Tried to improve SEO - the page rank in google got worse
I want to share with everybody what happened when I tried to boost my Drupal page rank in google.
I used the following modules: page title, pathauto, global redirect and XML sitemap.
Before my SEO tricks my site came fifth in the google search results (when searched with the name of the site).
After a week my site came first in the google search result. However, after couple of weeks it was fifth and now it's tenth!
So I wonder what has happened. All the trouble with the modules and now my ranking is sinking!! I read that duplicate content can hurt page rank but I thought using global redirect would eliminate the duplicate content issue. Has anyone any suggestions on what I should check related to duplicate content issue or something else that could cause this? I based my SEO tricks on this article althought it now seems to be unreachable: http://devbee.com/drupal_seo
Thanks!
did the pagerank of your site go down?
It doesn't sound like you did anything wrong. Did the pagerank of your site go down or did the pagerank of the other sites go up?
You can use Google Webmaster
You can use Google Webmaster Tools to check if there's problems with duplicate content or 404 errors etc, but it won't tell you if it's a different reason your site is sinking. Try it and see what it says though.
PR
What keywords are you trying to rank for? What is your site? How long has it been online?
Try these SEO tips.
Don't worry about the PageRank numbers in your toolbar. They dont mean much,
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If your site is relatively
If your site is relatively new or undergoing large changes it will fluctuate ALOT so if that is the case do not be alarmed. Google (and other SE's) will place you where you would fit within the algorithm as far as SEO goes to test your site in the waters, if it gets good attention then you may place there again later, if not then you may sink
Vision Media - Victoria BC Web Design
Ok, thanks for the tips! I
Ok, thanks for the tips! I noticed some problems with my sitemap via google webmaster tools. I got a warning:
URLs not followed
When we tested a sample of the URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot because they contained too many redirects. Please change the URLs in your Sitemap that redirect and replace them with the destination URL (the redirect target). All valid URLs will still be submitted.
So, trying to fix that and see does it affect anything..
And my site is http://www.sitemedia.fi and I'm measuring rank when I run "sitemedia" in google.. It has been online about three months.
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http://www.sitemedia.fi
1. Change the homepage title
1. Change the homepage title element of your Sitemedia site to this:
<title>Kotisivut, webkyselyt, keskustelufoorumit | Sitemedia</title>2. Change the text on your home page from text that is embedded in images to regular HTML text and make sure the word sitemedia appears a few times in the text. Search engines can't read text that is embedded in images. For an example, go here to see how search engines view your site. You'll see that search engines can't read the word sitemedia anywhere.
3. Wait 3 weeks. Your site should then appear on the front page of Google for "sitemedia". It's not a competitive keyword so you should be able to rank for it if you follow those tips.
You can uninstall the XML Sitemap module. I don't think it's going to matter on your site.
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Hmm 3 months is a generous
Hmm 3 months is a generous amount of time. A few obvious tips would be:
I could go on for a while :P but anyways you might want to check out the Drupal SEO Tutorial which has a link to a screencast that may help you out.
Vision Media - Victoria BC Web Design
meta tags
Meta tags don't help with rankings. The other two issues can be a factor, but generally only on very large sites where Googlebot is only going to grab a certain amount of data per crawl. In those cases, making the page sizes smaller should presumably enable Googlebot to crawl more pages before it reaches its limit for your site.
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Of course you would still
Of course you would still get indexed regardless, however with a slow site like that having your crucial content higher in the markup will speed things up. Yes some metatags are/have died away, however I would still consider many relevant such as description of course, not necessarily for SE's but for the users search themselves.
Vision Media - Victoria BC Web Design
PS. im jealous that you live
PS. im jealous that you live in Honolulu !
Vision Media - Victoria BC Web Design
Thanks for the tips
I'll be working on it..
http://www.sitemedia.fi
What to do with deleted content?
If I have deleted pages from my site (stupid me), what would be the preferred way to deal with it?
Just wait?
Or maybe do some redirecions (but that would be lead to duplicate content, I guess)?
Does google penalize if site has site not found errors.
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http://www.sitemedia.fi
Using the Google webmaster
Using the Google webmaster tools you can submit a URL that no longer exists, but otherwise yes if it is indexed I am positive googlebot will penalize you slightly for having 'live' 404s
Tj Holowaychuk
Vision Media - Victoria BC Web Design
Victoria British Columbia Web Design School
path redirect
Create a path redirect to the best place using a 301 redirect. That way you don't lose any traffic they were getting from links/bookmarks/search engines, you drive that traffic to an appropriate place, and there is no duplicate content penalty for a 301.
You can use Apache (.htaccess, httpd.conf) redirects for a slight performance improvement over path_redirect, though Apache redirects are somewhat more difficult to maintain.
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Open Prediction Markets | Drupal Dashboard
how many pages?
How many pages did you delete?
You can find the URLs that Google knows about by doing a query like:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Asitemedia.fi&num=100&filter=0
Make a list of the URLs and then either recreate the pages at the same URLs, or do 301 redirects to new versions.
You can also grep your logfiles for 404 errors, something like this:
grep '404' access_log > 404_errors.txtOr check out my logfile analysis tutorial
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