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    4. Home page mysteriously not ranking at all

    Home page mysteriously not ranking at all

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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    • Joes_Ideas
      Joes_Ideas last edited by

      Hey everyone, I'm baffled by a situation. I started working on www.hushabyephotography.com almost 3 months ago. The first thing I did was changed the address (was previously blog.hushabyephotography.com) and updated all of the links pointing from the old name to the new "www" and used 301 redirects for canonicalization. Have also built some additional links, added content to the site, and performed on-page optimization to rank for the primary key phrase "san diego newborn photography".

      But ranking is no where to be found, I searched for the key phrase, and at rank 190 is a random subpage, not even the home page. The listing had also disappeared from Google Places a few weeks ago after the client updated their listing (which I believe was the result of the known Places bug (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-you-may-need-to-hide-your-google-places-address-asap).

      I'm at a loss here for ideas, as I've never failed to at least have a site on the radar. There aren't any spam links so I don't think any penalties are the result.

      One last thing, it ranks on page 2 in both Bing and Yahoo...

      Please help me out Mozzers!!! 😕

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • DavidKonigsberg
        DavidKonigsberg last edited by

        I only see 1 link to your site using ahref and opensiteexlorer.com - It looks like you need to get more links

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • irvingw
          irvingw last edited by

          You rank for your company name so the site is not penalized at least

          Pages with no content is probably the biggest issue - this site needs content big time, sites like this won't rank well in a post panda world. Adding one sentence per page isn't enough

          Site needs better targeting/optimization as well

          Kill the blogroll links or at least nofollow them, recommend removing them, leaks PR, puts you at risk and takes users off of your site

          Lose the footer links makes it look like you're selling links for PR

          Joes_Ideas 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • Joes_Ideas
            Joes_Ideas @irvingw last edited by

            awesome answer!

            I'm actually working on a new home page with much more content to describe the service and pitch. And am trying to get the owner to write articles that provide value to clients/potentials.

            Good point on the outbounds... I didn't realize they could be that detrimental.

            irvingw 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • irvingw
              irvingw @Joes_Ideas last edited by

              get these out of the index - noindex,follow these pages

              http://www.hushabyephotography.com/waiting-for-sissy-san-diego-pregnancy-photographer/img_7876/

              https://www.google.com/#q=site:http://www.hushabyephotography.com/&hl=en&tbo=d&ei=jYC2ULqiGcXprQfrlIGoBw&start=120&sa=N&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=aa7a9b1de1b17414&bpcl=38897761&biw=1920&bih=909

              Also technical issue here with Gallery code:

              https://www.google.com/#q=site:http://www.hushabyephotography.com/&hl=en&tbo=d&ei=34C2UKzPF8eJrAev84CYBQ&start=184&sa=N&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=aa7a9b1de1b17414&bpcl=38897761&biw=1920&bih=909

              A plugin and or robots.txt and Google WMT URL removal requests will help you remove all of these pages you don't want Google to index.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Debdulal
                Debdulal last edited by

                I think you are over emphasizing the keyword – “San Diego Newborn Photographer”. Titles of almost all the individual blog posts start with one or two general words describing the photograph and then followed by the key phrase – “San Diego Newborn Photographer”. Would be great if you can add some varieties here.

                And add alt tags against the images [do not focus on keywords solely here; rather you should add descriptive alt tags here]. And create an image sitemap if you do not have one.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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