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Hi there,

To chime in, have you also considered trying heading into Google Search Console > Removals to submit a request for Google to clear a cached URL? This may be all that's needed, without further looking into it.

Hope this helps.

-Zack

Hi there,

To chime in, it's great that you've gotten many backlinks (hopefully, relevant, high quality backlinks), but many SEO professionals believe that there many more ranking factors -- some clearly stated by Google and others note.

Here's a link to the article people cite when discussing these 200 known ranking factors. Can I assume that you're aware of this?

https://backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors (no relation!)

Hope this helps.

Best,
Zack

Hi there!

I'd be happy to help, but am having trouble understanding the issue. Would you mind using Loom (or something similar) to record a quick video of yourself talking through the issue?

Best,
Zack

Hi there,

It's also worth mentioning that in addition to a possible need to disavow poor quality backlinks, you may have "lost" quality backlinks and / or your competitors may have gained backlinks. (Keep in mind that PA and DA also take competitive landscape into consideration.)

Hope this helps!

Zack

Yenu, I also find that occasionally, websites with poorer PA and DA rank higher than sites with weaker PA and DA. This certainly backs the point that these are Moz metrics and not Google metrics. That said, Moz professionals (good SEOs in general) would not encourage you to set goals to increase PA and DA, but rather set goals that bring the highest value to the website. In the SEO world, that could equate to more pages in the top 3 (or 5, or 10) position, which is not a Moz metric, but is straight from Google.

I hope this helps!

Zack

Hi Yenu,

Have you had an SEO professional conduct a formal SEO Site Audit to make recommendations on this? If not, I would strongly recommend it.

Best,
Zack

Hi there,

To chime in, just today we needed to look this up for a client. Here is what I believe to be a very helpful resource on this. (In short, yes, page load speed is a proven Google ranking factor.)

https://moz.com/learn/seo/page-speed

Hope this helps!

Best,
Zack

Hi there,

These can certainly take some time to be discovered. When did you obtain the backlinks? And can you ensure that they haven't been "lost"?

Much appreciated,

Zack

That is a solid answer, but to also chime in, Domain Authority is a Moz metric that largely increases and decreases depending on the number of backlinks a website has, and also takes into consideration the competitive landscape. So if your goal is to raise your Domain Authority score, you would want to start obtaining backlinks to your website.

Keep in mind that there are several ways to approach gaining backlinks, but doing so by getting your site listed in "bad link neighborhoods" can easily earn penalties in Google.

Hope this helps!

Zack

To chime in on this, DA and PA are Moz metrics, and are not only impacted by gain and loss of backlinks, but also take into consideration that of competitors. That said, there's a good chance that if you did not lose backlinks and saw a decrease, that your competitors gained backlinks during this period.

Is this helpful?

-Zack

Hi there,

In Google Search Console, are you aware that there is a "Clear Cached URL" option in Removals, that allows one to "Keep URL(s) in Google Search results, just clear current snippet and cached version until the next crawl."? Here is more information, just in case it's helpful:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9689846#clear_cache_request (You may already be aware of this)

While I don't know for sure, I would merit a guess that a previous title and meta description are displaying on these pages, and Google needs to know to refresh them. (Even if that guess is not correct, this may resolve the issue, actually.)

Does this help at all?

Best,
Zack

Hi there,

You may already be aware of this, but did you know that the search results change depending on where you are located, geographically? For example, we have a client in San Jose, California, US. If he searches for "electronic engineering" while in San Jose, he'll see their business near the top. If his cousin searches for it in Seattle however, different local businesses will display.

Does this help?

Best,
Zack

My pleasure. I agree, and honestly think it may be a newer feature in GSC, as I just noticed it for one of our client's needs today, and thought of your open question.  Hope to hear how this goes -- no pressure of course.

-Zack

Hi there,

In GSC, are you aware that there is a "Clear Cached URL" option in Removals, that allows one to "Keep URL(s) in Google Search results, just clear current snippet and cached version until the next crawl."? Here is more information, just in case it's helpful:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9689846#clear_cache_request (You may already be aware of this)

While I don't know for sure, I would merit a guess that changing the snippet's title and description would certainly change the clickthrough on it, and possibly alter the positioning as well if it has changed enough between other ranking factors.

Does this help at all?

Best,
Zack

Hi James,

Here are the steps I take to get around the issue I believe you're also experiencing:

• Toggle open MozBar
• See the text "Improve your MozBar experience. Please unblock 3rd Party Cookies, or allow [*.]moz.com in your Cookie settings. Learn more"
• Click the cog icon
• Click Login in the bottom right
• Login to Moz
• If the bar hasn't logged you in yet, click the now available login in the MozBar.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Zack

Hi there,

For years I've experienced a small quirk with the MozBar, where Google Chrome seems to prevent me from using it, unless I go a different route.

Are you seeing the following message in the MozBar itself? If so, I can talk you through getting around this.

"Improve your MozBar experience. Please unblock 3rd Party Cookies, or allow [*.]moz.com in your Cookie settings. Learn more"

-Zack

Hi there!

One recommendation I'd have right off the bat is using the (free) MozBar to take a look at the inbound links pointing to the website. If this website is in "bad link neighborhoods" it would be helpful to get rid of  any backlinks from spammy sources. Have you taken this step?

Best,
Zack

Thank you everyone. Taking a look further, I found that:

- Google Analytics shows that this old domain used to get traffic, for years, but back in January of this year, the traffic more or less came to a halt. I suspect this is approximately when a former SEO put in 301 redirects for this domain, and Google recognized it.

- And in a site:{domain.com} search in Google, along the same lines, I found that only one page is currently being crawled -- the homepage.

- BUT in an advanced search in Google, there are 171 mentions of "{domain}.com" in Google still. While many of these are mentions of the owner's email address, this leads to recommending hanging onto the old domain, especially if it is inexpensive.

- AND in Moz Pro, I can see that while there is certainly not much happening with the old domain, it does have some link equity, which is being passed to the main new domain name.

Conclusion

With all this said, I told the client that the bottom line is that I've looked into the potential value of this domain, and do feel it's worth hanging onto -- especially if it is relatively inexpensive.

Thanks again, so much, for chiming in on this one. Should anyone else have any vastly different suggestions, I'm all ears.

Zack Barton
Barton Interactive
(833) 442.6853 // office
(408) 910.7750 // mobile
https://bartoninteractive.com