My homepage doesn't rank anymore. It's been replaced by irrelevant subpages which rank around 100-200 instead of top 5.
-
Hey guys,
I think I got some kind of penalty for my homepage. I was in top5 for my keywords. Then a few days ago, my homepage stopped ranking for anything except searching for my domain name in Google.
sitename.com/widget-reviews/ previously ranked #3 for "widget reviews"
but now....
sitename.com/widget-training-for-pet-cats/ is ranking #84 for widget reviews instead.Similarly across all my other keywords, irrelevant, wrong pages are ranking.
Did I get some kind of penalty?
-
hello Ian.
Here is my DMCA
To do this, you need to pay the Copyright office to register your choice.
My DMCA agent is a lawyer, but you can do it yourself, if you want,
as long as there is correct address information that can be served with letters or papers.
What this does is give you a small amount of protection. If you are allowing third party submissions of stories or comments or photo uploads or you outsource content creation, you need this. It gives anyone with a complaint against you, a guaranteed way to contact you - but they have to comply with the rules too, so it can't be a frivolous complaint.
-
Thank you for the suggestions - I will implement those today. One thing I don't get though is how to set up a DMCA page. Can you tell me more about that? I researched but I can only find info on how to file dmca complaints etc.
What's a DMCA page?
-
Nope I haven't bought links but I have asked people for links and written them articles in return or done other odd jobs for them. I just checked my links and I see some weird stuff that looks like scraper sites or something, linking to me. Could that cause a homepage to stop ranking at all?
-
Apart from thje usual wordpress problems that would not accoubt for a sudden loss of rankings i could not find anything wrong, I thonk youir problem may lay off page, did you ever buy links?
-
Ian,
The site looks good.
This isn't the problem, but you should redirect index.html and .htm to the home page, as you do with .php
Your home page author and description are both empty
- actually, you have two descriptions - the first one is empty, the second is OK
If you have blogs, remember to set up a DMCA page.
-
You're right Alan. The URL is www.ipage-reviews.com and I must explain that it's much higher quality content than my competitors. It's a relatively new site so it's not my favorite or highest quality of the sites I work on... So please don't just say oh your site is filtered because it's not high quality.... The competing sites make this look like wikipedia...
-
Great idea - I have checked that way, and my main page is not in the results.
I did see that someone I know personally to have done some weird shady things to me before has filed a DMCA notice to have a site removed from results. I checked it out on ChillingEffects.org and it doesn't include details about what site was removed, etc.... Also I checked in my webmaster tools and there is no message about it.
-
Really do need a url to help
-
Ian,
what happens if you search for your keyword, go to the very end of the SERPS and click the link that searches again, but this time allowing the hidden results?
Does your main page appear then, and is it about the same position it used to be?
-
Already done but good idea, thanks! No duplicate content detected by copyscape.
-
I would be checking the SERPs to see if there is duplicated content on a more powerful domain.
-
Hi Keri! I did have a potential buyer of the site who cursed me out because I didn't accept his lowball price... Maybe something could have happened, but seems unlikely that one person could sabotage my site... I hope.
I haven't received any notices in webmaster tools. In fact this happened to another site of mine as well after I did a redesign. All my rankings disappeared after about 2 weeks of the new design, and instead google started ranking irrelevant subpages instead of the homepage which was in top 3 or #1 for many keywords.
I can confirm that there is no wrong caninical or noindex, etc.
-
Knowing your URL would help, but I can understand if you don't want to share it here (you can create a private question and share it there if you like). Have you checked Google Webmaster Tools for any notices?
Has anyone recently done work on your site, where there might have been an unnoticed change to the code that put in the wrong canonical tag, or added a noindex tag?
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
-
Google has discovered a URL but won't index it?
Hey all, have a really strange situation I've never encountered before. I launched a new website about 2 months ago. It took an awfully long time to get index, probably 3 weeks. When it did, only the homepage was indexed. I completed the site, all it's pages, made and submitted a sitemap...all about a month ago. The coverage report shows that Google has discovered the URL's but not indexed them. Weirdly, 3 of the pages ARE indexed, but the rest are not. So I have 42 URL's in the coverage report listed as "Excluded" and 39 say "Discovered- currently not indexed." When I inspect any of these URL's, it says "this page is not in the index, but not because of an error." They are listed as crawled - currently not indexed or discovered - currently not indexed. But 3 of them are, and I updated those pages, and now those changes are reflected in Google's index. I have no idea how those 3 made it in while others didn't, or why the crawler came back and indexed the changes but continues to leave the others out. Has anyone seen this before and know what to do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanDeceuster0 -
Why isn't www.devonshiredentalcare.co.uk ranking?
