Please Please Please help (not ranking any more)..
-
my website is: www.tcclinic.com
it was a static website which was ranking well. total about 400 pages.
I also had my blog hosted on another domain (www.shopify.com) about 800 pages.
I was told if I bring the blog to my domain, then I will have more content on my site and will rank even better, and also was advised to switch to WordPress. so about two weeks ago I did the following changes:
I moved the site and blogs to my domain (tcclinic.com). and switch to WordPress. total of 1200 pages
Since it was changing to WordPress all the URLs was changed and named differently.
I did 301 redirect for all the pages.
all the URLs now contains "toronto-cosmetic-clinic" which is the name of my clinic
example:
www.tcclinic.com/toronto-cosmetic-clinic-liposuction-surgery/
www.tcclinic.com/toronto-cosmetic-clinic-tummy-tuck/
most of my pages are indexed by google now BUT
Now as the result I am not ranking anywhere in first 5 to 6 pages. I am not sure what is happening.
have I been hit by a penguin, panda or any other black and white animal ? if this is the case how do I know this happened.
Haveing "toronto-cosmetic-clinic" in all the URLs is considered as keyword stuffing ?
moving 800 pages of blog to my domain caused it ? (blogs are removed from shopify.com)
Is it just the matter of time to come back to the first page?
Please let me know what you think....
Thank you
-
Hi Jane,I think now I know why my ranking has been affected.yesterday I noticed a message on my Google webmaster tools under "Manual Actions" which says:---------------------------------------------------------------Partial matchesSome manual actions apply to specific pages, sections, or linksReasonUnnatural links to your site-impacts linksGoogle has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole. Learn more.----------------------------------------------------------------then there is a button for "Request A Review"1- How do I know when did I received this message (there is no email from Google) ?2- How can I fined out what links they are talking about ?3- Is that the main reason that my ranking is dropping ?Thank youSina
-
Can I have your email please
-
Hi Sina,
Sorry to have gotten your name wrong!
It looks like Google does not always send this sort of notification through Webmaster Tools. See Matt Cutts' tweet from 2012. This tweet was in response to a lot of speculation in March 2012 that notifications were being sent about Panda.
When we see notifications, they are usually about "spam", which also usually means link-based issues rather than on-page problems.
I would still suggest that on-page clean up will help a lot here, but also that you will need to wait for Google to de-index the old content.
Cheers,
Jane
-
Hi Jane,
Thank you for your detail answer.
but if I was affected by Panda, shouldn't I get a message from Google on my webmaster tools ?
BTW my name is Sina
-
Hi Behnaz,
bstone81 is correct about it taking a long time for Google to re-index so many 301ed URLs - has the issue improved at all in the last week?
If you search for snippets of content from your blog posts, are the new URLs on tcclinic.com showing up, or is the content still indexed under the old Shopify URLs? I've run a couple of these and I see them indexed in the two locations. Please see the following screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/fvawU9L.png.
The Shopify URLs return 404s (http://tcc-e-store.myshopify.com/blogs/news/11632829-luxe-diamond-foundation) - it's not guaranteed how long Google will take to re-crawl these pages and acknowledge that they are gone. Unfortunately, you can't 301 redirect them to speed up the process.
Unfortunately, some of these pages do NOT return a 404, even though your content is gone. See this example (the redirect plugin is from my former agency, and shows the headers the page returns and if there are any redirects):
Indexed content: http://i.imgur.com/QHSAnlR.png
Shopify's page, returning a 200 OK response but no content: http://i.imgur.com/TT9ZehC.png
Several post pages do return a proper 404 though: http://i.imgur.com/L30npnv.png
As Google says here, the best way to remove content is for the URL to return a 404 or 410 server response: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/64033?hl=en
That page also says that outdated pages not returning 404s will drop out if people stop linking to them. Try to change any and all old links that might point to the Shopify blog to your new URLs.
You also have issues with multiple versions of your content being indexed on many URLs within your main domain: http://i.imgur.com/Z7Hzz37.png
For this, you're going to want to look at pagination options. This post from my former colleague at Ayima is a really good one on this subject: http://www.ayima.com/seo-knowledge/conquering-pagination-guide.html. It was highly recommended in the SEO world (Rand seemed to like it, tweeted it, etc.) and it should be useful for this issue.
You also have issues with an expired security certificate, which is returning this error if you try to access HTTPS URLs on the site. Quite a few HTTPS, as opposed to non-secure HTTP URLs, are indexed: http://i.imgur.com/ADX9hBc.png
This should be fixed, and HTTPS URLs should be 301ed to HTTP URLs where the URL does not need to be secure. Here is an example of both versions of the URLs being indexed for the same content: http://i.imgur.com/A7VkACx.png
There is quite a lot of housekeeping to be done on the site to perfect its on-page optimisation, and this will certainly help. There's a chance you are affected by Panda because of this: Google thinks you have duplicated content from the old Shopify blog, and content is duplicated throughout the site in its eyes.
