Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Blog posts not showing in serps for exact match title search
-
hi-
my first client ranks #1 for the exact phrase of each blog post title
the 2nd client doesnt rank anywhere when i search for the exact post title
2nd client has robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/so that shouldnt noindex any posts right?
his site ranks for many kw's - but oddly none of his blog posts are anywhere to be found - i dont mean for a kw search - i mean for searching for the entire title he doesnt rank anywhere in first 5 pages for any of 6-7 posts i checked
any idea what could cause this?
thanks
-
Also check Google webmaster Tools. When doing a site: of your site, there are some odd-looking SERPs and at least one page has a message that the site might be compromised.
-
Taswir, every page on your website has a meta-no-index. no-follow tag in the header. This explicitly tells the search engines NOT to include you pages/posts in the search results.
On WordPress sites, this is usually caused by having the "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" box in the Reading section of the Settings checked. This is often set this way during development, then folks forget to remove it when the site goes live.
Remove the check mark from that box and the engines should start indexing your pages within a day or so.
If that box isn't checked, check for plugins that might have the same settings - like SEO plugins.
That should do it.
Paul
[Included a screenshot to show where in the navigation to find the setting to change]
-
Hi Paul would you please also have a look on my blog http://www.thetopblogger.com as I am also facing the same problem. When I search with the URL at Google, the URL appears on top but when I check with "Exact Post Title" from my bog, this doesn't pull the related post from my blog.
I checked more than 15 posts in this way and so far only 1 post ranked on #6 though the post title is exactly matching with my search.
I am not a expert at Robots.txt but you can check my blog's robots.txt file too. http://www.thetopblogger.com/robots.txt
Waiting for your reply Bro. Thank you.
Regards
Taswir
- topic:timeago_earlier,21 days
-
There are a number of issues that are likely causing indexing problems with this site, Eric, but I'm going to have to be up front with you.
The site's business model is so completely against the search engines' terms of service, and is contributing to the low opinion so many in the public have of SEO, that regretfully I must decline to provide any further help with this particular site.
This is my own judgement call and is not intended to reflect on you in any way.
Paul
- topic:timeago_earlier,18 days
-
I must've gotten confused with wp-content. Thanks for clearing up Paul!
-
Wp-includes doesn't include any user content, William. The wp-content folder is where all user-uploaded images, pdfs etc are stored, so removing wp-includes from the robots.txt won' t have any effect on whether posts/pages are indexing or not.
But even if such content were in that blocked directory, posts and pages are in the database and are output from their respective pseudo index pages, none of which are ni the /wp-includes directory.
I'm just on my out the door, Eric, but if you want to PM me a few example URLs/pages, I'd be happy to have a look. Or of course you could post them publicly here for others to give you a hand, if you're comfortable with that. It's pretty hard to address problems like this without being able to research the actual pages.
Paul
-
I'd troubleshoot the site by removing /wp-includes/ mainly because from what I understand images are pulled from that dir usually. Or a lot of content is from wp-includes.
Remove it and see if that helps.
I'd also check WMT and use Googlebot to fetch the site. Usually that works on getting things indexed quicker. I would also check WMT messages to see if there was any manual action taken on your client's account.
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
-
Guest Post - What to reply when blogger ask for $$ to post a content?
Guest Post - What to reply when blogger ask for $$ to post a content? I did not want to pay $$ to post guest post.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 15, 2018, 5:23 PM | varunrupal0 -
How to get local search volumes?
