Can't understand poor rankings

[ColeLusby]

I've looked at the following:

• your DA and PA of home page is at the same level if not better than your competitors.
• your website speed is fine.
• you don't have any backlinks that are spammy.
• Your on-site optimization is good
• you have good content
• your site is visually appealing so it can't be CTR and bouncing.
• you appear to have good indexation
• your robots.txt file isn't the issue

Man, I'm very curious as to what others say. How long have you owned that domain? Could it be that someone previously had it and received a penalty?

ETA:

*the site that appear to rank higher than you have part of the keyword search query in their domain name but this isn't a "be all" scenario. So that can't FULLY be it either. It doesn't explain why you don't show up on second or third page.

*I didn't see you on the second or third page of "coffee vending machines south africa." I really wonder if this site has had a penalty before.

Have you ever disavowed any backlinks in GWT before? If so, what sites?

[MikeAquaspresso]

Thanks for the thorough attempt nope always owned it

[MikeAquaspresso]

Hi Cole

sorry saw the rest of you reply now. Yes in the last year disavowed a lot of spammy backlinks but it seems like they have not been excluded.

We had an seo a few years ago do some bad stuff and done 2 disavows since the  which seems to have helped a little

[ColeLusby]

Yeah I wonder if your domain name has been given a manual penalty.

I would do a reconsideration request now - (having done the two disavows already).

GWT will still show those links that have been disavowed. Don't let that worry you - they've still been disavowed.

[MikeAquaspresso]

Thanks Cole.

I do that in GWT right?

Mike

[ColeLusby]

Here is how to do a reconsideration request:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35843?hl=en

which should lead you to this page:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration?pli=1 where you'll check the manual penalty.

I hope this helps you guys.

[Chris661]

First check GWMT and see if you have received  a Manual Penalty. You cannot file a reconsideration request if you have not received a Manual Penalty. I don't think you have since using the operator site:http://www.aquaspresso.co.za/ you show up indexed for 5240 pages. That seems like there may be some duplicate content Panda issue. Wordpress may be causing duplicates with incorrect category/tag settings. I see you have Yoast and this is a good way to manage this. Also Woo Commerce and I think Yoast has a plugin specific to Woo Commerce. Hoping someone with more knowledge chimes in, but 5250 pages seems odd.

[MikeAquaspresso]

Hi Chris

i did notice the 5000+ pages but can't located where they come from

I can get as far as 230 and then it just ends but it does return the result 5000+ still

Not really sure how to resolve that

[MickEdwards]

check you have a cumulative disavow file and not just overwritten the 1st disavow with the 2nd.

[Chris661]

I think it will be a taxonomy issue. Go to your Wordpress dashboard and seo (Yoast). Click on "Tiles and Metas" and make sure meta robots noindex, follow is checked for categories and tags. Woo Commerce probably creates additional taxonomies which need to be set the same. Also click on "other" and set author archives and date archives disable and noindex, follow. I see author archives "Yossil" is creating duplicate pages. You need to learn the Yoast settings I think and you will get rid of these duplicate pages. It is not straight forward by any means, but worth the time.

[MikeAquaspresso]

Thank you I will try this and let you know how it has worked out