Blog posts not getting indexed anymore

by Ella
16 replies
  • SEO
  • |
Hi all,
I´ve been running a blog for a while and traffic has been increasing slowly. my blog posts have been indexed fast in the serps, in a matter on minutes often, but a couple of days ago I noticed that non of them had been indexed in the serps from december 6:th. the older ones are still there. Somewhere along the line there was some trouble with my sitemap (using wordpress and the google sitemap plugin), that might be the reason (I hope). Anyhow, have anyone here experience something like this and did you get indexed in the serps again at some point? I am trying to keep the motivation up and continue writing but it´s not easy...
thanks,
#anymore #blog #index #indexed #posts #serps #sitemap
  • Profile picture of the author abibakar
    I experienced this situation many times in the past, but from my point of view, that's get nothing to do with your Google sitemap, sitemap only assists Google to notice about new updates quicker, but not effecting on indexing process, thus, what happen to yours is usually because Google is updating its database, when Google updates its database its index shifts: Google find new sites, it lose some sites, and site rankings change. If our site was dropped from Google and we have not made major changes to it in the last month, Google will likely pick it up again in its next index. And for old pages, It's may be our site or pages are not available when robots visit, or the number of sites that link to your blog have decreased
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  • Profile picture of the author RebeccaL
    Dont lose motivaton, it has only been a few days. In the world of the web, 2 weeks is nothing. Just keep writing and posting and your blog will come back and the new pages will get indexed.
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  • Profile picture of the author Suzanne Morrison
    Are you social bookmarking your blog posts? If not register with OnlyWire.com or SocialMarker.com and bookmark each post.

    Do you have a wordpress blog that pings services automatically? If not, go to AutoPinger.com or somewhere like that and ping your blog after making an update.

    I usually find that my blog posts are indexed within a few minutes or so if I do the above.

    Another thing - are you writing unique posts or are you using reprint or PLR articles? You are probably going to get more traffic with unique content.

    It also makes sense to do a bit of keyword research before making a post. Pick a keyword phrase that has low competition and mention your keywords in the blog title and a couple of times in the blog post and this will help you to increase your traffic.

    Cheers,
    Suzanne
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  • Profile picture of the author chailak
    Originally Posted by eliel View Post

    Hi all,
    I´ve been running a blog for a while and traffic has been increasing slowly. my blog posts have been indexed fast in the serps, in a matter on minutes often, but a couple of days ago I noticed that non of them had been indexed in the serps from december 6:th. the older ones are still there. Somewhere along the line there was some trouble with my sitemap (using wordpress and the google sitemap plugin), that might be the reason (I hope). Anyhow, have anyone here experience something like this and did you get indexed in the serps again at some point? I am trying to keep the motivation up and continue writing but it´s not easy...
    thanks,
    3 Questions to you .

    1 - ) Are you using original content ?
    2 - ) Are you using duplicate titles or tags ?
    3 - ) Are you using any Blackhat methods for get good SERPs ?
    Signature
    Since 1453

    JUST A SIMPLE SEO WARRIOR
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  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Hi eliel,

    You have got some great advice from this thread already, but you should definitely try to rule out possibility of technical issues. If you host your own blog you can create an account at Googles' Webmaster Tools, add your site, get it verified and Google will give you detailed statistics on how they crawl your website. They will show you any issues their bot may have while crawling your site and allow you to control some of the aspects of how your website is indexed.
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    • Profile picture of the author Ella
      Thanks for all the advice, I think I might have been a bit to vague in my post. I got so many great answers I will qote some of them to be sure I answered you all.

      Originally Posted by longroad View Post

      Dont lose motivaton, it has only been a few days. In the world of the web, 2 weeks is nothing. Just keep writing and posting and your blog will come back and the new pages will get indexed.
      Thank you for the motivator. You are right, a couple of weeks is nothing, I guess you get spoiled when your system been running smoothly for some time.

      Originally Posted by Suzanne Morrison View Post

      Are you social bookmarking your blog posts? If not register with OnlyWire or SocialMarker and bookmark each post.

