Help.. there was a html and php version of my home page on my server for about a week. Now lost all rankings!
-
Our home page has disappeared from the Google SERPS completely. It won't even show for a search of our business name although other internal pages appear. Site appears in bing for our keywords but not for our business name.
When I republished the site I got a message saying there was a php and html version of the site on the home page. I deleted this immediately but was then advised by another staff member that they had also got that message the week before but not done anything about it - so I think it was out there for about a week.
Could this be the cause of the ranking drop? We have also done the following:
Checked GWM for robots issue, manual action, crawl errors, blocked URLs - all good. Some crawl errors on other pages relating to broken links. All sorted and marked as fixed.
Checked for duplicate content - redirected non www version of site to www
Checked back links
Removed video from home page that was temporarily unavailable when we did fetch and render
Added canonical tag
Added H1 tag that was missing
Coding checked - all looks good
There has been no change to the content of the page.
We have fetched and rendered and resubmitted for indexing but it's still not coming back in SERPS it did for a short time the other day and then after a couple of days disappeared again Prior to all this it had ranked really well for our most important keywords for years. It's not a new site.
The page is indexed as it comes up when doing a site: search.
Please can anyone help? Nobody seems to have the answer and we don't know what else to do. The site is
NSFW
Main keyword sex toy party
-
Hello again. I have just discovered this URL on a duplicate content checker site...
http://www.aprilnites.com.au/?el.outerHeight({margin:true})/2:el.outerWidth({margin:true})/2)
I have no idea where it has come from or how to get rid of it but it brings up my home page. Can anyone advise on this?
-
Thanks Paul. My first thought was to do a 301 redirect which I did last week on the index page but when the SEO company came out they took it off. They said I was creating a loop or something along those lines. I wasn't 100% sure what they meant. I didn't quite follow. Do you know what they meant? I created it in the same way as other 301 redirects I have on the site and they are all working just fine.
-
I'd strongly recommend changing that to actually redirect the /index.html version. There's no reason for either bots or human visitors to ever visit that URL. (A redirect is a directive, whereas canonical is only a suggestion and will leave the unwanted page in the search index.)
P
-
Hi Paul,
Thanks so much. I have now put a canonical tag on the index page to tell it to go to the home page. All of these things must help. Really appreciate the help from everyone.
-
Your home page is still also reachable under the /index.html version - that should be redirected to the real home page (the bare domain). In addition, the PHP version should probably have been redirected to the real home page, instead of just leaving it to 404, if it had ever been indexed by Google.
These aren't likely to be the primary reason for all versions of the page disappearing from the SERPs entirely, but they need to be fixed and then can be eliminated as a contributing cause.
Hope that helps?
Paul
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
-
May integrating my main category page in the index page improve my ranking of main category keyword?
90% of our sales are made with products in one of our product categories.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
A search for main category keyword returns our root domain index page in google, not the category page.
I was wondering whether integrating the complete main category directly in the index page of the root domain and this way including much more relevant content for this main category keyword may have a positive impact on our google ranking for the main category keyword. Any thoughts?1 -
Our web site lost ranking on google a couple of years ago. We have done lots of work on it but still can not improve our search ranking. Can anyone give us some advise
A couple of years ago the ranking on our site dropped over night. I believe someone working here at the time purchased links about that time. We have been doing lots of work on the site since then to improve it. We can not get our rankings back up on google searches. Can anyone give us some advise about what to do or where to go for some help that we can trust.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD0 -
Does Google still don't index Hashtag Links ? No chance to get a Search Result that leads directly to a section of a page? or to one of numeras Hashtag Pages in a single HTML page?
Does Google still don't index Hashtag Links ? No chance to get a Search Result that leads directly to a section of a page? or to one of numeras Hashtag Pages in a single HTML page? If I have 4 or 5 different hashtag link section pages , consolidated into one HTML Page, no chance to get one of the Hashtag Pages to appear as a search result? like, if under one Single Page Travel Guide I have two essential sections: #Attractions #Visa no chance to direct search queries for Visa directly to the Hashtag Link Section of #Visa? Thanks for any help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Muhammad_Jabali0 -
Will links to a subdomain help it rank?
I have an affiliate subdomain on a larger company's domain. (For example I have: www.victor.company.com on www.company.com). Would working to attain backlinks to the subdomain help it rank or will I just be putting forth my effort and helping the domain rank?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VictorVC0 -
Review of on page SEO - Please help
Hi I am new to SEOmoz but can see a lot of great information going back and forth. I am looking for a little help with the SEO on our site and looking for suggestions on what to do to improve it. We have some pages where we aggregate content from our database such as this: http://www.touristlink.com/india/nagpur/cat/temples.html It would seem that "Temples in Nagpur" is not that competitive of a term but we dont show up until page 4. Any on page suggestions on what we could do to improve? Or any mistakes we are making. All the content on the site is fairly new as in 6 months even though the site has been established and online for a number of years. We have not done any specific linking building for the term "Temples in Nagpur" Any suggestions on the overall structure of the site would also be great. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidUrmann0 -
Does title text of homepage effect ranking of sub pages?
Question is pretty much summed up in the title. I realize that title text on a specific page can effect the ranking of that page. But what I'm getting a feeling of lately is that google uses the title text of your homepage to effect the ranking of the site on a whole. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg1 -
Pages that were ranking now are not?
Hi Folks Noticed something strange just now pages that were ranking on position 10 on Google for searches such as 'ufc trainer kinect best price' at the start of this week are no longer ranking? Is what has happened to the site the famous google dance or sandbox effect as the site only officially went live on Monday If this is the case what is the recommended course of action to get back ranking competitively again? as I have no idea on what has gone wrong as I has always tried to follow best practice from these forums and the SEOMOZ and YOUMOZ articles My site is www.cheapfindergames.com Many Thanks Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ocelot0