Google de-indexed a page on my site
-
I have a site which is around 9 months old. For most search terms we rank fine (including top 3 rankings for competitive terms).
Recently one of our pages has been fluctuating wildly in the rankings and has now disappeared altogether from the rankings for over 1 week.
As a test I added a similar page to one of my other sites and it ranks fine.
I've checked webmaster tools and there is nothing of note there.
I'm not really sure what to do at this stage. Any advice would me much appreciated!
-
Another thing which is weird:
If I google "site:medexpress.co.uk" the page /clinics/erectile-dysfunction/viagra appears.
If I google "site:medexpress.co.uk viagra" that page no longer appears!
I could see why my page would have maybe dropped in the rankings but to go from a rank of around 30-70 for most of the keywords for this page to dropping off the index points to something more extraordinary. Its been like this for almost two weeks and I'm considering maybe changing the URL (as I mentioned other long-tail optimized blog pages are now starting to rank so it appears to be just this page).
Is it possible this page has been moved to the supplemental index for some reason?
-
Hi,
The domain actually has plenty of links and that page has two very high quality backlinks. The Moz tool for some reason is missing almost all the backlinks. If you use AHREFS it works much better (remembering to use www as the prefix for the domain).
The domain authority is 49 which is much higher than the bulk of sites on there and higher than the site in position number #1 which has somehow managed to rank with almost no backlinks (it has less than 20) or any quality content.
Whats even weirded I added a page to my other site www.centraltravelclinic.co.uk and it now outranks my main site even though it has less backlinks/relevant content.
There is even a page in my blog section which is now ranking as well.
I'm not sure but it seems as if there is some penalty against this one page...or something has gone wrong on the search index and it has been temporarily removed for whatever reason.
Regards,
Dwayne
-
Hi Everett,
I agree 100% the domain itself has a great name, the lack of domain authority or links undoubtably has taken its toll surprised it ranks for anything the honest without any authority.
A content marketing campaign with high quality content covering the topics he discussed like law, medical care and including tools for the end-user would make it extremely brand worthy.
I think the best way to go about it would be to start a six-month campaign and do some very aggressive work on site.
You have some great advice.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Thank you Thomas,
I did have a look at the site and came to the conclusion that it had relatively no domain authority or page/URL-level authority from quality backlinks. The page had no links, and the domain only had a couple, neither of them great. As you mention, this industry is very competitive. It is one of the most competitive niches online.
My recommendation was to embark on a content marketing campaign, possibly one that highlights medical care / law / coverage disparities between countries. The domain itself is very brandable, and if they were to latch onto a hot-topic issue in the right way they could get quoted as experts in that industry by major news outlets, or at least some decent blogs. Meanwhile, steady posting about the lindustry on the blog, occasional white papers or studies created by the company about the the industry... will help build their body of content and present their expertise on the topic. Any tool (calculators, price comparison charts, etc...) would also help. I also mentioned a recommended minimum budget for content creation and paid promotion of it over the next six months.
-
Hi Everett,
There is a good reason for him not not actually posting URL for keywords wants list for.
I think Deelo555 should private message you the information he sent me. They are keywords that are commonly thought of negatively is all I will say.
Deelo555 please send Everett what you sent me.
All the best,
Thomas
-
Deelo555 We'll need more information to be of much help here. Can you post the site and/or the keyword? If not, this is probably going to have to be assisted by private message with someone.
I'd look for over-optimized anchor text or spammy links going into that page just to make sure. From there I would look into whether the content on the page "should" rank for the keyword. In other words, does it answer the query or give the searcher what they are looking for? After that I would move on to general user experience. Does the site look good, trustworthy, authoritative...
Follow that path and you'll probably uncover some things to improve. If not, let us know.
-
I replied to the private message I hope it is helpful.
-
Fluxing sometimes can mean Google is testing your site verse the other competitors for that keyword.
If Google is unable to determine what is the most enjoyed by the end-user so they will allow for you to fluctuate in the SERPS.
If people query your keyword find your site in the SERPS then immediately leave once they have landed on your website. That is called "Pogo sticking" Google is simply trying to find out whether or not you are the best fit for that keyword.
1st off if you could test the site some of the tools below
https://moz.com/researchtools/crawl-test
http://deepcrawl.co.uk/ (Amazing tool)
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ ( everyone should have a copy I recommend the paid but you can crawl 500 pages for free using SF free addition)
You want to be see what Google bot can see your site can do that using
http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/
Check your Robots.txt using
http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/robots-txt-generator/ ( this will pull the file sometimes there are more than 1 it does happen)
make sure that if you're using WordPress or other similar CMS is that Google bot is not being blocked from seeing J query
The reason for this is Google cannot see the site as it might be shown to the end user therefore they would be less likely to come back & index
https://www.authoritydev.com/dont-block-jquery-from-googlebot/
once we have completed eliminated and chance of robots.txt or no follow / no index then you will want to look at your entire website Very thoroughly.
I do not know how old your domain is could you share its age?
what is your domain authority? what is the page authority of pages not being indexed?
we need to look at all of this before we can render a verdict.
If you're uncomfortable sharing your URL publicly you're welcome to send it to me privately.
what type of URLs are pointing (if any) Internal or external are pointing at your pages that are not indexing.
