Previously ranking #1 in google, web page has 301 / url rewrite, indexed but now showing for keyword search?
-
Two web pages on my website, previously ranked well in google, consistent top 3 places for 6months+, but when the site was modified, these two pages previously ending .php had the page names changed to the keyword to further improve (or so I thought). Since then the page doesn't rank at all for that search term in google.
I used google webmaster tools to remove the previous page from Cache and search results, re submitted a sitemap, and where possible fixed links to the new page from other sites. On previous advice to fix I purchased links, web directories, social and articles etc to the new page but so far nothing... Its been almost 5 months and its very frustrating as these two pages previously ranked well and as a landing page ended in conversions.
This problem is only appearing in google. The pages still rank well in Bing and Yahoo. Google has got the page indexed if I do a search by the url, but the page never shows under any search term it should, despite being heavily optimised for certain terms. I've spoke to my developers and they are stumped also, they've now added this text to the effected page(s) to see if this helps.
Header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
$newurl=SITE_URL.$seo;
Header("Location:$newurl");Can Google still index a web page but refuse to show it in search results? All other pages on my site rank well, just these two that were once called something different has caused issues?
Any advice? Any ideas, Have I missed something? Im at a loss...
-
Do you want to give me the old url to double check for you? You can personal message me if you don't want it to be public.
-
I should also say that was for the old URL it says Success with the button "submit to index" no mention of any 301?
-
Ran the fetch as google, says Success with a button "submit to index". Should I click the submit button?
-
If you used the remove URL tool to only remove page 1 from the index then that's why it won't be ranking, I'm guessing page 2 wasn't removed using this tool? I don't think the canonical tag would help you in this situation as you're now telling Google that page 2 is the same as a page you've already told them not to index!
Just to confirm, when you used the redirect checker did you put in the old url and it says 301? It's worth using the fetch as GoogleBot tool inside Webmaster tools and then adding the old url to be crawled again so that they can see it has been moved permanently. If the 301 was only implemented properly 2 weeks ago there is still the chance it will come back!
-
Thanks for the advice, just checked and it is saying "301 Moved Permanently" Which I'm assuming is correct.
But I must admit Im confused as to why the page is not ranking well. The page is a list of products and it ran on to a second page, the url being the same just with /page-2 at the end. Weirdly the page 2 started ranking but not the original. I then added rel="canonical" back to the original page, thinking this would help, but all this did was stop indexing page 2 and the original page still doesn't show...
Tearing my hair out!!!
The latest 301 redirect code was added 2 weeks ago, it did have 301 redirect before, but it was done in a different way...
**Previous Code : **
Header("Location:/$seo,true,301"); -
It sounds like you went about this in the wrong way. What you should have done first is 301 redirect the old url to the new url and then update all you sites links to also point to the new url. You have used webmaster tools to specifically tell Google not to index that page and therefore it has lost all of it's authority (the 301 would have passed most of the authority on from the start)
Use this tool and insert your old url and make sure the header returned definitely says "301 Moved permanently". How long ago was the 301 implemented? It may still recover once Google picks up the redirect.
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
-
Blog page and homepage ranking next to each other for same keyword
Hello, I have my homepage that has been existing for 10 years that is ranked in 18 th position on google for the keyword luxury bike tours. This homepage doesn't have any external link or internal links saying luxury bike tours and nowhere in the title or on the page do I have the word luxury. I only have the words bike and tours. I created a blog page 24 hours ago that has the word luxury, bike and tours in the title and it is ranked in 19 th position just behind my homepage. I am wondering how it can be there and my homepage just be one spot above with all the history and linking it has ? Is it due to the fact that I have the word luxury in the title ? Is it just because my internal linking structure is correct and this blog page is brand new and will my homepage rank higher in the near future but see that I just redid the structure I need to wait a few months ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Should I use noindex or robots to remove pages from the Google index?
I have a Magento site and just realized we have about 800 review pages indexed. The /review directory is disallowed in robots.txt but the pages are still indexed. From my understanding robots means it will not crawl the pages BUT if the pages are still indexed if they are linked from somewhere else. I can add the noindex tag to the review pages but they wont be crawled. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-do-not-use-noindex-in-robots-txt-20873.html Should I remove the robots.txt and add the noindex? Or just add the noindex to what I already have?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj0 -
Home page ranks for most keywords with no SEO
Hi Guys, The keyword I am trying to rank is on seperate page with its own Optimization in place. However the HOME page of website starts ranking for that keywords . The keyword is mentioned on Home page Just once in content description, that's all. What should be my ideal strategy. Deleting the Sub Page, will that improve the SEO of my home page and improve the Rank for that keyword ? Also I can see my Own YELP pages rank better than the actual website for few terms . Any way around this ? A Part from building links to page ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aus00071 -
GWT Keywords not showing my Keywords Focus, What to do?
Hello Community I will like ot know if im doing something wrong here..... I have setup keywords for my google ranking using yoasr SEO http://imgur.com/BCWTifV but in my Google Webmaster http://imgur.com/V1texto What im doing wrong?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dawgroup0 -
Pages getting into Google Index, blocked by Robots.txt??
Hi all, So yesterday we set up to Remove URL's that got into the Google index that were not supposed to be there, due to faceted navigation... We searched for the URL's by using this in Google Search.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
site:www.sekretza.com inurl:price=
site:www.sekretza.com inurl:artists= So it brings up a list of "duplicate" pages, and they have the usual: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more." So we removed them all, and google removed them all, every single one. This morning I do a check, and I find that more are creeping in - If i take one of the suspecting dupes to the Robots.txt tester, Google tells me it's Blocked. - and yet it's appearing in their index?? I'm confused as to why a path that is blocked is able to get into the index?? I'm thinking of lifting the Robots block so that Google can see that these pages also have a Meta NOINDEX,FOLLOW tag on - but surely that will waste my crawl budget on unnecessary pages? Any ideas? thanks.0 -
Monthly Searches from Google Keyword Planner
I've used Google Adwords, Google Analytics and competitors keywords to compile a master list. I'm now looking to evaluate metrics on the keywords / phrases / long tail phrases. My question is this ... Based on Googles use of Geo Targeting, would I be better to evaluate metrics (Avg. Monthly Searches, Competition, Avg CPC) based on United Kingdom or my local city (I only operate in my local city). I am looking to use the results to redesign my website. I will use the favorable keywords / phrases / long tail keywords to implement a new menu, new content page creation, articles, etc. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch0 -
Page URL keywords
Hello everybody, I've read that it's important to put your keywords at the front of your page title, meta tag etc, but my question is about the page url. Say my target keywords are exotic, soap, natural, and organic. Will placing the keywords further behind the URL address affect the SEO ranking? If that's the case what's the first n number of words Google considers? For example, www.splendidshop.com/gift-set-organic-soap vs www.splendidshop.com/organic-soap-gift-set Will the first be any less effective than the second one simply because the keywords are placed behind?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReferralCandy0 -
Why is my XML sitemap ranking on the first page of google for 100s of key words versus the actual relevant page?
I still need this question answerd and I know it's something I must have changed. But google is ranking my sitemap for 100s of key terms versus the actual page. It's great to be on the first page but not my site map...... Geeeez.....
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ursalesguru0