Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I've tried to be as comprehensive as possible but will respond to clarify if asked for more info.
Wondering if we've been hit with a penalty, we're being subject to black hat to push us down the ranks or maybe we need to be more competitive
The Situation:
Our site does not rank in Google SERPs for some searches like DOMAINNAME KEYWORD
History:
Our site used to rank first or second for searches like DOMAINNAME KEYWORD
The site was the originator in its field and was opened for business in 2007. The basic site structure has not changed since then.
The blog was hacked twice about a year apart with spammy pharmaceutical ads being inserted. Both times we were alerted to this by Google. The last time was over 6 months ago. Back then site was dropped from SERPS but was reinstated after informing Google we'd removed the hack. However, the SERPs positions have never recovered. We wrote requesting review a few months ago to no avail. The first time we ere hacked there was no problem after being reincluded.
Site structure & content:
The site hosts a WordPress blog an osCommerce store selling related goods. The blog is in the root and the store is in the /store/ subdirectory.
Domain name is like: DOMAINNAME.com. The name is formed by joining two words, DOMAIN and NAME, together. One word is English, the other not.
There are few outgoing links from the blog and only three from the store (to payment and shipping provider and another non-adult store).
The store's links are like http://www.DOMAINNAME.com/store/KEYWORDS-p-123.html.
The store interface has multiple languages and currencies.
Product descriptions are translated for only two languages. Selecting other languages changes the standard interface language elements (e.g. "login", "add to cart", etc.) with product titles and descriptions, menus etc. displayed in English.
This results in a multitude of different URLs often with identical content. We aren't using canonical meta-tags or 301 redirects in use to deliver unique URLs for the different language and currency combinations. (I'm wondering about any duplicate content implications here).
Site has an affiliate program with inbound links like http://www.DOMAINNAME.com/store/KEYWORDS-p-123.html?aa_id=123 etc.
We have do not use a sitemap as the site is easily spiderable and Google webmaster tools reports no crawling errors. The robots.txt file is empty.
We have another store running the exact same osCommerce code (same languages and currencies) but don’t have this problem at all. On that site there is no blog and the store is in the domain root.
Keywords/SERPs:
As stated above the site does not rank in Google SERPs for searches like DOMAINNAME KEYWORD
Sites that link to our site rank ahead of us in SERPs.
The site ranks first for DOMAINNAME and DOMAIN NAME. SERPS shows 8 subcategories from the blog above the "more results from DOMAINNAME.com" link for both these searches.
The site ranks first for about 60% of exact product name searches (without quotes and without the domain name) but not in top 100 for others.
The non-ranking keywords are priced in Google Adwords in the tens of cents whereas others are priced at five cents (presumably others are targeting these keywords).
There are a few other direct competitors on domains like KEYWORD.com
Page Rank:
Both the blog landing page and store landing pages are PR 3. Other store pages typically show Firefox TBPR 0 (white) or grey.
Other Information:
We don't use AdWords.
We are open to restructuring the site such as moving the blog to a sub-directory or another domain and/or moving the store to the root directory. If we do this, what's the best way to handle redirects for the store?
[edited by: tedster at 2:36 pm (utc) on Oct. 2, 2009]
It also can save googlebot a lot of crawl budget, and that can result in more frequent and deeper crawls, as well as eliminating the duplicate issues and filtering plus the splitting of link juice.
[edited by: tedster at 1:54 pm (utc) on Oct. 20, 2009]
I realized that our site didn't have DOMAINNAME anywhere in the human-readable text (i.e. excluding image and anchor tags etc.).
We were only showing DOMAIN NAME (two words) in human readable text but sites ahead of us in the searches all display our URLs in readable text as well as in anchor tags. I've added the domainname and and canonical URL to the footer of each page and will wait to see what happens.
I've searched the archives but can't find any recent filter=0 related posts.
Is this a sign of duplicate content? Any suggestions on how to improve things will be appreciated.
Also, we had some articles written and posted by an SEO company. Within days a couple of these articles were appearing in top 10 SERPs for "domainname keyword "searches but there's been no improvement in the site ranking.
We have another store running the exact same osCommerce code
Does the store share the exact same products, and product titles or descriptions?
As stated above the site does not rank in Google SERPs for searches like DOMAINNAME KEYWORD
Does the website rank in position one for
domainname
domainname.com
When you search site:domainname.com does your index page, or home page show up in position 1?
Have you copied a unique snippet of text from the homepage, and placed in quotes in Google. When you do this, what do you see?
Does the store share the exact same products, and product titles or descriptions?
No. The stores sell different products, with their own titles and descriptions. The store system is the same with the main similarities being the GUI layout, URL formats, language options and a few pages of boilerplate text (terms and conditions, shipping info, privacy policy, etc.) with the store name changed as needed.
Does the website rank in position one fordomainname
domainname.com
Yes
When you search site:domainname.com does your index page, or home page show up in position 1?
Yes.
Have you copied a unique snippet of text from the homepage, and placed in quotes in Google. When you do this, what do you see?
Our site in first in SERPs for unique text from home page, product pages and product titles. Site is not on first page when I Google the title of a product commonly available on other sites.