Hi Guys, I want to get search volumes for "carpet cleaning" for certain areas in Sydney, Australia. I'm using this process: Choose to ‘Search for new keyword and ad group ideas’. Enter the main keywords regarding your product / service Remove any default country targeting Specify your chosen location (s) by targeting specific cities / regions Click to ‘Get ideas’ The problem is none of the areas, even popular ones (like north sydney, surry hills, newtown, manly) are appearing and Google keyword tool, no matches. Is there any other tools or sources of data i can use to get accurate search volumes for these areas? Any recommendations would be very much appreciated. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 31, 2017, 6:29 AM | wozniak650 -
Lazy Loading of Blog Posts and Crawl Depths
Hi Moz Fans, We are looking at our blog and improving the content as much as we can for SEO purposes, but we have hit a bit of a blank in terms of lazy loading implications and issues with crawl depths. We introduced lazy loading onto the blog home page to increase site speed initially and it works well with infinite scroll, but we were wondering whether this would cause any issues regarding SEO. A lot of the resources online seem to be conflicting and some are very outdated, so some clarification on what is best in terms of lazy loading and crawl depths for blogs, would be fantastic! I hope someone can help and give us some up to date insights - If you need anymore information, I'll reply ASAP
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Sep 15, 2016, 4:37 AM | Victoria_0 -
Yoast seo title question
I was referred to this plugin and have found it to be the most irritating and poorly designed plugin in the world. I want to be able to set my titles without it changing my page headers as well. For instance - If I set my title to be "This is my article name | site name" it will make my H1 tag read the same. I do not want or desire this nonsense. Why would they think this is something wise? Why would I want my site name on every single H1 tag on my site? How can I fix this? I only want my title to be my title. I want my H1 tag to remain the post/page name that I define in wordpress.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 29, 2015, 7:06 PM | Atomicx0 -
Other domains hosted on same server showing up in SERP for 1st site's keywords
For the website in question, the first domain alphabetically on the shared hosting space, strange search results are appearing on the SERP for keywords associated with the site. Here is an example: A search for "unique company name" shows the results: www.uniquecompanyname.com as the top result. But on pages 2 and 3, we are getting results for the same content but for domains hosted on the same server. Here are some examples with the domain name replaced: UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Nov 19, 2013, 11:05 PM | Motava
ftp.DOMAIN2.com/?action=news&id=63
META DESCRIPTION TEXT UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
www.DOMAIN3.com/?action=news&id=120
META DESCRIPTION TEXT2 UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
www.DOMAIN4.com/?action=news&id=120
META DESCRIPTION TEXT2 UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 3
mail.DOMAIN5.com/?action=category&id=17
META DESCRIPTION TEXT3 ns5.DOMAIN6.com/?action=article&id=27 There are more but those are just some examples. These other domain names being listed are other customer domains on the same VPS shared server. When clicking the result the browser URL still shows the other customer domain name B but the content is usually the 404 page. The page title and meta description on that page is not displayed the same as on the SERP.As far as we can tell, this is the only domain this is occurring for.So far, no crawl errors detected in Webmaster Tools and moz crawl not completed yet.0 -
Easy way to change wordpress category titles. Currently categories are appearing with the same title?!
I'm working on a wordpress adult dating review site and have started to set up categories for each of my main keywords. I have also started to add sub categories by county and town and so far have done so for the counties of 'Lincolnshire' and 'Derbyshire'. The problem is though that for each of my subcategories the page titles are appearing the same. For example: www.mysite.com/category/online-dating/lincolnshire/spalding (root category online dating) shows the title as 'Spalding'. www.mysite.com/category/adult-dating/lincolnshire/spalding also has the title 'Spalding' even though it's root category is different (adult dating). It's probably easier to go to http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com to see how it's set up. If you click in the category text in the top menu and navigate to dating/derbyshire/alfreton for example and then adult dating/derbyshire/alfreton you'll notice the page titles are the same. I use all in one SEO pack and have rewrite titles checked with category titles set to %category_title% | %blog_title%. I also use category SEO updater. In order to prevent duplicate content issues how can I simply make the title of each category category root title/category subtitle(county)/category subtitle 2(town). The title of each category page would then read for example Online Dating Lincolnshire Spalding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 29, 2013, 10:14 AM | SamCUK0 -
Why should your title and H1 tag be different?
Is it dangerous to have your H1 tag and your title the exact same thing? My thought was that it's not be the best use of space, but that it couldn't cause harm. What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 7, 2014, 4:34 PM | MarieHaynes7