Weird SERPS
-
Hello mozerz, I have a question regarding my SERPS that I just can't figure out, maybe one of you had this problem before or has encounter a similar problem.
So I have a website on Scotland, and I have a page for each major city so the structure is scotland/city/glasgow or scotland/city/edinburgh or scotland/city/aberdeen.
Now every city page is w3 validated, page speed validated, has around 1000 words of text, all with h1, h2, image alt, nice title and nice description, all have grade A on moz campaign, original content, all with canonical links, no ads or spammy links.
The title , description, h1, h2 and img alt are the same only replaced Aberdeen with Edinburgh or Glasgow. or so on ... so all pages are identically just replaced the city word.
In terms of link building I have done none ! and in terms of promotion I have done none... so theres no scenario where by I have done something more for one city then the other
Now my problem is that all cities are doing well in SERPS, only Glasgow has come up till 14 position and then has dropped suddenly to 74, and remained there for 2 weeks now. I know this sounds like a penalty, but it can't be because I haven't done anything, I've tried all the tools possible to analyze the Glasgow page, though that it was a code problem or a broken link or that google-bot doesn't get up to this page to crawl it and classify it, but all is fine.
Can anyone suggest anything that I might do. I'm 100% sure that I have no penalty, I've checked even the webmaster tools, open site explorer to see if anyone tried to link to my site with spammy links ( has happened before, I had about 1000 links about viagra from a competitor pointing to my site ) .
-
And in terms of Links I would just let them came naturally, I will establish collaboration and if anyone links to my site or my content I will know that came absolutely natural a i will not have any problems with penguin or any update that Google will produce in the future. Actually I had one link to my homepage, which I got from a charity that I've contacted and ask them if I can support them by adding some info about them on my site, in return and without asking they added a link to my site
-
Well yes I have my social accounts , and i have about 30 followers, about 250 on Google + and 40 on facebook, i builde engagement, had them to answer some polls, they even had some of my blogs shared and liked .. so I'm doing well in there, and I do focus on my brand, eventually they will all direct link my site and not google search for it
-
yes sorry forgot to mention, of course I checked the competition, and actually Glasgow is a lot easier then Edinburgh, and as mentioned, I just know I should rank somewhere between 10-20 on Google without any links, because the other Serps are just horrible, I mean the first 3 sites on Glasgow, do banner exchange and spammy comment links :), and they don't even have social accounts ...
And about the serps, yes my snipped is showing as it should, keyword Glasgow | brand name ,
I have the keyword included once in the description also, once in the h1 and h2 and 3 times in the body with different forms, all should be good ...
-
Ah huh, I misunderstood. If the content is good and unique, and the only duplication is as you describe then it wouldn't seem to be a duplication issue. However, it's not unusual to see such drastic changes in ranking from time to time and that page could pop back up to its previous position at any time.
When you say you haven't done any link building, does that mean you don't have any natural back links either? If that's the case I'd recommend you do some work to build your authority.
-
Ive had experienced that multiple times with clients lol
- First thing I would do is check the competition. IF it's harder than the rest of the other cities/localities. Some cities have specific keywords that work better, too. Local is very easy to spam so there might be some competitors that are battling it out there. You might just be collateral damage from the recent updates to local.
- The next thing i would look at is how search results show. Is google showing you different serp results vs the other cities? Google might show more images/carousels or whatever for that city vs the others. Google is crazy like that.
- Links. Start building links (just a few of them will do) to test and see if you improve within the next week. If you do, then you need to start bothering yourself with competition + link building for that lol
Those are the basic things that id do first, assuming, like what you said, that everything on-page related and technical side are ok.
-
Thanks Chris , as I said, all pages have unique content ( text, photos, etc.. ), just the meta title -> meta description h1, h2 and img alt are the same only with the city keyword replaced
example : i' trying to rank for keywords glasgow and keywords edinburgh, all pages have the title keywords glasgow | brand name or keywords edinburgh | brand name and so on ..
It's a common practice, I have around 300 pages that are for different cities just imagine having to manually type every piece of info there :)) that's why we have the php script that auto generates this.
-
I might see that as a portent of things to come for your other pages. I mean, from what you describe, none of those pages should be ranking due to either thin and/or duplicate content--Panda type stuff. Sorry to say, there's really no reason for you to believe your rankings for the other pages will hold up unless you get original content on those pages.
