Lost ranking once optimised a page
-
Hello, we're a new member of SEOMOZ and love it but have a problem. Obviously the reason for joining is to learn more about SEO and hopefully get our website ranked a lot better than it currently is.
However, one particular page we've chosen to optimise (based on your tips) has since lost ranking and we can no longer find it in the searches. Is there a reason for this? We've only made the on page changes you suggested and also added more external and internal links so I can't understand why it would no longer be listed in the searches?
I look forward to your reply/feedback.
Many thanks
Peter
-
Hi Ryan,
Looks like you're using Wordpress. To take care of those redirect issue, try the following in your .htaccess file. Test thoroughly on a demo site before going live with this. Wordpress plugins that you're using might have options that reach the same effect, so look into that as well.
RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymLinks#Force trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www.)?mybabyradio.com/$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$
RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.mybabyradio.com/$1/ [R=301,L]
#Redirect non-www to www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mybabyradio.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mybabyradio.com/$1 [R=301,L] -
Hi Peter.
I am not clear what you mean by "swapped around". If the position of the href and rel properties were reversed, that is fine.
As far as which version of your link is used, with or without a trailing slash, that is up to your preference. I tend to think that a trailing slash represents a folder while a lack of a trailing slash represents a page. My preference for the conjunctivitis would be without the trailing slash.
The canonical tag, like most tools, can be used correctly to help your results. If used incorrectly, your results can worsen. It is a very important piece of code along with 301 redirects. I highly recommend taking a bit of time learning about both. My best advice is google "Matt Cutts canonical" and reviewing some of the results, along with "Matt Cutts 301".
-
I had a very similar problem with my own site disappearing from the SERPS, but showing as it should on any other PCs (that I hadn't previously used.)
The problem then related to Google's personalised search. Essentially, I had accidentally deleted my site and prevented it showing up in personalised search - though it still worked in any other browser that wasn't displaying my personalised results. ( See this article: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-test-lets-users-vote-add-and-delete-sites-in-serps/6031/ )
To remove personalised search take a look at: http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=54048
This sounds to be a likely suspect for the issue you are having.
Personalised Search can also provide false results as you are seeing personalised results, based on your search history, activity and preferences, rather than the non-personalised results as they actually appear without personalised bias in the SERPS.
You can see your web history settings here: https://www.google.com/history/
Hope that helps!
-
Any unsafe sites will be removed from the pages. So if you are 15 and there are 2 unsafe sites between 1 and 15 your rank will move up 2 spots to replace the pages that cannot be shown and so your rank will show 13.
-
The canonical do help as they funnel the links to provide rank for the http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis page. If you leave it out and follow Google webmaster tools you will see duplicate content errors showing up with the 4 urls Ryan mentioned highlighted.
-
Hi Ryan, for now, I'm gonna take the canonical tag off as I'm not sure it's right or if they're even helping sites. Just read some horror stories about these tags. Look forward to your reply in due course.
Many thanks
Peter
-
I agree, strange but more testing is required me thinks. In regards to the canonical tag this is what it looks like in our source:- Thinking on shouldn't it look like this
-
Hi Ryan, I've added the canonical tag, but when I've saved it it's swapped around the the way you've listed it. Check it out in the source and let me know what you think? Also, all the URLS should be like this http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis/ How do I do a 301 redirect?
-
You used to see the search result at #13, I see it at 13, and your iphone sees it there as well. I am going to go with the ranking of 13.
The other search results can be affected by numerous factors. Search Safe, your location, which Google search engine is used (uk vs .com vs others), past browsing history, and numerous other factors can be used to adjust the search results. These changes can happen even if you are not logged into Google.
With the above noted, the results are jumping around too much for my taste. I would suggest you perform additional tests, try clearing cache, try other browsers ( ie / chrome ) on the same pc and see what you come up with.
Good luck.
-
Your htags look good to me.
The code for a canonical tag looks like:
The canonical tag can go anywhere within the tag of your page.
Once you decide upon a URL style, be consistent throughout your site. You can decide on www vs non-www, and whether pages should end with a trailing slash.
-
Oh, and as another slant. I've just done a Google search on my iPhone and it appears at number 13. Obviously there's a discrepancy somewhere?
