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
-
If a page ranks in the wrong country and is redirected, does that problem pass to the new page?
Hi guys, I'm having a weird problem: A new multilingual site was launched about 2 months ago. It has correct hreflang tags and Geo targetting in GSC for every language version. We redirected some relevant pages (with good PA) from another website of our client's. It turned out that the pages were not ranking in the correct country markets (for example, the en-gb page ranking in the USA). The pages from our site seem to have the same problem. Do you think they inherited it due to the redirects? Is it possible that Google will sort things out over some time, given the fact that the new pages have correct hreflangs? Is there stuff we could do to help ranking in the correct country markets?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ParisChildress1 -
Help! Rankings dropping after optimising
I have been using MOZ a lot, in the past I have always been able to optimise a website enough to rank well in my local areas, but lately every time I optimise a website based on MOZ recommendations the rankings are just dropping and dropping... I haven't focused any efforts on backlinks, but a few sites have gone from the first page of SERP to 2nd and continue to drop... I have 2 example sites: https://www.documentmanagementsoftware.com.au/ - optimised for "Document Management Software" - was initially ranked no.7 in google AU, now it is no.16 after my efforts. http://www.tmphysio.com.au/ - optimised for "canberra physiotherapy" - was no.6 now it is dropping to no.9 after 'optimisation' Any help or insights would be extremely helpful as I feel hopeless!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thinkLukeSEO0 -
Help me to understand why this page doesn't rank
Hello everyone. I am trying to understand why most of my website category pages don't show up in the in the first 50 organic results on Google, despite my high website DA and high PA of those pages. We used to rank high a few years ago, not clear why most of those pages have almost completely disappeared. So, just to take one as an example, please, help me to understand why this page doesn't shows up in the first 50 organic search results for the keyword "cello sheet music": http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Cello.html I really can't explain why, unless we are under some sort of "penalization" or similar (a curse?!)... I have analyzed any possible metric, and can't find a logical explanation. Looking forward for your thoughts guys! All the best, Fab.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Help With This Page
This is page - http://www.kempruge.com/location/tampa/tampa-personal-injury-legal-attorneys/ - is the most important one to my business, and I can't seem to get it to rank higher. It has the second highest authority and links, second only to my homepage (though none are all that impressive) but it is just buried in the SERPs. Granted, I know Tampa Personal Injury Attorney is the hardest keyword for us to rank for, but there must be some way to improve this. I know getting high quality links is an appropriate answer, but I'm looking for anything I can do solely on my end to improve it. However, if anyone has some ways to make the page more linkable, I'm all ears! Please, if you have a second to take a look, I'd appreciate any and all feedback. Thanks, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Is my landing page "over-optimized"? Please help
Hello out there My website www.painterdublin.com and www.tilers-dublin.com were heavily hit by google panda update on 27.9.2012 and EMD update few days after. I lost about 70% of the traffic mainly from combination of the keywords from my domain name (painter dublin and tilers dublin) and never managed to recover from it. I am wondering if I should also concentrate on rewriting the content of both home landing pages in the terms of "KEYWORD DENSITY". Do you think my content is "OVER OPTIMIZED" for my main keywords? (painter dublin, tilers-dublin). What is the correct use? Is there any tool to guide me? I am aware I am using those terms quite often. I don't want to start deleting those terms before I know the right way to do it. Is there anybody willing to have a look at my sites and give me advice please? kind regards Jaro
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jarik0 -
Getting individual website pages to rank for their targeted terms instead of just the home page
Hi Everyone, There is a pattern which I have noticed when trying to get individual pages to rank for the allocated targeted terms when I execute an SEO campaign and would been keen on anyones thoughts on how they have effectively addressed this. Let me try and explain this by going through an example: Let's say I am a business coach and already have a website where it includes several of my different coaching services. Now for this SEO campaign, I'm looking to improve exposure for the clients "business coaching" services. I have a quick look at analytics and rankings and notice that the website already ranks fairly well for that term but from the home page and not the service page. I go through the usual process of optimising the site (on-page - content, meta data, internal linking) as well as a linkbuilding campaign throughout the next couple of month's, however this results in either just the home page improving or the business page does improve, but the homepage's existing ranking has suffered, therefore not benefiting the site overall. My question: If a term already ranks or receives a decent amount of traffic from the home page and not from the page that its supposed to, why do you think its the case and what would you be your approach to try shift the traffic to the individual page, without impacting the site too much?. Note: To add the home page keyword target term would have been updated? Thanks, Vahe
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vahe.Arabian0 -
How Do I Create Multiple Pages In HTML Sitemap?
I'm working on an html sitemap for our ecommerce site and want to limit the links on each page to less than 100. I've created an article for the initial page, but what is the proper way to go to the next page? Do I create another article page (and so on and so on) until I have the sitemap completed? If so, how do I link from one page to the next? Would my on page text read: "sitemap continued" with anchor text on the link "sitemap page 2.."? It seems like all the sitemaps I've seen just fill one page with links and very little regard for "link saturation" and continuous pages. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
High Ranking Site with tons of junk on the server
Hey All, So to make a long story short, we own a site that has been passed through many hand and many strategies. We are in the financial field and rank high for many relevant search terms. My job is now to audit/optimize and purge out site of the garbage that has collected over the years (since 2002). During the audit I have found many issues, fized them, but I am not sure own how to proceed with the follwing issues. Any advice to solve the following would be greatly appreciated! 9932 orphan files - does just removing them affect my SEO.. I like a clean house, can I somehow use them to my benefit? Hundreds of 404s with many external "follow" links that we are no longer getting juice from 8 Sitelinks in webmaster tools, but only 4 show in our search I am straight n00b so sorry if this is 101 for anyone you but your input would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deuce1s0