I hope this helps - I know it's a lot of work to clean up the site internally but it's definitely necessary.
Cheers,
Jane
-
The fact that you have all new URL's, even though you have 301'd all your old URL's, it will take Google time to crawl, index and rank those new URL's. It is like a whole new website, and is not currently in Google's database.
You might try going into Google Webmaster Tools, under the Crawl section, and then Fetch as Google. When it is Fetched, click on the Submit to index button, and then click the box "URL and all linked pages". It may speed up the process of Google re-indexing, but is no guarantee.
I have had to do this on numerous sites where I wanted to change to different URL structures.
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
-
Why am i ranking great in canada but not in the US?
hi, some of my keywords with high volume are ranking on first page in canada, but in the states i am on 3rd pages first result. what factors are contributing this disparity. what can be done here in this case. is it because of my links and tld distribution or some server location thing. what should i do to rank better in the US? i have shared hosting server in singapore.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sam09schulz0 -
Too many links pointing to our privacy policy page: Hurting our ranking efforts of main pages?
Hi community, As per the "Links" report from GSC, there are millions of pages pointing to our privacy policy page. We can expect high number of links to this page being ours an open source product. But these links are overtaking the count of links pointing to our homepage which are very artificial from few spammy or low quality sites. "Privacy policy" anchor text is also been the top anchor text. Our homepage ranking dropped and I suspect this is the culprit. Google might be considering this is the important page being linked on top with anchor text. Shall I Disavow these sites and will this makes Google stop counting links, and the anchor text coming from these sites as well? Suggestions please. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Search ranking for a term dropped from 1st/2nd to 106th in 3 months
Hello all, Just a couple notes first. I have been advised to be vague on the search term we've dropped on (in case this page ranks higher than our homepage for it). If you search for my name in Google though you should be able to figure out where I work (I'm not the soccer player). While I am looking for an answer, I've also posted this question on a couple other forums (see https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4934323.htm and https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/webmasters/AQLD7lywuvo/2zfFRD6oGAAJ) which have thrown up more questions than answers. So I have posted this as a discussion. We've also been told we may have been under a negative SEO attack. We saw in SEMRush a large number of backlinks in October/November/December - at about the same time we disavowed around 1m backlinks (more on this below) but we can't see this reflected in Moz. We just got off a call with someone at Moz to try and work this out and he suggested we post here - so here goes... On 4th October for the search term 'example-term' we dropped from number 2 to number 9 on Google searches (this was confirmed in Google Search Console). We also paid an external SEO consultant to review our site and see why we are dropping on the term 'example-term'. We've implemented everything and we're still dropping, the consultant thinks we may have been penalised in error (as we are a legitimate business and we're not trying to do anything untoward). In search console you could see from the graphs on the term we used to rank 1st and 2nd (you could go back 2 or 3 years and still see this). The thing we do find confusing is that we still rank very highly (if not 1st) for 'example-term + uk' and our brand name - which is very similar to 'example-term'. Timeline of events of changes: 2nd October 2018 midday: Added a CTA using something called Wisepops over the homepage - this was a full screen CTA for people to pledge on a project on our site helping with the tsunami in Indonesia (which may have had render blocking elements on). 4th October: we added a Google MyBusiness page showing our corporate headquarters as being in the UK (we did flag this on the Google MyBusiness forums and both people who responded said adding a MyBusiness page would not affect our drop in rankings). 4th October: dropped from number 2 to number 9 on Google searches (this was confirmed in Google Search Console) 4th October: Removed the Wisepops popup 5th November: Server redirect so anything coming in on / was redirected to a page without a / 12th November: Removed around 200 junk pages (so old pages, test cms pages etc that were live and still indexed). Redirects from any 404s resolved 19th November: Updated site maps and video site maps to reflect new content and remove old content. Reviewed the whole site for duplicate meta tags and titles and updated accordingly with unique ones. Fixed issues in Google Search Console for Google search console for 404 and Mobile usability. Removed embedded YouTube video from homepage. 11th December: Removed old content and content seen as not useful from indexing; 'honey pot' pages, old blog, map pages, user profile pages, project page ‘junk pages which have little SEO value’ (comments, contact project owner, backers, report project) from indexing, added ‘no-follow’ to widgets linking back to us 3rd January 2019: Changed the meta title from to remove 'example-term' (we were concerned it may have been seen as keyword stuffing) 7th January: Disavow file updated to refuse a set of external sites powered by API linking to us (these were sites like example-term.externalsite.co.uk which used to link to us showing projects in local areas - our SEO expert felt may be seen as a ‘link farm’) 11th January: Updated our ‘About us’ page with more relevant content 15th January: Changed homepage title to include 'example-term' again, footer links updated to point to internal pages rather than linking off to Intercom, homepage ordering of link elements on homepage changed (so moving external rating site link further down the page, removing underlines on one item that was not a link, fixed and instance where two h1 tags were used), removed another set of external Subdomains (i.e. https://externalsite.sitename.co.uk) from our system (these were old sites we used to run for different clients which has projects in geographical areas displayed) 18th January: Added the word 'example-term' to key content pages We're at a loss as to why we are still dropping. Please note that the above changes were implemented after we'd been ranking fine for a couple years on the 'example-term' - the changes were to try and address the drop in ranking. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Nobody15554510997900 -
Is there proof that disavowing backlinks in GSC help to boost rankings in Google?
