[Plugin: All in One SEO Pack] Translated pages got dropped from SEO ranking due to random pagination

  • Resolved Fanaticweb

    (@fanaticweb)


    11 years, 8 months ago

    This is a major concern as I’m trying to narrow down what happened.

    My site is based on Custom post types, main installation is in English.

    I’m using the Transposh plugin for translations (only one additional language) in conjunction with AIOSEOP, everything worked fine and in harmony until the latest updates.

    Since the last update, I noticed that ALL the translated pages have been moved to different pages.
    Before the update:
    domain.com/Post_x (English) is located on page 4
    domain/com/Post_x/?lang=fr (French translation) is located on page 4

    After the update:
    domain.com/Post_x (English) is located on page 4
    domain/com/Post_x/?lang=fr (French translation) is now pushed to page 25 or some random non-existing page causing a 404 error.

    This has caused a major drop in the site’s ranking to a point where the French translated pages are Nowhere to be found, only the native English pages are still indexed, all French pages got dropped given they were moved somehow.

    I usually dont update the plugins unless it’s worth it based on the ChangeLogs, although I wanted to try out the Google Plus profile option given the advantages it offers.

    Current settings for AIOSEO:
    Track Outbound Links: Not checked
    Use Categories for META keywords: Checked
    Use Tags for META keywords: Checked
    Dynamically Generate Keywords for Posts Page: Checked
    Use noindex for Categories: Not checked
    Use noindex for Archives: Not checked
    Use noindex for Tag Archives: Not checked
    Autogenerate Descriptions: Checked
    Capitalize Category Titles: Checked

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Peter Baylies

    (@pbaylies)

    11 years, 8 months ago

    Fanaticweb,

    I am not familiar with the Transposh plugin; however, All in One SEO Pack does not do anything to change your permalinks or where pages appear on your site. Also, I wouldn’t be able to troubleshoot your site without knowing what the site is. Can you verify that this is a conflict with All in One SEO Pack by testing your site with the previous version of the plugin?

    Thread Starter Fanaticweb

    (@fanaticweb)

    11 years, 8 months ago

    Hi Peter,
    I didnt post the link to the site for ethic reasons, I can pm it to you if need be, thanks for the headsup on my other thread I posted.

    Going back in Google Webmaster tools, under Optimization/Content Keywords, I pulled the following example:
    Content Keywords
    Keyword: models
    Occurrences: 28605
    Variants encountered
    models, model
    Google found the keyword models and its variants on these top pages:
    Top URLs
    posts/independent-model-photoshoots-videoshoots/?lang=fr
    page/18/?lang=fr
    page/20/?lang=fr
    page/27/?lang=fr
    page/28/?lang=fr
    page/30/?lang=fr
    page/31/?lang=fr
    page/21/?lang=fr
    page/22/?lang=fr
    page/29/?lang=fr

    The First Top URL link does indeed exist, generated by Transposh through the French translation function, the other ones (pages) don’t exist on the site since the highest existing pagination is 10, yet Google is crawling those phantom pages, why and what is causing it to do so is what I’m trying to get at.

    I suspect this is the results of few things since the last updates I applied on AIOSEO, Transposh and Redirection plugins at the same time, luckily for me, the developer of Transposh is looking into it from the backend, I also noticed other behaviors but linked to Tranposh, I’ll start by making sure no duplicate G-A code is on the pages and stick to one only.

    Peter Baylies

    (@pbaylies)

    11 years, 8 months ago

    fanaticweb,

    If google finds it, that just means there’s a link to it, coming from somewhere, and it resolves to a page — that link doesn’t even have to be on your site, although it’s possible that you have pagination broken somewhere. Try searching for those links on your site with google to see where they’re coming from, or add rules to your .htaccess to ensure that it’s clear that they don’t go anywhere. The Redirection plugin has a feature where it can log things like 404 pages, that may be helpful temporarily as well — just remember to turn the logging off when you’re done.

    Thread Starter Fanaticweb

    (@fanaticweb)

    11 years, 8 months ago

    By searching those links with Google, did you mean using this search query? website:www.domain.com/page/18/?lang=fr

    It sure looks like a pagination issue affecting all the /?lang=fr pages since even the existing ones are no longer found by Google, yet Bing.com and Yahoo.com are able to find them, this is so puzzling to me and doesnt make sense how one search engine can locate the pages without issues yet the main giant one lost track of them, I say so because I see the stats and the source of the visited URL’s, in one way, Bing.com is definitely crawling my site now which was rare prior to the issue I’m having, as if Google told Bing, here…you can have the French pages lol

    On a serious note, I hope the Transposh developer can nail the root cause, if not, well, that’s it for the Translation plugins, gonna have to push a full French site in the next one.

    Peter Baylies

    (@pbaylies)

    11 years, 8 months ago

    Fanaticweb,

    Try something like site:www.domain.com/page/ and see what it comes up with. Also check your robots.txt and the meta in the headers to see if there are any noindex or nofollow directives. And if nothing else, make sure there’s an actual link somewhere to the French pages that Google can find and crawl without Javascript.

    Thread Starter Fanaticweb

    (@fanaticweb)

    11 years, 8 months ago

    Peter, the issue was isolated and fixed, it was linked to a setting that was enabled in the Transposh plugin (translate Permalinks/urls) which seem to have kicked in after the latest update or was caused previously by turn off/on by myself, bottom line, the developer of Transposh was able to troubleshoot and debug the root cause, the site and the relative posts are back in the top ranking and we are back in business as usual, AND I learned my lesson, so thank you for your feedback and support.

    P.S.: Would be nice to see AIOSEO allowing multiple Google+ Author integration when the site has multiple authors, specially since AIOSEO is compatible with custom post types 🙂

    Peter Baylies

    (@pbaylies)

    11 years, 8 months ago

    Fanaticweb,

    Great, I’m glad to hear that your issue was troubleshooted and resolved. Also, each author should be able to add their own Google+ page information from their profile pages, found under “Contact Info”.

    Thread Starter Fanaticweb

    (@fanaticweb)

    11 years, 8 months ago

    I just saw this! lol super nice add-on, thanks again Peter 🙂

    Thread Starter Fanaticweb

    (@fanaticweb)

    11 years, 7 months ago

    Forgot to close this thread since it was resolved, thank you once again Peter.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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