Help please - from No1 worldwide to nowhere??

[mryang]

Hi guys and Girls...

I need some help please -

My site is www.dvd-and-media.com

I also have on my server www.dvd-and-media.co.uk and www.dvdandmedia.co.uk both of which are set up to redirect to my main site dvd-and-media.com

For the last 6 months I have been worldwide number 1 on google for the key phrase "dvd case" but suddenly today something very strange has happened which I have never seen before -

If I do a search on google for "dvd case" then my site appears at no5 as "dvdandmedia.co.uk/dvd-cases.htm" .... It should be www.dvd-and-media.com/dvd-cases.htm .... I have not changed the Apache config file for months but suddenly this strange URL is getting found by google which has hit my ranking by not having the hypens in the name of the page.

HELP APRECIATED - PLEASE!!!

[mryang]

Someone just told me this - is it true and do you think I will regain my positions -

Google is doing a PageRank update at the moment (they do one every quarter) , there is a problem in their algorithm at the moment for .com's hosted outside of the US.

dvd-and-media.com's actual PageRank wont be affected, only the visible one.

Google have sorted the problem and rolling out the fix currently, but they have hundreds of thousands of servers so it will take a while for the visible change to be seen.

[buddhu]

There certainly seems to be a glitch if those 301s have been in place all that time. From what I see when checking your redirects (which are all in place and working), I would expect to see your preferred .com in the index and SERPs rather than the hyphenated .co.uk version that is actually showing up. Google reports the same subset of IBLs for both.

One thing, glitch or not (and I have my fingers crossed for you regaining your positions), quite a lot of your reported IBLs as shown on Google "link:" (yeah, I know, shows what it wants regardless of reality) are from forum sigs, and from product listings that may go out of date. To firm up your preferred domain in the index and SERPs it is probably worth getting some more relevant, heavy duty links from more persistent content pages on good sites.

That said, it may be part of the UK hosted .com thing that has been generating discussion. See http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic...er=asc&start=0

Good luck, Simon.

[mryang]

Originally Posted by buddhu

To firm up your preferred domain in the index and SERPs it is probably worth getting some more relevant, heavy duty links from more persistent content pages on good sites.

Can you tell me the easiest way to achieve that - I dont mind paying if there are definate benefits for the future.

[Webnauts]

I also had a quick look and I have seen that you have canonicalization problems, causing duplicated content issues.
Also broken links, irrelevant and spammy meta tags and title tags.

That is all I could see on the fly so far.

[RemodelingGuy]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

canonicalization.

huh?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by RemodelingGuy

huh?

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-ad...onicalization/

[mryang]

Yes I understand what you mean by canonicalization and think I have fixed it... today if you go and search DVD cases then we are back to number 1 and the URL is showing correctly now.

Webnauts - how do you suggest I fix the "Also broken links, irrelevant and spammy meta tags and title tags..." I must be doing something right to get to No1 for my chosen key phrases but suppose I can always learn more.. Help appreciated.

[Webnauts]

Get rid of these meta tags:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="ALL,FOLLOW,INDEX">
<META NAME="REVISIT-AFTER" CONTENT="20">
<META NAME="RATING" CONTENT="general">
<META content="www.dvd-and-media.com" name="owner">
<META http-equiv="CONTENT-LANGUAGE" content="English">
<META http-equiv="VW96.OBJECT TYPE" content="Homepage">

Don't use keywords more than one in your title tag:
<TITLE>DVD-and-media.com blank dvd recordable disc products</TITLE>

Tool to check broken links: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

[mryang]

Are you saying I should get rid of those meta tags through the whole site or just the homepage...

I also thought they were required? If you dont mind and have the time do you mind explaiing why they are not needed and if this will definately help me?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by mryang

Are you saying I should get rid of those meta tags through the whole site or just the homepage...

Get rid of them through the whole site.

Originally Posted by mryang

I also thought they were required? If you dont mind and have the time do you mind explaiing why they are not needed and if this will definately help me?

I might will not help you if you remove them, but they will not help you if they remain. You just have extra crappy and useless code.
More about: http://code.google.com/webstats/2005-12/metadata.html

[mryang]

Right then, thanks for that - very usefull google advice and code article.

One other question I have is that being a .com I get a very large percentage of our visitors from the USA - would adding the country to our pages in the meta tags help us gain more UK presence

I really appreciate you taking the time to help me.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by mryang

Right then, thanks for that - very usefull google advice and code article.

One other question I have is that being a .com I get a very large percentage of our visitors from the USA - would adding the country to our pages in the meta tags help us gain more UK presence

Such meta tags cannot help you at all. :)

[incrediblehelp]

Google recent filtering could be effecting you to.

Algorithm to reduce Googlebomb impact

I am sure perefectly good websites are going to get bent from this.