Pages not ranking - Linkbuilding Question
-
It has been about 3 months since we made some new pages, with new, unique copy, but alot of pages (even though they have been indexed) are not ranking in the SERPS I tested it by taking a long snippet of the unique copy form the page and searching for it on Google. Also I checked the ranking using http://arizonawebdevelopment.com/google-page-rank
Which may no be accurate, I know, but would give some indication. The interesting thing was that for the unique copy snippets, sometimes a different page of our site, many times the home page, shows up in the SERP'sSo my questions are:- Is there some issue / penalty / sandbox deal with the pages that are not indexed? How can we check that?
- Or has it just not been enough time?
- Could there be any duplicate copy issue going on? Shouldn't be, as they are all well written, completely unique copy. How can we check that?
- Flickr image details - Some of the pages display the same set of images from flickr. The details (filenames, alt info, titles) are getting pulled form flickr and can be seen on the source code. Its a pretty large block of words, which is the same on multiple pages, and uses alot of keywords. Could this be an issue considered duplication or keyword stuffing, causing this. If you think so , we will remove it right away. And then when do we do to improve re-indexing?
The reason I started this was because we have a few good opportunities right now for links, and I was wondering what pages we should link to and try to build rankings for. I was thinking about pointing one to /cast-bronze-plaques, but the page is not ranking. The home page, obviously is the oldest page, and ranked the best. The cast bronze plaques page is very new.
- Would linking to pages that are not ranking well be a good idea?
- Would it help them to get indexed / ranking?
- Or would it be better to link to the pages that are already indexed / ranking?
- If you link to a page that does not seem to be indexed, will it help the domains link profile? Will the link juice still flow through the site
-
These two pages are similar but definitely not duplicates. I wouldn't worry about that being the issue. The first two answers in this thread have it right, you need to build links internally and externally to these new pages to help them out. You are indexed just fine, just need some link love.
Kate
-
Do I need to re-ask the question, or repost it? Is having SEO MOZ review it like an escalation of the question?
Thanks
-
You are a pro member, so you get two questions per month. Make sure you provide a link to this thread for reference.
-
Thanks Richard - How do I get it to go upto someone at SEOMoz to confirm?
-
Page looks great by the way!
Yes, there is lots of duplicate content here. However, with the other page copy, I would think you would not get penalized.
I must admit, this should go up to someone at SEOmoz to confirm.
-
Hi Richard
Wanted to see if you could see the links, and if you feel the flickr code on those pages is a good idea or not?
Thanks
-
Thanks Richard
www.impactsigns.com/cast-bronze-plaques
compared to
-
Yes, please post a link.
I am going with that as long as there is other content on the page and not simply a redundant pulling of Flickr code, you will fine.
If you are pulling the Flickr code and on that page is just a recompilation of images in a different order, then yes, I would say a duplicate content issue will arise.
I think that answered you question?
-
Richard
Thanks for your reply. It all makes sense. Was wondering if you coudl give me some detial about #4 (Flickr code showing) as I wwant to be sure I was clear, and what we are doing is not harming us.
- So even though the images are used on multiple pages, and the code is pulling the alt tags, captions, and titles (this has actually helped us rank for some longer tail kw, and have alot of images show up in image search which is good for us) and there are alot of KW in the code block, it would not penalize us in any way?
- I know there is not reallu a duplicate content penalty per se, and more of a filter, so for each query G can choose which of our "duplicated" page is most relevant. Would this be the same here?
- We have very well written, persuasize, and KW balanced on page copy, but if you look at the source code, the % of words taken up by the flick images infor is so large compared to our sales copy. Woudl this be drowning out the kw in the sales copy?
- Could I post a coupel URLS?
Thanks
Shabbir
-
Wow, I think you used up all your Q&A points on this post alone : )
-
No
-
Could be, but probably not
-
doubt it.