Hi, devonshiredentalcare.co.uk was hit badly by one of Google's algorithm updates due to some prior poor seo (by another company). We took this client on and followed all of Google's guidelines and after a lot of work, managed to lift the penalty. It's been almost a year since the penalty was lifted, but it seems to be impossible to get this website ranking for 'Dentist Glasgow', they are currently page 4 in the SERPs! They have 33 Google reviews, we've built good quality links and citations, they have a 'Grade A' for on page optimisation in moz, we are also about to make the website responsive due to the recent mobilegeddon update. Do you have any further suggestions to help get this website ranking? Thanks in advance, Faye
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dentaldesign0 -
URL Errors in webmaster tools to pages that don't exist?
Hello, for sometime now we have URLs showing up in Google webmaster saying these are 404 errors but don't exist on our website.......but also never have? Heres an example cosmetic-dentistry/28yearold-southport-dentist-wins-best-young-dentist-award/801530293 The root being this goo.gl/vi4N4F Really confused about this? We have recently made our website wordpress? Thanks Ade
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | popcreativeltd0 -
Any reasons why social media properties are ranking higher than the site's own name?
The site below has social media properties and other sites coming up before it's own listing even for the exact search of the site name. Any ideas why this is happening? Link Any input is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO5Team0 -
Why isn't google indexing our site?
Hi, We have majorly redesigned our site. Is is not a big site it is a SaaS site so has the typical structure, Landing, Features, Pricing, Sign Up, Contact Us etc... The main part of the site is after login so out of google's reach. Since the new release a month ago, google has indexed some pages, mainly the blog, which is brand new, it has reindexed a few of the original pages I am guessing this as if I click cached on a site: search it shows the new site. All new pages (of which there are 2) are totally missed. One is HTTP and one HTTPS, does HTTPS make a difference. I have submitted the site via webmaster tools and it says "URL and linked pages submitted to index" but a site: search doesn't bring all the pages? What is going on here please? What are we missing? We just want google to recognise the old site has gone and ALL the new site is here ready and waiting for it. Thanks Andrew
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Studio330 -
Looking for good examples of website's geotargeting
I am looking for some examples of sites that handle their global presence well (geotargeting and languages), ideally from a single .com domain thanks! Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | firstconversion0 -
Do I need to use canonicals if I will be using 301's?
I just took a job about three months and one of the first things I wanted to do was restructure the site. The current structure is solution based but I am moving it toward a product focus. The problem I'm having is the CMS I'm using isn't the greatest (and yes I've brought this up to my CMS provider). It creates multiple URL's for the same page. For example, these two urls are the same page: (note: these aren't the actual urls, I just made them up for demonstration purposes) http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Omnipress
http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/bossman.cmsx (I know this is terrible, and once our contract is up we'll be looking at a different provider) So clearly I need to set up canonical tags for the last two pages that look like this: http://www.omnipress.com/boss-man" /> With the new site restructure, do I need to put a canonical tag on the second page to tell the search engine that it's the same as the first, since I'll be changing the category it's in? For Example: http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/ will become http://www.website.com/home/MEET-OUR-TEAM/team-leaders/boss-man My overall question is, do I need to spend the time to run through our entire site and do canonical tags AND 301 redirects to the new page, or can I just simply redirect both of them to the new page? I hope this makes sense. Your help is greatly appreciated!!0 -
What if you can't navigate naturally to your canonicalized URL?
Assume this situation for a second... Let's say you place a rel= canonical tag on a page and point to the original/authentic URL. Now, let's say that that original/authentic URL is also populated into your XML sitemap... So, here's my question... Since you can't actually navigate to that original/authentic URL (it still loads with a 200, it's just not actually linkded to from within the site itself), does that create an issue for search engines? Last consideration... The bots can still access those pages via the canonical tag and the XML sitemap, it's just that the user wouldn't be able to access those original/authentic pages in their natural site navigation. Thanks, Rodrigo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlgoFreaks0