My homepage doesn't rank anymore. It's been replaced by irrelevant subpages which rank around 100-200 instead of top 5.

[wearetribe]

Hey guys,

I think I got some kind of penalty for my homepage. I was in top5 for my keywords. Then a few days ago, my homepage stopped ranking for anything except searching for my domain name in Google.

sitename.com/widget-reviews/ previously ranked #3 for "widget reviews"
but now....
sitename.com/widget-training-for-pet-cats/ is ranking #84 for widget reviews instead.

Similarly across all my other keywords, irrelevant, wrong pages are ranking.

Did I get some kind of penalty?

[KeriMorgret]

Knowing your URL would help, but I can understand if you don't want to share it here (you can create a private question and share it there if you like). Have you checked Google Webmaster Tools for any notices?

Has anyone recently done work on your site, where there might have been an unnoticed change to the code that put in the wrong canonical tag, or added a noindex tag?

[wearetribe]

Hi Keri! I did have a potential buyer of the site who cursed me out because I didn't accept his lowball price... Maybe something could have happened, but seems unlikely that one person could sabotage my site... I hope.

I haven't received any notices in webmaster tools. In fact this happened to another site of mine as well after I did a redesign. All my rankings disappeared after about 2 weeks of the new design, and instead google started ranking irrelevant subpages instead of the homepage which was in top 3 or #1 for many keywords.

I can confirm that there is no wrong caninical or noindex, etc.

[EGOL]

I would be checking the SERPs to see if there is duplicated content on a more powerful domain.

[wearetribe]

Already done but good idea, thanks! No duplicate content detected by copyscape.

[loopyal]

Ian,

what happens if you search for your keyword, go to the very end of the SERPS and click the link that searches again, but this time allowing the hidden results?

Does your main page appear then, and is it about the same position it used to be?

[AlanMosley]

Really do need a url to help

[wearetribe]

Great idea - I have checked that way, and my main page is not in the results.

I did see that someone I know personally to have done some weird shady things to me before has filed a DMCA notice to have a site removed from results. I checked it out on ChillingEffects.org and it doesn't include details about what site was removed, etc.... Also I checked in my webmaster tools and there is no message about it.

[wearetribe]

You're right Alan. The URL is www.ipage-reviews.com and I must explain that it's much higher quality content than my competitors. It's a relatively new site so it's not my favorite or highest quality of the sites I work on... So please don't just say oh your site is filtered because it's not high quality.... The competing sites make this look like wikipedia...

[loopyal]

Ian,

The site looks good.

This isn't the problem, but you should redirect index.html and .htm to the home page, as you do with .php

Your home page author and description are both empty

• actually, you have two descriptions - the first one is empty, the second is OK

If you have blogs, remember to set up a DMCA page.

[AlanMosley]

Apart from thje usual wordpress problems that would not accoubt for a sudden loss of rankings i could not find anything wrong, I thonk youir problem may lay off page, did you ever buy links?

[wearetribe]

Nope I haven't bought links but I have asked people for links and written them articles in return or done other odd jobs for them. I just checked my links and I see some weird stuff that looks like scraper sites or something, linking to me. Could that cause a homepage to stop ranking at all?

[wearetribe]

Thank you for the suggestions - I will implement those today. One thing I don't get though is how to set up a DMCA page. Can you tell me more about that? I researched but I can only find info on how to file dmca complaints etc.

What's a DMCA page?

[loopyal]

hello Ian.

Here is my DMCA

http://bit.ly/HpEVTA

To do this, you need to pay the Copyright office to register your choice.

My DMCA agent is a lawyer, but you can do it yourself, if you want,

as long as there is correct address information that can be served with letters or papers.

What this does is give you a small amount of protection. If you are allowing third party submissions of stories or comments or photo uploads or you outsource content creation, you need this. It gives anyone with a complaint against you, a guaranteed way to contact you - but they have to comply with the rules too, so it can't be a frivolous complaint.