Sincerely,
Thomas
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
-
Site moved. Unable to index page : Noindex detected in robots meta tag?!
Hope someone can shed some light on this: We moved our smaller site (into the main site ( different domains) . The smaller site that was moved ( https://www.bluegreenrentals.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin
Directory where the site was moved (https://www.bluegreenvacations.com/rentals) Each page from the old site was 301 redirected to the appropriate page under .com/rentals. But we are seeing a significant drop in rankings and traffic., as I am unable to request a change of address in Google search console (a separate issue that I can elaborate on). Lots of (301 redirect) new destination pages are not indexed. When Inspected, I got a message : Indexing allowed? No: 'index' detected in 'robots' meta tagAll pages are set as Index/follow and there are no restrictions in robots.txtHere is an example URL :https://www.bluegreenvacations.com/rentals/resorts/colorado/innsbruck-aspen/Can someone take a look and share an opinion on this issue?Thank you!0 -
404 Pages. Can I change it to do this without getting penalized ? I want to lower our bounce rate from these pages to encourage the user to continue on the site
Hi All, We have been streaming our site and got rid of thousands of pages for redundant locations (Basically these used to be virtual locations where we didn't have a depot although we did deliver there and most of them was duplicate/thin content etc ). Most of them have little if any link value and I didn't want to 301 all of them as we already have quite a few 301's already We currently display a 404 page but I want to improve on this. Current 404 page is - http://goo.gl/rFRNMt I can get my developer to change it, so it will still be a 404 page but the user will see the relevant category page instead ? So it will look like this - http://goo.gl/Rc8YP8 . We could also use Java script to show the location name etc... Would be be okay ? or would google see this as cheating. basically I want to lower our bounce rates from these pages but still be attractive enough for the user to continue in the site and not go away. If this is not a good idea, then any recommendations on improving our current 404 would be greatly appreciated. thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Does including your site in Google News (and Google) Alerts helps with SEO?
Based on the following article http://homebusiness.about.com/od/yourbusinesswebsite/a/google-alerts.htm in order to check if you are included you need to run site:domain.com and click the news search tab. If you are not there then... I ran the test on MOZ and got no results which surprised me. Next step according to :https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40787?hl=en#ts=3179198 is to submit your site for inclusion. Should I? Will it help? P.S.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
This is a followup question to the following: http://moz.com/community/q/what-makes-a-site-appear-in-google-alerts-and-does-it-mean-anything0 -
Big discrepancies between pages in Google's index and pages in sitemap
Hi, I'm noticing a huge difference in the number of pages in Googles index (using 'site:' search) versus the number of pages indexed by Google in Webmaster tools. (ie 20,600 in 'site:' search vs 5,100 submitted via the dynamic sitemap.) Anyone know possible causes for this and how i can fix? It's an ecommerce site but i can't see any issues with duplicate content - they employ a very good canonical tag strategy. Could it be that Google has decided to ignore the canonical tag? Any help appreciated, Karen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Digirank0 -
Index or not index Categories
We are using Yoast Seo plugin. On the main menu we have only categories which has consist of posts and one page. We have category with villas, category with villa hotels etc. Initially we set to index and include in the sitemap posts and excluded categories, but I guess it was not correct. Would be a better way to index and include categories in the sitemap and exclude the posts in order to avoid the duplicate? It somehow does not make sense for me, If the posts are excluded and the categories included, will not then be the categories empty for google? I guess I will get crazy of this. Somebody has perhaps more experiences with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rebeca10 -
How to make Google include our recipe pages in its main index?
We have developed a recipe search engine www.edamam.com and serve the content of over 500+ food bloggers and major recipe websites. Our legal obligations do not allow us to show the actual recipe preparation info (e.g. the most valuable from the content), we can only show a few images, the ingredients and nutrition information. Most of the unique content goes to the source/blog. By submitting XML sitemaps on GWT we now have around 500K pages indexed, however only a few hundred appear in Google's main index and we are looking for a solution to include all of them in the index. Also good to know is that it appears that all our top competitors are in the exactly same situation, so it is a challenging question. Any ideas will be highly appreciated! Thanks, Lily
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edamam0 -
Getting a Facebox Item De-Indexed
Hello all, Select pages on a website I manage utilizes Facebox lightbox elements for additional information. These Faceboxes have been indexed as their own pages by Google. Unfortunately, when they were created, there is no call to action or navigation elements or anything. So I would prefer that Google not index them since it is a pretty horrible user experience if you navigate to one of these Faceboxes directly. I have tossed up no-index tags on each about three weeks ago, but they are still being indexed at present. Is there any tips or tricks that anyone has to handle this scenario or any ideas that I am not thinking of outside of just no-indexing them? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClayPotCreative0 -
Website is not getting indexed in Google! Not sure why?
I just came up with my new blog, its not live yet but the 1<sup>st</sup> landing page is ready, up and running… all is fine but here is the only problem is its not getting indexed in Google and I am not really sure why? .xml sitemap is there Google webmaster and analytics are there Website contain at least that much real social shares that it should get indexed in Google Few Links may be coming from Famous Bloggers and SEOmoz (both sites are very authentic in their respective domains) It’s the 4 day the website is up I don’t think website is not getting indexed in Google just because it contains 1 landing page and a thank you page! Any clue or help will be appreciated. www.setalks.com is the domain
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MoosaHemani0