Different pages ranking for search terms, often irrelevant.
-
Website: www.templatemonster.com
Problem: Positions dropped while pages which were ranking previously disappeared from top 100 and now different - often completely irrelevant - pages are ranking.Examples:
Search term: Joomla Templates
Previous Position: 8
Current Position: 35
Previously Ranked Page: http://www.templatemonster.com/joomla-templates.php
Currently Ranked Page: http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.phpSimilar situation with the following search terms: virtuemart templates, virtuemart themes, prestashop templates, prestashop themes, magento themes, zencart templates, zencart themes, zen cart templates, zen cart themes
When: according to the Google Analytics (drop in visitors stats) this happened on July, 2nd
Preconditions: we had 45 minutes downtime on July 2-nd - but could this 45 mins have had such disastrous results?
No redirects or canonical URL were used which could lead to such change of ranking page.
No changes in the site's informational structure and design.
In webmaster tools (inbound links report) we saw a website yesterday which had over 800,000 links pointing to our domain - http://moviebestwatch.com/ - and today this site is NOT found in Webmaster Tools report! Also, site is down, domain is quite new (how could it have possibly developed 800,000 pages in such a short time?) and whois is privacy protected. Is this some dirty trick from competitors - could it have possibly influenced our positions?Still, what I completely fail to understand - how could a page like http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php be the top ranking page for 'Joomla templates' if there is:
- not a single mention of the word 'Joomla' on the page (or source code), i.e. the page is completely irrelevant to the search term
- not a single link with 'Joomla templates' anchor text pointing to that page, neither external nor internal
PS. No similar changes in other search engines noticed.
Also, the pages in question have been re-spidered July 4th and cache shows the right pages, i.e. it is not that Googlebot has seen logotypes page instead of Joomla templates page.
I checked any possible reason I could think of (see "Preconditions") but still have no clue - what is going on?
-
Thanks Keri, though it still shows as answered to me.
We've submitted a reconsideration request and still waiting for any reaction. The situation hasn't changed yet - still same positions, same wrong pages.
-
Admin note: I changed this question back to unanswered (it automatically changed to answered when Ryan was marked as a good answer) so it can get some more visibility and other opinions.
Templatemonster, thanks for such a well-written question with relevant details!
-
Thanks Ryan for your prompt reply. I tend to think now that the only way is to contact Google as I just don't see any apparent reason for such situation as well.
As you said, I'd also be interested to hear if anyone else has a different view on this matter.
-
I looked at your site along with all the details you mentioned including the two pages involved and the moviebestwatch.com. I was unable to locate any apparent reason for the results you are experiencing.
I checked all the unseen factors including ALT text and incoming link anchor text. The logo-templates page is clearly highly associated with "templates" but there was not a single instance of the term Joomla in the html code.
I would suggest contacting Google via the Reconsideration Request tool and ask if your site is under any penalty. I am concerned about this site with 800k links. That would clearly set off alarms and it is unclear how Google's automated system, or any given employee, may have reacted.
If there were no other issues the only step I can recommend is to add a text link to your page footer for "Joomla templates" linking to the correct page. This step normally should not be necessary, but is being suggested as a bandaid to resolve your current issue.
I did a Google site search for your term: joomla templates site:http://www.templatemonster.com/. The correct page appeared as the first result. I would be interested to hear if anyone else has a different view on this matter.
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
-
Does you page need to be unique to rank
What I mean by unique is : Let's imagine I want to rank one "seo ranking factors." In order to compete do I need to have (in terms of design) that is totally different than everything out there or can I rank with a page that is presented in a very similar way than everything out there but with different content. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Inner pages not ranking well
Hi Guys I'm currently working on a website and scratching my head. It seems certain pages of the website rank absolutely fine. The homepage, certain pages on footer and the primary navigation pages are ranking fine. Pages, however, that sit on the inner navigation (e.g 3rd level navigational pages) - do not rank well at all. Looking in webmaster, it is apparent these are fluctuating in and out of the Google index - sometimes they are there - sometimes not. I fully understand issues with Google penalties but I don't believe this is case as other pages are ranking fine. Link building has been done to these pages but to no effect. We have also increased internal links e.g by putting the pages on the footer - but still nothing. One thing that may impact the ranking is possibly the URL structure The website URLs are all www.Example.com/widgets - even if they sit on the 3rd level of the user navigation. Could this be a reason why? Would it help if 3rd level pages had the URL structure www.Example.com/services/widgets ? If anyone can provide help that would be great!!! thanks, Duncan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Ranking on google search
Hello Mozzers Moz On page grader shows A grade for the particular URL,but my page was not ranking on top 100 Google search. Any help is appreciated ,Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sobanadevi0 -
Possible to Improve Domain Authority By Improving Content on Low Page Rank Pages?
My sites domain authority is only 23. The home page has a page authority of 32. My site consists of about 400 pages. The topic of the site is commercial real estate (I am a real estate broker). A number of the sites we compete against have a domain authority of 30-40. Would our overall domain authority improved if we re-wrote the content for several hundred of pages that had the lowest page authority (say 12-15)? Is the overall domain authority derived by an average of the page authority of each page on a domain? Alternatively could we increase domain authority by setting the pages with the lowest page authority to "no index". By the way our domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Should I do different H1 and H2 Tags on Paginated Pages ?
Hi All, I use pagination (Rel=Prev , Rel=Next) and a canconical tag on my paginated pages and also on my View All page to point to my root page (Page 1). My thoughts are am I missing a trick by having the same H1 and H2 tag on each of my paginated pages ? Should I having different ones on say Page 2, 3,4 and view all , to give the Collective Page better SEO . Just wondered what peoples thoughts here were ?. thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
"No index" page still shows in search results and paginated pages shows page 2 in results
I have "no index, follow" on some pages, which I set 2 weeks ago. Today I see one of these pages showing in Google Search Results. I am using rel=next prev on pages, yet Page 2 of a string of pages showed up in results before Page 1. What could be the issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
To land page or not to land page
Hey all, I wish to increase my sites rankings on a variety of keywords within sub categories but I'm unsure where to be spending the time in SEO. Here's an example of the website page structure: General Home Page > Sub Category 1 Home Page
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DPSSeomonkey
> Searching / Results pages
- Sub Category 1
- Sub Category 2
- Sub Category 3
- Sub Category 4 > Sub Category 2 Home Page
> Searching / Results pages
- Sub Category 1
- Sub Category 2
- Sub Category 3
- Sub Category 4 We've newly introduced the Sub Category Home Pages and I was wondering if SEO is best performed on these pages or should landing pages be built, one for each of the 4 sub categories in each section. Those landing pages would have links to the "Searching / Results pages" for that sub category. Thanks!0 -
Are links to on-page content crawled / have any effect on page rank?
Lets say I have a really long article that begins with links to <a name="something">anchors on the same page.</a> <a name="something"></a> <a name="something">E.g.,</a> Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc, allowing the user to scroll down to different content. There are also other links on this page that link to other pages. A few questions: Googlebot arrives on the page. Does it crawl links that point to anchors on the same page? When link juice is divided among all the links on the page, do these links count and page rank is then lost? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anthematic0