Hi Guys Let's say you have a website and you got some questionable back links or lower quality ones. Does anyone have proof that after disavowing back links helped in the rankings or had some positive effects? I am concerned that Google will place our website on their radar and instead possibly demote it or smth. Lastly, if disavowing is the way to go what criteria do you use to disavow backlinks? So if you get questionable back links over time, should you disavow ongoing as well? If so how often? Cheers John
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | whiteboardwiz0 -
On Page #2 of Bing But Nowhere on Google. Please Help !
Hi, community. I have a problem with the ranking of my blog and I hope anyone could help me to solve this problem. I have been trying to rank my blog post for a keyword for almost 6 months but still getting no success. My URL is: this blog post
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Airsionquin
Target keyword: best laptops for college The interesting fact is that the post has been on page #2 of BING but nowhere on google. It was on page #3 of google for about one month, but it's been 1-2 weeks gone(not ranked anymore but it's still well indexed). The post has been replaced by another post of my blog(let's say post A) which doesn't have any link. The Post A is ranking on page #4 right now.
The weird thing is my post which ranks for this keyword frequently changes. One day the Post A was on page#4 then after a few days it changed to the post B. Yesterday I searched on google for a keyword "number one on bing but nowhere on google" and then I
come across to read this article on MOZ community and one of the people here said that it was over optimization issue. I think my post has been suffering for an over optimization penalty algorithm. Just for your information, I have been building backlinks to this URL for the last 5 months(it's 1+ year old). It has backlinks only about 1,5k from 200 domains(according to ahref). I have used the exact match anchor only under +/- 2%. The rest is branded, naked URL and generic anchors.
So, in this case, I thought that I haven't done any over anchor optimization.
I have checked the keyword density and I found it was "safe". One important thing I can remember before the post has gone is I add a backlink from lifehack.org(guest post) with exact match anchor.
I suspect this is really the cause because 2-3 days after doing that then the post is gone(dropped) and replaced by another post of my blog(as I've mentioned before). But it's very strange because the amount of the anchor keyword(including the long tail) is only about 10(from 200 domains) or only 5% which mean it should be safe. I'm so Sorry. It's a long story 🙂 So, What is actually happening to my post? and How to fix this problem... Please..please help me... Any hep is appreciated. By the way, Sorry for my poor english.. 🙂0 -
Help with ranking
Hi Board users! I have a site that I don't understand why its not ranking. Its called JohnnyJet.com It has great domain authority and plenty of links. Looking at google webmaster tools I don't think there is a penalty. I have not done black hat stuff, so I am puzzled. I have a subdomain that stores some of my old content (some of it is duplicate) http://vintage.johnnyjet.com/home.asp The site has been around for ever, and I need help with a site audit to see what it is that I am missing. I know my long tail should rank much better. 2 questions: 1. Can you guys (board members) send me any insights if you take a peek 2. Can you tell me where to go to get an in-depth audit on my site -- I need a deep dive to get to the bottom of this 🙂 Thanks all!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | coolhand19800 -
Want to Remove numbers from Old Post URL - Will it effect its Ranking?
Hi. I have a number of posts that are ranking in google for several keywords. However the URLs contain numbers, for example 2011, 2014 and 35. I want to remove these numbers to make the URLs more updated. If I use the 301 redirect for old URL to the new one, will I retain the same ranking for these blogposts Or it can effect the ranking. Does anyone have tried this in the past? I would like to get your opinion on this. Thanks in advance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | techmaish0 -
Site ranking position 1, after 1 day existing
Hi, I'm working in the Online gaming and since a few months there was a website called 'Htmlwijzer.nl', it ranked page 1 for 'online casino' in Google.nl which is of course a high competive keyword and remained there for about 2 months. This website didn't come up slowly in Google.nl from page 10 to 1, it just was there one day at page 1. This one only had HTML-related information content and did rank for 'online casino' with a layer ad on it's site which would only be showed to users in the Netherlands. Now that website received a penalty after 2 months, and since today a new site is in Google at position 1, called www.casinowijzer.nl. It has completely no backlinks (online a 301 from the former domain). It just popped up there.. Does anyone know how this website could have gotten here? It's obviously blackhat, but for a keyword like 'online casino' it's quite amazing. Thanks,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | iwebdevnl0