Blog posts outranked for Title a String searches in content...why?
-
Site Pages: When I wrap a page title, or a string of several words in quotes, and GG search, my client's page shows up first. My understanding is that this shows general health of site, and acknowledgement as the original source of the content.
Blog Posts: When I wrap a blog page, or post, title or string of words in quotes, and GG search, Feedblitz, Facebook, and other scraper sites appear before the blog home page, and also the actual blog post. The blog is in a separate directory. Does this suggest that the /blog/ is being penalized or demoted in any way? Does it indicate the /blog/ directory does not have authority?
Both the static site pages, and the blog pages, are using rel=canonical tags.
What causes this, what does it indicate, and how can I fix it?
Thanks,
Greg -
The site is 10 years old, the blog 4 or 5 years old, and has held top positions for extremely competitive keyword phrases such as 'health insurance quotes' and 'individual health insurance'. The site was hit by penguin, a panda, and subsequent pandas. I successfully recovered the site from an 'unnatural links' penalty, which required the removal of a lot of links. The site began to rank for primary keywords, but not great. Top 50. I saw this as an accomplishment.
I hope that helps. I left out details initially because I was hoping someone could be able to tell me if what I am experiencing is indicative of a known issue. Thanks for your help, happy to add more detail.
-
We need more info. A major question is site age. If the /blog directory is fairly new, your results are not atypical. Also if the /blog directory is fairly new and changing the URL wouldn't damage existing SERPs too much, you might try a more descriptive directory name like /location-business type-blog.
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
-
Duplicate Page Content
Hello, After crawling our site Moz is detecting high priority duplicate page content for our product and article listing pages, For example http://store.bmiresearch.com/bangladesh/power and http://store.bmiresearch.com/newzealand/power are being listed as duplicate pages although they have seperate URLs, page titles and H1 tags. They have the same product listed but I would have thought the differentiation in other areas would be sufficient for these to not be deemed as duplicate pages. Is it likely this issue will be impacting on our search rankings? If so are there any recommendations as to how this issue can be overcome. Thanks
Technical SEO | | carlsutherland0 -
Is <title>different from <h1> and "meta tag title"?</title>
hi guys, new to MOZ and SEO. Basic question here. is <title>different from <h1> and "meta tag title"?</p> <p>I have lots of "title missing or blank" errors as reported by a recent Moz crawl. What do i need to add into the pages to clear these? an <h1>? an <title>? or <meta tag title>? </p> <p>Im running a volusion site, and from what ive read (negative & positive) Volusion can be a pain to optimize my SEO as i dont have full access to all my pages.?</p></title>
Technical SEO | | Jerrion0 -
Dulpicate Content being reported
Hi I have a new client whose first MA crawl report is showing lots of duplicate content. The main batch of these are all the HP url with an 'attachment' part at the end such as: www.domain.com/?attachment_id=4176 As far as i can tell its some sort of slide show just showing a different image in the main frame of each page, with no other content. Each one does have a unique meta title & H1 though. Whats the best thing to do here ? Not a problem and leave as is Use the paremeter handling tool in GWT Canonicalise, referencing the HP or other solution ? Many Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Moving content from CMS pages to a blog - 301 or rel canonical?
Our site has some useful information buried in out-of-the-way CMS pages, and I feel like this content is more suited to our blog. What's my best method here? 1. Move the content to a blog post, delete the original page, and 301. 2. Move the content to a blog post, leave the original page up, and rel canonical. 3. Rewrite the content so it's not a duplicate, keep original page up, and post rewritten content on the blog. 4. Something else. Some of this content has inbound links and some does not. Quite a bit of it gets long-tail traffic already. It just looks kludgy because it's on pages that really aren't designed for articles. It would look much nicer and be much more readable/shareable/linkable on the blog.
Technical SEO | | CMC-SD0 -
Syndicated content outranks my original article
I have a small site and write original blog content for my small audience. There is a much larger, highly relevant site that is willing to accept guest blogs and they don't require original content. It is one of the largest sites within my niche and many potential customers of mine are there. When I create a new article I first post to my blog, and then share it with G+, twitter, FB, linkedin. I wait a day. By this time G has seen the links that point to my article and has indexed it. Then I post a copy of the article on the much larger site. I have a rel=author tag within the article but the larger site adds "nofollow" to that tag. I have tried putting a link rel=canonical tag in the article but the larger site strips that tag out. So G sees a copy of my content on this larger site. I'm hoping they realize it was posted a day later than the original version on my blog. But if not will my blog get labeled as a scraper? Second: when I Google the exact blog title I see my article on the larger site shows up as the #1 search result but (1) there is no rich snippet with my author creds (maybe because the author tag was marked nofollow?), and (2) the original version of the article from my blog is not in the results (I'm guessing it was stripped out as duplicate). There are benefits for my article being on the larger site, since many of my potential customers are there and the article does include a link back to my site (the link is nofollow). But I'm wondering if (1) I can fix things so my original article shows up in the search results, or (2) am I hurting myself with this strategy (having G possibly label me a scraper)? I do rank for other phrases in G, so I know my site hasn't had a wholesale penalty of some kind.
Technical SEO | | scanlin0 -
Should each new blog post be added to Sitemap.xml
Hello everyone, I have a website that has only static content. I have recently added a Blog to my website and I am wondering if I need to add each new Blog post to my Sitemap.xml file? Or is there another way/better way to get the Blog posting index? Any advice is greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | threebiz0 -
Pages with different content and meta description marked as duplicate content
I am running into an issue where I have pages with completely different body and meta description but they are still being marked as having the same content (Duplicate Page Content error). What am I missing here? Examples: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/what-to-expect-in-the-summer-internship
Technical SEO | | WallStreetOasis.com
and
http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/blog/something-ventured http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/im-in-the-long-run
and
http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/image/jhjpeg0 -
Good Seo Titles
Hi. Mybsite is www.theprinterdepo.com and I am trying to find a good template for my product/page titles. Many users search our products by the product model: something like Q2121X. Some other users search by: hp 1320 printer or just 1320 printer. They will almost never search for hp 1320 new, or hp 1320 refurbished. My website is developed in magento, and we have a SEO plugin in which I can put a template for the URL and also a template for the product title. I was thinking for title and URL. title + condition + productmodel However many users search for: "refurbished printers" and maybe its better that our products say something like this: HP 1320 Refurbished Printer, instead of: HP 1320 Printer - Refurbished - Q2121X Please let me know your suggestions.
Technical SEO | | levalencia10