-
No
1a) Yes, very much so. Link to it, blog it, tweet it, and post on Facebook and other social sites
2a) Yes
- Yes
- Make sure the page is listed in the site XML and the new XML is uploaded to Google Webmaster.
- Be sure to link to this page from strong pages on your site, or blog.
- Get outside pages linking to this page.
- Blog it, tweet it, Facebook it, etc.
I hope that helps.
-
-
I guess it really comes down to what key phrase you are trying to rank, adding new pages with unique copy doesn't mean they will rank automatically, apart from onsite factors, you need to look into external factors as well, this includes building links to the new pages or taking advantage of social signals (if this applies to your industry).
To see whether there is any duplicate copy issue, I recommend using this http://www.copyscape.com, you can check whether there are any duplicate copy floating around on the net.
In regards to the flickr images, it really depends on the alt tag, how they describe the images, I don't think there is a problem using the same images on different pages with the same alt tags but if alt tags are all keywords, that might be a problem.
In regards to link building, my recommendation is to link to the page that would benefit users the most because apart from getting traffic in, I look into getting them to the most useful page to get them to convert, and I believe Google likes this more than just ranking the homepage. So if you find the "not-ranking" page beneficial to users, I would link to it and it will help get them indexed/ranking. One other thing you need to look into is the quality of the link, make sure it's relevant to your industry, because if they are just random links, Google might not pass value at all.
Hope this helps
-
That is a whole lot of questions so let me do my best to sum it up for you.
Your new pages are not ranking because new pages don't just rank. The quality of your content helps Google know what phrases to rank your pages for. The links to that page determine its relevance and authority, or how high it will rank for those phrases.
Putting up new content just because does not guarantee any rankings. Are there internal links to these pages? Are they in your sitemap? Do they have any external inbound links coming to them?
Make sure you have internal links to these pages as well as external links to them. Make sure the content is more than just original and well written- it has to be optimized. Make sure your title tags are all unique and keyword rich. These types of basic SEO practices should be followed first and foremost. Then if nothing is ranking like you think it should after 3 months, you can look at other things.
I would imagine that if they have been indexed but aren't ranking that they just need some optimizing and some link juice. That tends to get pages ranked pretty well.
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
-
How to rank 1 page for multiple keywords in the new way
Hi There It has been a little while since I was involved with KW's in earnest. 1.5 years ago and beyond I did really well with SEO. I'm not in a hugely competitive market but we found our keywords, we wrote great web pages for 1,2,3 keywords and when we found more great keywords that we built a new page to rank for. For example: One big hitting keyword was "Rugged PDA", we created a category page for Rugged PDA's. Another was "Rugged Handheld" so we had a new page for that. We then long tailed "semi rugged PDA", "waterproof rugged PDA" etc etc and built sub category pages. We were legit, did lots of content marketing, ran a blog tweeted etc and we did really well to be honest. However these days it's not working, One of Rand's whiteboard sessions stated that you need to build bigger topic based pages that delivered on more keywords (The one about shoes!). This is great as we love that idea as we can have 1 big category page that offers great value to the visitor, however I am struggling to work out how we target a bigger list of keywords to the one page or to fewer pages. To underline this the MOZ page rankers also still seem to work in the same way where they expect 1 or 2 KW's per page to get A ranks to them, so I'm confused!! For example Rugged PDA is an old term, Google trends is showing that it's glory days are over and we know that the term "Rugged Smartphone" is the one to use as we all use smartphones not PDAs these days. However we also see a lot about Rugged + Phone, Mobile, Cell, Handheld, tablet, device, phablet... all relevant to one big category page. So I run these KW's through google search to see if the same pages come up as a test to see if Google thinks they all mean the same, I get a few, but not much overlap. How do we therefore have 1 page that talks about all kinds of great stuff about the "Rugged smartphone" but one that also targets rugged handheld, rugged android device etc etc? I've spent 2 days catching up, i'm none the wiser on this specific element but i'm sure I am just missing one key element of common sense here and any help is very much appreciated. Regards Dave
