Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
The site sat there on a subdirectory of a domain that I was developing for another totally different type of site, so I transferred my site to a different domain but left the same exact site up at the original domain.
The site on the new domain was listed in dmoz and the google directory, and both domains were getting linked to by several sites and some 'authority' sites on this topic, through no doing of my own. At this point I noticed Page 1 results on google for the main search term of the niche, I was
happy but this is not a popular search word and didn't deliver much traffic.
Months, years passed and I pretty much left this site alone. Recently I realized that It is #1 for it's main search term on Yahoo and delivering traffic that I now figured out how to use properly.
I figured if I was performing so well in Yahoo I'd for sure not be doing too bad in google as well, remembering my page 1 result a year or so earlier.
But searching for this term now in google, I am way back in the 150 range which might as well be 1 million for this niche.
The page is still extremley relevant and full of useful content, if it weren't on page 1 it should still rank close to that, so my only thought is it must have been penalized.
The site existed on two seperate domains, would this be a dupe content penalty and is that why my site is nowhere close to where it should be in google?
If so, what is (if possible) the best way to 'un-do' this and get my site listed properly again?
I have edited the old page , just with a text description and a link to the 'new ' domain, as this old domain still has several links and some traffic coming to it.
I also used a meta robots tag to dissallow indexing of the old domain. Now, a search for the old domain/directory shows it not listed in google anymore.
Is this something that will 'un-do' on it's own, in time, or will that have absolutely no effect on the situation?
Thanks
>The site existed on two seperate domains, would this be a dupe content penalty and is that why my site is nowhere close to where it should be in google?
The page with the best pr and/or more relevant links in should be ranking highest for duplicate content. Eitherway, google should choose one or the other to rank well.
>I also used a meta robots tag to dissallow indexing of the old domain. Now, a search for the old domain/directory shows it not listed in google anymore.
So now you are getting no benefit from the sites that link to the old domain (and then would have passed on benefit to the new).
If you have dmoz links to your new domain you should rank fairly well. I doubt that there is a duplicate content issue, unless many other sites have nicked your copy. Search in quotes on google for chunks of text and see if you come up or if other sites have used your copy. Look at your back links on alltheweb doing a link:yourdomain.com search. Are they good quality or just endless links pages/directories? A few text rich pages linking to you about the subject may be required to give you the boost you need. Unless you have over spammed the target keywords on your page, then links in is probably the key to your poor ranking, even in a non competitive search.
Do a site:yourdomain.com search on google and check to see if the spider is picking up all your pages. If not, they are seeing a one page site which may be the problem.
Get a few deep links into your site.
This may be the case, the site is from 2001 and at the time it was a daily journal type site updated on a regular basis from date A to Date B and then ended for good on a certain date. This was all done on 1 single page.
The page is quite long and full of rich text, keywords occuring naturally.
Now, do I update the page and spread it over a few or several pages - and how would I be sure that I wouldn't lose #1 on Yahoo by doing this? I guess there's no way to tell.
I agree. Whack some new pages up, preferably around 10. Put 5 navigation links on the home page to 5 pages and then 'breadcrumb' links to deeper pages. Link each page back to the home page. Don't do anything too rash but 'slowly slowly catch your monkey'. Everything in moderation and be patient :)