      Do you have a wordpress blog that pings services automatically? If not, go to AutoPinger.com or somewhere like that and ping your blog after making an update.

      I usually find that my blog posts are indexed within a few minutes or so if I do the above.

      Another thing - are you writing unique posts or are you using reprint or PLR articles? You are probably going to get more traffic with unique content.

      It also makes sense to do a bit of keyword research before making a post. Pick a keyword phrase that has low competition and mention your keywords in the blog title and a couple of times in the blog post and this will help you to increase your traffic.

      Cheers,
      Suzanne
      Hi Suzanne, I use wordpress on my own server and are pinging a bunch of services that I fond useful. I always do keyword search before my posts and are aiming for long tail keywords. I write my own content always, no duplicate at all.
      As far as social bookmarking goes I use it for backlinks, because the converting I get from social sites is not very great. The best converting traffic comes from the organic one. So I bookmark every now and then, but not nearly every post, I seems better to put my efforts elsewhere.
      I also found that if I write an interesting post or offer something for free I get a lot of backlinks from that, so that´s another reason to concentrate on the blog more. I write to article directories every now and then if there´s a reason, but the same thing there; my writings seem to do most use on the blog itself.

      I write in niche related forums from time to time to get a traffic boost from there. Works if you are active and have a good offer your sig.

      I use no black hat what so ever, no duplicate content, sold or bought links, I am working to follow googles guidelines, I actively follow what's debated in the google webmaster forum and read Matt Cutts blog (a google employee for for those who don´t know) regularly. It´s a totally basic concept, quality content mixed with affiliate and adsense, after trying all sorts of things, this is what pays off for me.

      Originally Posted by dburk View Post

      Hi eliel,

      You have got some great advice from this thread already, but you should definitely try to rule out possibility of technical issues. If you host your own blog you can create an account at Googles' Webmaster Tools, add your site, get it verified and Google will give you detailed statistics on how they crawl your website. They will show you any issues their bot may have while crawling your site and allow you to control some of the aspects of how your website is indexed.
      I use webmaster tools to its fullest, among other things I use it to follow how google is searching my site. It was there I found the errors in the indexing. As the sitemap goes, I told a bot about the trouble I had in my original post and the thing is that it was totally not loading plus there was a couple of broken links, so I changed page slugs/titles. One of my other sites just dropped totally once when I changed titles lugs and after some research I found that it´s quite common to get dropped for fundamental changes like that. So, I thought this might be the case, but maybe to a lesser degree in this case. Anyhow, as far as that other blog goes, I filed a request of reconsideration to google and the thing was solved within a week.

      So back to my original question, when it comes to getting indexed in the serps, have you ever experienced such a thing, from getting indexed very fast with your posts, to not getting indexed at all? In my case, my old blog posts is still doing well and my keyword positions remain the same. Did you get back after a while and in that case how, if the new ones got indexed again all of a sudden, what happened to the ones in between, did they get indexed finally too, or did the stay out of the serps?
      appreciate any feedback.
      thanks,
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  • Profile picture of the author James Schramko
    I have had sites disapear for a while and then come back. In this case it was the robots file that somehow got screwed up.

    Steps: I deleted the sitemap and re-did that This was an established site. I also added some new content pages and got a few links from articles and blogs with non keyword specific anchor text (because if this is too saturated you get dropped too).

    Then a week later it came back. The new rank is even higher than when it dropped out.
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    • Profile picture of the author JV3STUDIO
      Are people starting to link to your blog? Hopefully your content attracts other Bloggers to link to you but even big sites are actively building links so should you.

      Has your PR dropped? Is your blog being spidered as frequently as before?
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      • Profile picture of the author Ella
        Originally Posted by James Schramko View Post

        I have had sites disapear for a while and then come back. In this case it was the robots file that somehow got screwed up.