-
Also, just been downstairs and done a search for the term on two separate PC's on a variety of browsers with different IP's than what we use upstairs and our searched term didn't appear in google's searches. Now I'm baffled.
-
Hey Ryan, thanks for the on page assessment above I will narrow down the keyword to 6 in the article. I take it I'm ok with it in the htags. Not sure how to do these canonical tags though. Where do you put them and how do they look?
Now, just gone into IE and seen our listing ranked at number 4. This is getting a bit weird now.
-
Peter, I am using FF and tried private browsing. The result is the same.
Rather then troubleshoot FF, can you try opening up a IE or chrome browser and checking your result?
You can also try FF or any browser from another pc.
-
An additional note. You did a good job of optimizing the page for your keyword. There are a few opportunities for improvement.
1. Add a canonical tag to your page. There are at least 4 URLs which lead to the same page:
http://mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis
http://mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis/
http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis
http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis/
Those are considered 4 separate URLs, each of which can be linked to and divide your page's ranking. Adding a canonical tag will ensure all of your link juice flows to the correct page.
2. Decide which version of your URL is preferred for your site, www or the non-www. Once you decide, add a 301 redirect to enforce your decision, then take a look at your site and ensure all your links use the correct URL.
3. Optimizing is a great idea, but using "conjunctivitis" 24 times on a page goes far past anything needed for a search engine. There is not any exact number but I would say using the term four times should be sufficient, and six times is very safe. I would advise adjusting the content for the best readability and resist the urge to use the keyword at every opportunity.
-
Hi Ryan, very odd. I've just clikced your link and I still can't see it. I use firefox and whenever I want to get a clean search I go into > tools > private browsing. Is there something else that I need to do or plugin I need to use?
Cheers
-
I went to google.co.uk and searched for conjunctivitis and found you at...spot 13 just as you suggested.
If you are not seeing yourself there, perhaps you are using google.com, not google.co.uk? Or perhaps your browser is customizing your results based on other factors?
-
Hi Ryan, this is the URL it currently sits on:- http://www.mybabyradio.com/experts-faq/conjunctivitis/ look forward to your reply.
Oh, the term is "conjunctivitis". Last time I checked it was appearing at number 13 in Google searches in the UK. Now, it's gone, where I haven't a clue. Or even why?
-
If you are willing to offer the URL of this particular page, along with the terms you optimized the page for, I am very willing to help.
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
-
I have recently re-done my website. My buyers guide and my category page are ranking for keywords I'm after.
I have recently re-done my entire site (only a few days). I believe Google is still re-crawling and updating (however, the amount of movement on other searches has been significant). My buyers guide is ranking very high for its intended keywords, as well as high for the keywords of the category page. Both are at the beginning of the second page and I wonder if its dragging me down. What do you think I should do? Is it to early to take action as everything has been completed redone.
Technical SEO | | Code2Chil0 -
Pricing value pages
We have the main pricing page here: https://www.eginnovations.com/product/pricing Then depending on what you click, you'll be taken to the appropriate form on one of these pages: https://www.eginnovations.com/product/request-quote?pricetype=audit https://www.eginnovations.com/product/request-quote?pricetype=saas https://www.eginnovations.com/product/request-quote?pricetype=perpetual https://www.eginnovations.com/product/request-quote?pricetype=subscription How should I handle these? Noindex, follow? Set a canonical? I keep getting notifications that these are duplicate content, but it's just a way to keep the form fills organized. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | eGInnovations1 -
Getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as duplicate pages and duplicate page titles can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what might I be missing?
I am getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as reporting both duplicate pages and duplicate page titles on crawl results, I can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what am I be missing? Has anyone else had a similar issue, how was it corrected?