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
-
Meta keywords shown in Google SERPS as site description
I'm seeing Google display meta-keywords in the SERP description for some sites (at least a half dozen that I've checked). I BELIEVE IT IS AN AJAX ISSUE BECAUSE: The sites all use AJAX to display content. So the meta-keywords are in the header, and the javascript that displays the content. Non-AJAX parts of the site display properly in Google SERPS The meta-keywords don't visibly appear anywhere on the page. When I turn off images and Javascript in Chrome I don't see any hidden keyword text. I BELIEVE IT IS A GOOGLE-SPECIFIC ISSUE BECAUSE: Each site displays properly in Bing and Yahoo SERPS - the meta-description is the description. However, (as expected) I see the same strange meta-keyword activity in Aol search In Screaming Frog's SERP preview I see the meta-description as the description. Google has been ignoring met-keywords for years. Any idea why it's appearing in the SERPS for these AJAX powered sites? I found one other person who saw that Google may be reading and displaying their content in AJAX even though that content is meant to appear on a different "page". No one on that Google Forum seemed to understand the person's problem. The only reason I get it is because now I'm seeing it with my own eyes. I know the Moz community can do better, so i'm posting about it here.
Technical SEO | | AlexCobb0 -
Giving a final nudge to lead the serps
hi
Technical SEO | | ciznerguy
might be a weird one to ask. working on an ecommerce site, using all new inbound marketing best practices the site positioned on many keywords on the second page of results. the site started to generate income. Assuming budget is not an issue here, do you have any suggestions on how to give it the final push. any ideas will be considered.0 -
Wrong listing in SERP
For one of the keyword of my website wrong URL appearing in SERP.I wanted to remove that listing in SERPs.How can i remove that listing in SERP?
Technical SEO | | Alick3000 -
How long does it take for Google to index a new site and has anyone experienced serious fluctuations in SERP within 2 weeks after launch?
Hi guys, I have recently launched my ecommerce jewellery site - www.luxuryfinejewellery.com - and noticed some serious swings in SERP over the last couple of weeks. From ranking No 2, 3 and 4 for the keyword 'luxury fine jewellery' on Google.com, the homepage periodically disappears from the Top 50 altogether. I thought it was the Sandbox, as I recently purchased the domain name, within the last 6 weeks, however the fact that it does rank on the 1st page some of the time is a mystery. Has anyone also experienced this? Could you provide some advice on what to expect until the the rankings settle. Thanks in advance, Satbir
Technical SEO | | deluxebydesign0 -
Https-pages still in the SERP's
Hi all, my problem is the following: our CMS (self-developed) produces https-versions of our "normal" web pages, which means duplicate content. Our it-department put the <noindex,nofollow>on the https pages, that was like 6 weeks ago.</noindex,nofollow> I check the number of indexed pages once a week and still see a lot of these https pages in the Google index. I know that I may hit different data center and that these numbers aren't 100% valid, but still... sometimes the number of indexed https even moves up. Any ideas/suggestions? Wait for a longer time? Or take the time and go to Webmaster Tools to kick them out of the index? Another question: for a nice query, one https page ranks No. 1. If I kick the page out of the index, do you think that the http page replaces the No. 1 position? Or will the ranking be lost? (sends some nice traffic :-))... thanx in advance 😉
Technical SEO | | accessKellyOCG0 -
Why is there 4 lines in competitors meta description in SERP?
Hi there, I have noticed several sites now display 4 lines of meta description in Google. Has anyone else seen this? Any help would be appreciated...thoughts? Barry
Technical SEO | | HaymarketMediaGroupLtd0 -
Page Title Not Displayed in SERPS
Why would a page title not be displayed in the SERPS? Everything appears to be formatted correctly in the code, yet the title of the company gets displayed instead of the page title? Any general idea why this could be happening?
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
I changed the domain and structure of my site,is there anything I can do to help speed the recovery in SERPs?
I change the domain of my site in March (pretty much exactly when Panda hit, by coincidence). Our search traffic has dropped by 90% in that time with little recovery. In webmaster tools it shows about 400,000 pages on the new domain and about 85,000 still indexed on the old domain. I set up custom 301 redirects to all of the new pages on the new domain so everything that was moved has a good one hop redirect. I've been told that the only thing I can do is sit back and wait for everything to finish transitioning. The problem is that it has been 5 months of poor traffic, which means 5 months of slow sales. Is there anything I can do the speed up the transition?
Technical SEO | | iJeep0