Technical SEO | | Raptor-crew0 -
Contact Page
I'm currently designing a new website for my wife, who just started her own wedding/engagement photography business. I'm trying to build it as SEO friendly as possible, but she brought up an idea that she likes that I've never tried before. Typically on all the websites I've ever built, I've had a dedicated contact page that has the typical contact form. Because that contact form on a wedding photographers website is almost as important as selling a product on an e-commerce site, she brought up the possibility of putting the contact form in the footer site-wide (minus maybe the homepage) rather than having a dedicated contact page. And in the navigation, where you have links such as "Home", "Portfolio", "About", "Prices", "Contact", etc. the "Contact" navigation item would transfer the user to the bottom of the page they are on rather than a new page. Any thoughts on which way would be better for a case like this, and any positives/negatives for doing it each way? One thought I had is that if it's in the footer rather than it's own page, it would lose it's search-ability as it's technically duplicate content on each page. But then again, that's what a footer is. Thanks, Mickey
Technical SEO | | shannmg10 -
All rankings lost from page 1 to 5+
Hello, all my keywords are dropped on Google from 1. st page to page 5+. Is these Penguin 3.0 problem? What to do now? Register new domain and move website? I loose 1 year:( Details: PA: 53 DA:46 (backlinks from 110 domains), domain old: 3 years I didnt recived any message in Google webmaster. Sorry for my english. Please help me! Thank you!
Technical SEO | | cerar0 -
After fixing duplicate pages problem - keyword rankings have fallen off a cliff!
We have recently signed up to SEOMOZ and found that our site had over 2,500 duplicated pages. We reported it the the web designer and they found links on the website to an old prototype version of the website and so they did a SQL run to get rid of them. Doing this got rid of 90% of them. However, this morning, moz has just done another crawl of our website and our keyword rankings have fallen off a cliff. Particularly, important one that we were at position 1 for. We are now on the fifth page. Can anyone shed any light on it? Will this be temporary? Thanks Stuart
Technical SEO | | Stuart260 -
How does this rank? - a page that is 301 redirected
How does a 301ed page rank in google? In google I searched for" ikea.ca" which is set up as a 301 redirect to www.ikea.com/ca/en and was surprised to see the url --> www.ikea.ca actually ranking. IKEA Canada <cite>ikea.ca/</cite>IKEA Featuring Scandinavian modern style furniture and accessories. Include storage options, lighting, decor products, kitchen appliances and beds. Bedroom - Kitchen - Living Room - IKEA North York
Technical SEO | | Morris770 -
Question for experts - a website is ranking defying all google rules
Hi all Today I saw a strange result in google's search page. When I typed a keyword: Rezeptfrei bestellen, it gave me results like number 1- http://www.rezeptfreibestellen.com/ If I check this site in opensiteexplorer, this is nothing but a new site with no backlinks, or any other offpage work. Onpage work is simply keyword stuffing and domain name is also same as keyword. Now why google ranked this website above others? Where are google EMD and Penguin, Panda? Amit
Technical SEO | | expertvillagemedia1 -
Two different page authority ranks for the same page
I happened to notice that trophycentral.com and www.trophycentral.com have two different page ranks even though there is a 301 redirect. Should I be concerned? http://trophycentral.com Page Authority: 47 Domain Authority: 42 http://www.trophycentral.com Page Authority: 51 Domain Authority: 42 Thanks!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Frequent updating of pages on website to rank better
Will updating each page often for example everyday or few days, rank the page and/or website better in google. The reason I ask is that I made 18 websites about three months ago and the traffic initially was alot higher and has fallen little by little thru the 3 months. Also how well my pages rank has also fallen. I just put out the websites, have done nothing else. No linking, etc. No updates. It is evident that without new links coming in, the website will fall in rank ie., link aquistion velocity But my question is if I update the pages and change content frequently will this improve my position in google and other search engines. The traffic on websites over the three months if graphed sort of looks like a stair case going down.
Technical SEO | | mickey110