Technical SEO | | tgwebmaster0 -
I am having an issue with my rankings
I am having an issue with my rankings. I am not sure if there are issues with onpage dup content or with the way wordpress is behaving but there is no reason based upon the sites back link profile that the site shouldn't be ranking well. The site is mesocare.org. If anyone can help it would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | weitzluxenberg0 -
Beating big brands for rankings on Google page 1 post Panda & Penguin
Hi all, so having followed lots of SeoMoz guidelines that we have read here and standard SEO ideas we seem to no longer be able to rank for our core keywords.. and certainly not rank in front of the big brands. We're a small eCommerce company and have historically ranked Google positions 1-4 for many of our keywords (a year or two ago)... but now no where near this any more. We always write unique content for our products of usually around 300-400 words per product we include our keywords in Title, meta description and H1 tags. We include buyers guides and set up articles on the site and generally have a reasonable amount of good quality and always uniquely written content Recently we have concentrated to ensure that page load speed is above average and Google Web Master Tools page speed gives us around 80-90 out of 100 We carry out linking and have always done... in the most recent past this has been weighted towards 'content for links' to gain purely incoming links (although in the early days from 2005 we did swap links with other web masters as well as write and publish on article sites etc). product category pages have an intro piece of text that includes the key phrases for that page and is placed as close to the body tag as possible. From what I understand if you are hit by Panda or Penguin the drop off is invariably over night, but we have not seen this... more of a gradual decline over the last year or two (although there was a bit of a downward blip on Panda update 20). Now we're lucky to be on page 2 for what were our main keywords / phrases such as "portable DVD players" or "portable DVD player"... in front of us in every position is a big national brand.. and certainly on page 1 it is purely only a big brand in every postion. They don't have great info from what we can see for these keywords and certainly don't give as much info as we do. For the phrase "portable DVD player" our portable DVD accessories page ranks better than our actual portable DVD player category page... which we also can't understand? This is our portable DVD category page: http://www.3wisemonkeys.co.uk/portable-dvd-players-car Currently we're starting to produce 2 minute product demo videos for as many of our product detail pages as we can and we plan to host these on something such as Vimeo so that content will be unique to our site (rather than YouTube) in order to give us a different format of unique content on many of our product detail pages to improve rankings (and conversion rates as the same time ideally). So ... I am hoping that some one out there can point us in the right direction and shed some light on our declining positions. Are we doing or have done something wrong... or is it in these post Panda / Penguin days extremely difficult for a small business to beat the big brands as Google believes these are what every one wants to see when shopping? Thanks for any comments and / or help.
Technical SEO | | jasef0 -
Whats happened to my rankings
Hey everyone, I hope someone might be able to help me figure out what has gone wrong here. I have a website which was slowly growing in rankings. The domain used was a .net However, It is a UK based business so I shifted this to a .co.uk domain and then followed googles advice in webmaster tools for moving address. ie, copy site, verify in GWMT and then 301 the old site. Now the .net had 71 indexed pages out of 73. But after 2 months .co.uk only has 41 out of 73 indexed. At the end of last week I did change the theme on my website although the content / urls have all remained the same. I have gone to check my rankings this morning and the site has totally bombed. Even the own brand name does not ranking in top 10 pages. I have not done an major link building at all yet for the site and any links that are there are all high quality from industry related authority sites. Looking at GWMT the latest links all look ok, nothing spammy but one thing I did notice is that it shows the .net domain providing 193 links via 301and also individually a great deal of the links that point to .net but have shown in .co.uk What I would like to know if have I actually done something wrong? Should I just kill the 301 (i am loathed to do this as a few of the links to this took me a long time to get), after spending a great deal of money developing my site and just starting to see some nice progress in the natural rankings and google has gone and pulled the carpet from under me. I would understand if I was doing something wrong but I have made strenuous efforts to ensure the linking on this site is whiter that white. Oh, I have had no warnings in my messages at all. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Technical SEO | | easyrider20 -
Not ranking well in Google
Hi, I am new to Seomoz,I have some little doubts regarding <title>tag.</p> <p>Can i target 3 words in the title tag. Currently i am on top for one keyword, and i cant get the rest two in top positions. Here is my website, can anyone review my site please.</p> <p>xxx(dot)ridpiles(dot)com with keyword hemorrhoids treatment</p> <p>I have good amount of backlinks, but still something i am missing. I have 100% unique content.</p> <p> </p> <p>Regards</p></title>
Technical SEO | | Dexter22387874870 -
Why sudden change in rankings?
I have been working on a domain for site which has only been up for a few months. I have mainly been working on building trust and authority for the site, with only a few links to my keyword phrases, which I was saving for the end, and concentrating on good quality non-spammy type links. It was progressing nicely until last weekend when I went from the first page on Google to the 3rd and 4th pages. Was there some kind of update?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0