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Need help with my "ghost" blog...
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...when I fired my original web designer, did they sabotage coding? I have never checked my Alexa/Google Analytics, or any blog ranking until last night. Subsequently, I have spent the last 24 hours googling away, and finally joining MOZ b/c I'm desperate to find out WHY I'm not ranking. I've googled and found many answers to a problem directly opposite of mine: (How to increase traffic with a high ranking), but I already have quite a bit of traffic (via Wordpress Stats), but can not be found on any ranking system. So, fiddled with some NoFollow/NoIndex boxes in Genesis SEO settings thinking maybe when my domain name changed it messed everything up? Most the boxes HAD been checked, so I unchecked them all. Anyhow, basically signed up for the monthly service so i could ask this question on the forum. My site is hellowhitney.com
**it's so weird---i have a LOT of organic direct hits coming directly to my blog (for instance a celebrity re-posted a post which gained a lot of traffic from Twitter to the page), but Google nor another ranking is seeing it. IN FACT, it stops any and all ranking data back to FEBRUARY 2016 when I changed my domain name from Myscriptedreality.com to HelloWhitney.com
Ignorance is NOT bliss in this case--would appreciate any help! #ForeverGrateful
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When I go to "myscriptedreality.com", it doesn't redirect to your new site. (No login credentials needed to see that.) Also, social traffic is generally not a ranking signal... so getting traffic from Facebook is great, but it's not going to have a direct impact on how well you rank with search engines. (But it's a great argument in favor of diversifying your traffic sources!)
Here's what I would do first:
- Stop fiddling with boxes in the WP admin if you're not sure what they do. For instance, I can tell you for certain that NOODP and NOYDIR will have zero impact on ranking since they're rather obscure meta description directives that you probably do actually want to keep checked, and which have no impact on Google ranking. But you didn't know that, and some of those other options can affect site indexing. You don't know what you don't know, and that worries me a bit.
- **If you don't still own the old domain, repurchase it immediately. This is absolutely imperative. **
- Apply a 301 redirect** from each page of your old domain to the most relevant page on the new one. You'll probably need to hire someone to do this for you. It may require some time and research to reconstruct the old site enough to pull a complete list of its URLs, which is really what needs to be done. Hard to say how much work that will be without really digging into it.
- It seems like you're getting overwhelmed by a lot of technical details without a good understanding of SEO's most basic concepts. So while your hired gun is working on the 301 issue, read the Beginner's Guide to SEO.
I wouldn't expect this to be a miracle resurrection, but it would be a solid start, and you're about to learn a lot about how this all works. Good luck, and keep us posted.
**In layman's terms, a 301 is basically a signpost that says "the page you're looking for is over here, and now I'm going to take you there." It's the technical name for what happens when you type one URL and it takes you to a different one. A 301 redirect is not just for users, but also for search engines. My guess is that when you moved your site, because the 301 redirects were never set up, it's basically like you left no forwarding address. You didn't get to take any of your backlinks or domain authority with you, and all of that is hugely important for maintaining rankings after a site move.
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Hello--not sure how to assign your credentials vs giving you my administrative credentials...make sense?
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I think I would need to look at the backend to help you further. Do you mind sending me your WP credentials to hello@solvid.co.uk?
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Thank you so much for your in depth explanation. I wanted to further expand on some of your points with some links to social media. AGAIN--I appreciate so much you taking the time to look deeper into my site set up: (let me know if I should post this as a new thread, OR contact MOZ or SEO professional for paid service explanation.
these are all things I did LAST night from the Genesis SEO settings:
1.SITEWIDE SETTINGS: Section Headlines - checked "use semantic HTML5", Document Title-checked "add site name to <title>"</p> <p>2. HOMEPAGE SETTINGS: <strong>Document Title - </strong>field blank, but checked "add site description (tagline)...<strong>Meta Description, Meta Keywords = </strong>nothing. <strong>Robot MetaTags</strong> - I UNCHECKED no-index,no-follow, no-archive (all 3 WERE checked from previous designer set up)</p> <p>3. DOCUMENT HEAD SETTINGS: left <strong>Relationship</strong>, <strong>Windows Live</strong>, and <strong>Shortlink</strong> blank</p> <p>**4. ROBOTS META SETTINGS: <strong>Indexing</strong> were all checked, I CHECKED no index to TAG ARCHIVES per your advice, <strong>Archiving</strong> <strong>all </strong>unchecked, **<strong>DIRECTORIES</strong> were ALL CHECKED, but i unchecked both <em>noodp</em> and <em>noydir </em></p> <p><em>-just set up Google Analytics last night. Not sure why it stopped completely in February, before my site traffic picked up and I was never optimized or changed settings like i just did per your advice. </em></p> <p><em>-What ar H1 and 301? </em>again, sorry for my lack of knowledge, but my blog manager left me high and dry after setting everything up. Hence, me signing up on site, paying, and hoping to get some answers on whats wrong...I've included a screenshot of my WP stats so you can see real time organic traffic. </p> <p>Here's my FB page that shows all the views on posts. I can't attach the image of WP stats, but i have over 5,000 unique visitors thus far in April. Not great, but surely enough to put me on map. Unless sabotage from back end of WP site SEO settings. </p> <p>https://www.facebook.com/hellowhitney1/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel</p> <p> </p></title>
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Hi,
I did a quick check, your website is indexed by Google and you don't seem to have nofollow/noindex issues nor robots.txt issue with your Home Page. However, I can see that you are using noindex tags on some other pages like life, style and health. This may be the cause.
Also, I can see that your website isn't really optimised, that includes page titles (they are too short and don't target specific keywords), some pages have very short meta descriptions and is missing on some pages, you have multiple H1 on some pages, etc.
Also, I can't see Google Analytics set-up on this new website. Did you or your developer put 301 redirect from the old site to the new one?
I would advise you to remove noindex tags, configure your GA, optimise your site internally and you should be good to go.
Please read Moz's beginners guide to SEO
I hope this helps!
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