before we can have the site re-coded as responsive. I have stumbled upon a converter tool (which turns any site into one that's mobile friendly) called bMobilized, which essentially turns your site into one that's mobile friendly. Have you used bMobilized? Is it a safe idea to use this service temporarily until our new responsive site is ready in a few months? Do you have any suggestions for temporarily getting around the mobile compliance issue while our new responsive site is being built? Thanks
Web Design | | Martin_S0 -
Dedicated landing pages vs responsive web design
I've been doing some research into web design and page layout as my company is considering a re-design. However, we have come to an argument around responsive webdesign vs SEO. The argument is around me (SEO specialist) arguing that I want dedicated pages for all my content as it's good for SEO since it focuses keywords and content properly, and it still adheres to good user journeys (providing it's done correctly), and my web designer arguing that mobile traffic is on the rise (which it is I know) so we should have more content under 1 URL and use responsive web design so that users can just scroll through content instead of having to keep be direct to different pages. What do I do... I can't find any blogs, questions, or whiteboards that really touches on this topic, so can anyone advise me on whether I should: Create dedicated landing pages for each bit of content which is good for SEO and taking users on a journey around my site OR All content that is relative to a landing page, put all under that one URL (e.g. "About us" may have info on the company, our team, our history, careers) and allow people to scroll down what could be a very long page on any device, but may effect SEO as I can't focus keywords/content under one URL properly, so it may effect rankings. Any advice SEO and user experience whizzes out there?
Web Design | | blackboxideas0 -
Best Practices for home page design for ecommerce website
I know this question is not directly related to SEO, but I figured I have been getting some good help from this forum, so why not? The website is www.vrtack.com. I am looking to redesign the home page. It is an ecommerce website selling equestrian clothing and leather goods. My goals are: 1. Reduce the very high bounce rate and drop-off rate. 2. Fine tune the relevancy of the website towards a handful of keyword phrases. 3. Engage the visitor to create better click-through and to increase the average time spent on the page/site. 4. Page Loading time is of importance. It has to load quickly. I would love to hear some specific suggestions, examples, best practices.
Web Design | | amitramani0 -
Redirecting duplicate pages
For whatever reason, X-cart creates duplicates of our categories and articles so that we have URLs like this www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars
Web Design | | k9byron
www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars/ or http://www.k9electronics.com/articles/anti-bark-collar
http://www.k9electronics.com/articles/anti-bark-collar/ now our SEO guy says that we dont have to redirect these because google is "smart enough" to know they are the same, and that we should "leave it as-is". However, everything I have read online says that google sees this as dupe content and that we should redirect to one or the other / or no /, depending on which most of our internal links already point to, which is with a slash. What should we do? Redirect or leave it as is? Thanks!0 -
Website Blog causes duplicate pages
Hello, I added a blog to my website, which is hosted at weebly. I was told this would drive traffic but I have actually fallen way, way down in Alexa rankings. When I ran a campaign here, the results show over a 100 errors, all to do with the website blog. It states they are duplicate pages and titles. I dont see a way to rename the pages. Am I better off getting rid of the blog? Thanks
Web Design | | Gardengirl0 -
Does page speed worth for SEO?
I always broken my head to try to follow all pagespeed guidelines. I increase my pagespeed significantly, but i didnt saw any effect in my SEO performance. In my keywords, my concorrents are crap on it (I have score of 90 and they are at 60-70).Does google gives importance to it?
Web Design | | Naghirniac0 -
Is it necessary to redirect every Error page (404 or 500) found?
If I have Hundreds of pages with 404 and 500 erros should set up 301 redirects for all of them? Some of the pages have external links, some don't.
Web Design | | jmansd0