Blog posts outranked for Title a String searches in content...why?
-
Site Pages: When I wrap a page title, or a string of several words in quotes, and GG search, my client's page shows up first. My understanding is that this shows general health of site, and acknowledgement as the original source of the content.
Blog Posts: When I wrap a blog page, or post, title or string of words in quotes, and GG search, Feedblitz, Facebook, and other scraper sites appear before the blog home page, and also the actual blog post. The blog is in a separate directory. Does this suggest that the /blog/ is being penalized or demoted in any way? Does it indicate the /blog/ directory does not have authority?
Both the static site pages, and the blog pages, are using rel=canonical tags.
What causes this, what does it indicate, and how can I fix it?
Thanks,
Greg -
The site is 10 years old, the blog 4 or 5 years old, and has held top positions for extremely competitive keyword phrases such as 'health insurance quotes' and 'individual health insurance'. The site was hit by penguin, a panda, and subsequent pandas. I successfully recovered the site from an 'unnatural links' penalty, which required the removal of a lot of links. The site began to rank for primary keywords, but not great. Top 50. I saw this as an accomplishment.
I hope that helps. I left out details initially because I was hoping someone could be able to tell me if what I am experiencing is indicative of a known issue. Thanks for your help, happy to add more detail.
-
We need more info. A major question is site age. If the /blog directory is fairly new, your results are not atypical. Also if the /blog directory is fairly new and changing the URL wouldn't damage existing SERPs too much, you might try a more descriptive directory name like /location-business type-blog.
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
-
Best way to handle Breadcrumbs for Blog Posts in multiple categories?
The site in question uses Wordpress. They have a Resources section that is broken into two categories (A or B). Underneath each of these categories is 5 or 6 subcategories. The structure looks like this: /p/main-category-a/subcategory/blog-post-name /p/main-category-b/subcategory/blog-post-name All posts have a main category, but other posts often have multiple subcategories while some posts also fall into both main categories. What would be the easiest or most effective way to auto-populate the breadcrumb based on from where the person reached the blog post? So for example, a way to set Home -> Main Category -> Subcategory 1 as the breadcrumb if they reach it from the Subcategory 1 landing page. Or is this not possible and we should just set the breadcrumb manually based on where we feel it best lives? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Alces0 -
Managing Zendesk content, specifically redirecting/retiring content?
We've been using Zendesk to manage support content, and have old/duplicate articles that we'd like to redirect. However, Zendesk doesn't seem to have a solution for this, and the suggestions we've found (some hacky JS) have not worked. I'd like for us to not just delete/hide these articles. Has anyone else successfully navigated retiring/redirecting Zendesk content in an SEO-friendly fashion?
Technical SEO | | KMStrava0 -
Search results indexed
Hi there, is is bad practice in seo to have search results for products indexed? For example a search result of holidays to Ibiza, with lots of deals coming up? its a search query url that would be indexed, with just an image and price per product on the page, with about 10 per page? Any advice appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
My Article Post Title in both the h1 and the h2 are the same. Is this good seo?
I'm seeing a common practice in wordpress themes where the h1 tag for a page has the logo in it, then the h2 would be the title to the article. I've decided to place the title in the h1 dynamically, like this: - Joe's Auto Store where '' is the actual title to the post - the logo is still being used as a background image in the h1... So for example, the page would show this: How install a car battery - Joe's Auto Store I think this is good seo still, but the other issue is that the first, subsequent also has the exact same title because this is the actual post title, which uses the first h2 on the page to display the title. So the code would look like this: - My Company paragraph content text stuff an example would be How install a car battery - Joe's Auto Store How install a car battery At Joe's we teach how to install batteries on site. There are mor...(etc.) Is this an issue since the post title in both the h1 and h2 are nearly the same (except for the company name)? Is this good seo still?
Technical SEO | | johnnydigital0 -
301 redirecting old content from one site to updated content on a different site
I have a client with two websites. Here are some details, sorry I can't be more specific! Their older site -- specific to one product -- has a very high DA and about 75K visits per month, 80% of which comes from search engines. Their newer site -- focused generally on the brand -- is their top priority. The content here is much better. The vast majority of visits are from referrals (mainly social channels and an email newsletter) and direct traffic. Search traffic is relatively low though. I really want to boost search traffic to site #2. And I'd like to piggy back off some of the search traffic from site #1. Here's my question: If a particular article on site #1 (that ranks very well) needs to be updated, what's the risk/reward of updating the content on site #2 instead and 301 redirecting the original post to the newer post on site #2? Part 2: There are dozens of posts on site #1 that can be improved and updated. Is there an extra risk (or diminishing returns) associated with doing this across many posts? Hope this makes sense. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | djreich0 -
Duplicate Content Vs No Content
Hello! A question that has been throw around a lot at our company has been "Is duplicate content better than no content?". We operate a range of online flash game sites, most of which pull their games from a feed, which includes the game description. We have unique content written on the home page of the website, but aside from that, the game descriptions are the only text content on the website. We have been hit by both Panda and Penguin, and are in the process of trying to recover from both. In this effort we are trying to decide whether to remove or keep the game descriptions. I figured the best way to settle the issue would be to ask here. I understand the best solution would be to replace the descriptions with unique content, however, that is a massive task when you've got thousands of games. So if you have to choose between duplicate or no content, which is better for SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Ryan_Phillips0 -
Duplicate content
I have two page, where the second makes a duplicate content from the first Example:www.mysite.com/mypagewww.mysite.com/mysecondpageIf i insert still making duplicate content?Best regards,Wendel
Technical SEO | | peopleinteractive0 -
Duplicate Content Issue
Hi Everyone, I ran into a problem I didn't know I had (Thanks to the seomoz tool) regarding duplicate content. my site is oxford ms homes.net and when I built the site, the web developer used php to build it. After he was done I saw that the URL's looking like this "/blake_listings.php?page=0" and I wanted them like this "/blakes-listings" He changed them with no problem and he did the same with all 300 pages or so that I have on the site. I just found using the crawl diagnostics tool that I have like 3,000 duplicate content issues. Is there an easy fix to this at all or does he have to go in and 301 Redirect EVERY SINGLE URL? Thanks for any help you can give.
Technical SEO | | blake-766240