        Steps: I deleted the sitemap and re-did that This was an established site. I also added some new content pages and got a few links from articles and blogs with non keyword specific anchor text (because if this is too saturated you get dropped too).

        Then a week later it came back. The new rank is even higher than when it dropped out.
        Sounds like something simular that happened to me. I´m adding a few articles a day, so I´ll see what happens. Interesting about the anchor text. I am very aware of not having the same anchor text on all incoming links, google don´t approve of that, It´s clearly said in the google webmaster help forum. So having non keyword specific would be a safe way out. It might be one needs a few more, but it´s safer.

        Originally Posted by johan View Post

        Are people starting to link to your blog? Hopefully your content attracts other Bloggers to link to you but even big sites are actively building links so should you.

        Has your PR dropped? Is your blog being spidered as frequently as before?
        My PR has not dropped and I´m spidered just as often, it´s usually once a day. I get a bunch of inlinks regurlary from other bloggers and sites, when I have an extraordinary content or offer something. Every now and then I write e-booklets (10-15 pages) and let visitors download for free. I´ll let people know through forums and blog catalogues. That´s a very good way of collecting inlinks automatically. And I get a traffic boost from it for a couple of days. I use bookmarking sites regularity too, but not for every post. I write a lot, several articles a day, so it doesn´t seem to be worth the time to bookmark every blog post I´m writing. I might be wrong. I bookmark a couple of times a week to my favourites. Thinking of James point of wiew above, I should maybe put an extra effort on those articles not being indexed and inlink to them, to see if I can get them in too.
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        • Profile picture of the author James Schramko
          Originally Posted by eliel View Post

          I am very aware of not having the same anchor text on all incoming links, google don´t approve of that, It´s clearly said in the google webmaster help forum. So having non keyword specific would be a safe way out. It might be one needs a few more, but it´s safer.
          I have had a few sites dropped for over-optimization - this always brings them back. Loosen up the anchor text and they pop back up....like magic.
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  • Profile picture of the author flashgordon
    Don't lose motivation. I've had sites that were ranking on the first page of Google, then for no reason just disappeared from the SERPs for a couple weeks. Freaked me out, but I just kept writing content and building links. They came back - often a little higher.
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    • Profile picture of the author Ella
      Originally Posted by James Schramko View Post

      I have had a few sites dropped for over-optimization - this always brings them back. Loosen up the anchor text and they pop back up....like magic.
      excellent, that´s very good to know. Helpful for many others here as well, I´m sure.

      Originally Posted by flashgordon View Post

      Don't lose motivation. I've had sites that were ranking on the first page of Google, then for no reason just disappeared from the SERPs for a couple weeks. Freaked me out, but I just kept writing content and building links. They came back - often a little higher.
      Yeah, freaking out has been my middle name this last couple of weeks . I´ve been keeping on writing during this time, but it´s been really hard do concentrate, with this drop hanging over me. It was like I finally found something that worked, things started to go smoothly and it was working with the thing that I enjoyed none the less: by writing and then some more writing. I feel SO much better now! Hard work might pay off after all.

      By the way some wise person wrote this in some forum, can´t remember his or hers name but it was this formula for a successful blog: 70% working on the blog, 20% backlinking, 10% SEO. That´s a good way to spend your day, I think.

      Thank you so much for your tips and encouraging words! I will keep on working with so much more ease now. I will let you know how it goes.

      all the best,
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      • Profile picture of the author JV3STUDIO
        Hard work usually pays off. I'm sure you'll be fine. Some things you might want to look at are your internal links (are you linking to other posts on your blog?) and outbound links (linking to quality content on other sites and blogs).

        Regards

        Johan
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  • Profile picture of the author askloz
    Submit your pages that are not indexed to yahoogroups... join about 100 or so of them in the niche you're in.... most are suitable, since they allow promotions... and simply just place your link in a post... wait about 1-2 days for ppl who run their own blogs to extract the rss feed content to their pages, and before long those pages will be indexed
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    • Profile picture of the author Ella
      Haven´t tried that, I will look in to it, thanks,
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