Need help with my "ghost" blog...
-
...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
-
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.
-
Hello--not sure how to assign your credentials vs giving you my administrative credentials...make sense?
-
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?
-
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>
-
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!
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
-
"Not enough data for selected time period" - Google My Business Insights
Hello All, Has anyone come across the following message "Not enough data for selected time period" when they choose a time frame in Google My Business (GMB) for one week. It seems to be consistent with "Customer Actions" and "Where Customers View Your Business on Google sections. I'm confused because I am pulling in a minimum of 500 searches a week according to the "How customers search for your business" section. I can scroll over top of each day in these areas and manually write down the results, but what's the point of offering a 'one week" insight if it won't calculate for you. If anyone has had the same issue or knows what's going on, please let me know. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | MainstreamMktg1 -
How to Diagnose "Crawled - Currently Not Indexed" in Google Search Console
The new Google Search Console gives a ton of information about which pages were excluded and why, but one that I'm struggling with is "crawled - currently not indexed". I have some clients that have fallen into this pit and I've identified one reason why it's occurring on some of them - they have multiple websites covering the same information (local businesses) - but others I'm completely flummoxed. Does anyone have any experience figuring this one out?
Reporting & Analytics | | brettmandoes2 -
Longterm wordpress blog not providing seo benefit to main site - help needed please
Hi I have a bigcommerce ecommerce store, with a Wordpress blog on a subdomain. The store and blog have been active for four years, the blog is regularly updated with original content, has many links to the store, is promoted regularly via my brand's social media channels and mailing list, and has the simplest SEO basics covered via a Yoast SEO plugin. But the store sees very little, if any, SEO benefit from the blog. My question is: based on this information, and the details below, is there an issue with the connection between the blog and main site in SEO terms? And if there is, how can I start fixing it? Further info: 1 In my Moz dashboard for the store site, the blog does not show at all as providing any inbound links or linking domains 2 Google Analytics also shows zero referral traffic to the store site from the blog since April 2015 3 Moz crawl issues is flagging ‘duplicate page content issues’ for pretty much every page of the blog, and the analysis provided suggests this may be related to tags but I have only basic SEO knowledge and am fast getting out of my depth here. 4 I have today altered the settings within the Yoast plugin on the blog to ‘noindex’ for Tags, Meta Robots, based on advice I have found in this section but am already well over my head and unsure even this is correct. An agency have been running SEO for the store since 2012 but since uncovering how little they have done in this time for the money paid, I am now taking matters back into my own hands. However I am on a very steep learning curve and this one is beyond me right now - please does anyone have any suggestions where I can start looking to uncover the root issue? Any guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated Thanks very much and hope to hear from someone!
Reporting & Analytics | | Warren_331 -
What is the "UPDATE" indicate in the Google Search Console Query Reports?
We recently noticed an update note in the Google Search Console that happened on April 27th. Does this denote an algorithm update? Any feedback or article would really be helpful. Thanks! gfQ8FG9.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB0 -
Google Analytics is treating my blog like all the content is just on the home page.
Hello all, I installed Google Analytics on a main website and a blog (blog.travelexinsurance.com) While it appears to be tracking correctly (and when I test it in real time it shows that I'm visiting) but it is treating the entire blog as though it's one page. So I can't see data on blog post X. All I see is that X visitors came to my blog in aggregate. So I see blog.travelex.com has 999 visitors, but it doesn't show that /travel-luggage got 50 visits, while /insurace-tips got 75 and so forth. I assume I screwed up the tracking somehow, but can't figure out where I went wrong. Tracking on the main domain works just fine. It's specific to the blog.
Reporting & Analytics | | Patrick_G0 -
Hi all I want some help
Hi all I want some help can some one help what google dont like on this web site http://www.escort-munich.net/ [staff disclaimer: site is not safe for most workplaces] Escort München ist my keyowrds thancky very mutch all regards jivko
Reporting & Analytics | | jivkojelazkov0 -
Google Webmaster Tools is showing wrong data - help?
Hey all, I'm seeing some weird problems with Webmaster Tools. Specifically: We've submitted a sitemap with 174k URLs. According to the WMT dashboard, only 21 are indexed, though if you search our site via site:sitename.com blah blah, there are thousands of pages returned. Why is WMT only showing 21 indexed pages? Yet if I go to Health -> Index Status, it's showing nearly 199k URLs indexed. This seems consistent with searching Google site:sitename.com blah blah. Under "Search Queries", it's showing "no data available". Not sure why as it's linked to the proper Google Analytics account, which has keyword data. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong here? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | chimptech0 -
We lost great amount of Google Traffic. Need Expert Advice, Please!
We are in the business of selling home and commercial light fixtures for about 10 years now. Our website is a very large ecommerce website with more than 40K pages including category, sub-category and product pages. We have been getting decent organic traffic mostly from highly competitive keywords and also from product/solution specific long tail keywords. Recently when Google changed the EMD algo we have seen a dip in the traffic (say about 60%). I can't be so sure that this is because of EMD update, but it started happening only after this update. There has been a rank drop from 1st page to 2nd page, decrease in no. of keywords driving traffic, decrease in no. of pages driving traffic, all these things have an negative impact on our organic revenue. I know that our back link portfolio is bad and the reason behind this is the SEO companies that we previously worked with, Thanks to them for this sloppy work. Other than back links, Is there anything fundamentally wrong on our website. Here is the URL http://bit.ly/QVFHgr
Reporting & Analytics | | goldenageusa0