Google loves my main site but hates blog area

[samwest]

I still run my old html site which consists of 70 pages. My sitemap is digested and indexed completely for that site. I have a blog that is related to my site, residing in a /m directory and has about 273 pages. The problem is, Google won't index but 1 page of that 273. The one page they do index is unrelated to the entire site, but strangely popular to the world at large (it's about how to get rid of a certain type of bug)

My question is: why are they so adverse to index the blog?

I'd love to get rid of the old html site and combine all content, but I'm afraid they'd end up indexing nothing. Any advice? TIA

[RedBar]

My question is: why are they so adverse to index the blog?

I hope you get an answer to this since I have also experienced this on several WP blogs all with unique content and images.

Initially Google indexed them all and then over a period of months simply removed most of the pages and images.

Have you tried Blogger, Google loves its own platform?

[londrum]

do you have things like tag pages, category pages and date archives? maybe your posts are being repeated word-for-word on all of those, and google sees them as duplicate content

[samwest]

I've been very careful to delete any unused categories, tags and have optimized the database using a popular plugin. I run all the essentials, wordfence, yoast and the like and have many green light SEO'd pages. No duplicate content warnings in wmt. also running a dupe checker and broken link checker. It's squeaky clean...maybe too clean?
If I search the exact page title, it's there and includes my G+ author photo. Yet in wmt, it says 273 submitted, 1 indexed. weird wild stuff.
No penetration whatsoever in the serps for the blog. BTW - the main site is 14 years old.

BTW2 - the reason for the blog was to have a more friendly user experience for mobile users. There are some general duplications and some rehash, although not verbatim. Perhaps I need to redirect users the moment they enter the site. Mobile to /m, desktop to the root.
Just guessing.

BTW3 - and no errors reported in sitemap or crawling.

[edited by: samwest at 3:14 pm (utc) on Jul 2, 2014]

[netmeg]

Are your users actually engaging with the blog?

I had an ecommerce client who put up a blog, and it was nicely done, but nobody really went there, or commented, or engaged with it. They just stayed on the ecommerce part. And the blog never went anywhere in Google so eventually we took it down. And I'm reasonably sure it's because Google could tell users weren't interested in it.

[samwest]

@netmeg - Thanks for the reply. I agree, the one page that is indexed has 140 comments (not spam). The problem is, how can users engage the blog when they never find it? Users can't engage the html site by commenting, but it ranks highly across the board in my niche and gets decent daily traffic.
I'm guessing (dangerously) that if I merge the 70 pages of content in the root into the CMS and move it all to root, I might stand a better chance of getting users re-engaged on a modern, dynamic platform. That would make sense...but is it riskier than just sitting on my hands? It would also require a mind numbing amount of 301 redirects. (at least for my mind) :)

[not2easy]

@samwest -

Perhaps I need to redirect users the moment they enter the site. Mobile to /m, desktop to the root.
Just guessing.

Bad idea, users don't like landing on the exact search results page they wanted and ending up on the mobile version's home page. Read about other mobile version mistakes from Google: [developers.google.com...]

[netmeg]

The problem is, how can users engage the blog when they never find it?

Are you sure they want to? You need to promote it through other channels, and see how they respond. Google ranks (already) popular sites, they're not trying to make sites popular. You're not going to be able to use a (new) blog to drive traffic to an already popular site, but you might be able to use the site to drive traffic to the blog (if that's really your end goal - I'm not sure what your end goal is, here)

[Sirajul]

samwest-
Did you check for index for www.yoursite.com or yoursite.com for indexing. As Google index now differs for this two. I have face this problem- my blog was submitted and also installed as www.mysite.com , after a while I moved my blog to different hosting, then a fresh installation done as mysite.com / . After a while I saw my index downgrade to ~340 to just 4.

Then I went through some search and got this idea. Submitted my site in google webmaster tools as mysite.com. After several days I found my index is 400~.

If you already know, you can try to find the google index- in google. com, search field- site:yoursite.com/

Thanks

[lucy24]

Yet in wmt, it says 273 submitted, 1 indexed. weird wild stuff.

Make sure you're asking about a problem that actually exists, as opposed to what wmt is telling you. There are constant threads about wmt saying A while the reality is B. In fact I think the most recent discussion is specifically about sitemaps.

[netmeg]

True. All my pages are indexed, but on some of my sites Google says 0 in GMT and that the sitemap is still pending. For months.

[farmboy]

How's a blog compare to, say, Twitter, engaging users? Or put another way, which is more able to attract visitors to a site?


FarmBoy

[FranticFish]

They're too different IMO to compare in that way.

Twitter is for networking and drives traffic (to a blog perhaps), plus you can pick up links off Tweets that are aggregated on other sites. It's marketing / PR and is time-specific. Stop tweeting, stop networking, you'll eventually end up forgotten.

Blogging or other forms of publishing on your own property leaves pages in place permanently to be indexed permanently. If an article proves popular then you can have rankings and traffic for years after its publication. Plus, the effect is cumulative; as each month goes by then (so long as you have enough link equity to support a growing number of pages) your traffic grows.

You really need to do both these days. Blog / publish so your visitors have something good to read, and network to get the eyeballs on it that could lead to links / shares / subscribes etc.

[wallarookiller]

Perhaps I need to redirect users the moment they enter the site. Mobile to /m, desktop to the root.
Just guessing.

Never do this. Personally nothing makes me back out (real bounce rate) and choose a different choice than this.