Wordpress Blog On Static HTML Website

Our static HTML website www.playcasino.co.za ranks decently on the SERPS. About 15 months ago, we added a WordPress BLOG to the website http://playcasino.co.za/blog/ as we felt the need to regularly add new, fresh articles to the site...and the benefits thereof

The BLOG has more than 200 articles since installation but not a single article ranks decently on Google which is frustrating. I doubt any article can be found in the first 10-20 pages of the Google SERPS. In comparison, when we add a new article on the main site, it is indexed within a couple of days and starts to rank well.

How is this possible? Are we missing something? Are we blocking Google from accessing the Blog articles? How do we check this?

PS. Before today, the main site loaded with the prefix www. while the blog loaded without the http & www.
We have just now corrected that so that both loads with www. in the hope that this will solve the problem

Help please :)

That could be part of the problem.

How do you link to it?

As an example, you just gave yourself a non www link above and yet your html site appears to be indexed rather well with the www.

You should make sure your htaccess re-writes all urls to the www pages and do not link nor advertise the non-www site in any way.

Rick
Universal4


Edited to add: Ok I just hit some blog pages and I see they are redirecting to the www pages, if you just made this change with htaccess, then it may take a little time for the pages to become fully indexed.

There is an option when you install wordpress to not index it in SERPS. I'd look to see if that is activated too.

Thanks Rick.
Yeah, waiting for the Blog pages to be indexed...Will keep you updated.

Thanks Renee. I didn't realize that there was such an option. Luckily, it was activated.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by playcasino1

Thanks Renee. I didn't realize that there was such an option. Luckily, it was activated.

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It mustn't be activated.

Settings >> Reading >> Discourage search engines from indexing this site (do not tick box).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DaftDog

It mustn't be activated.

Settings >> Reading >> Discourage search engines from indexing this site (do not tick box).

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Thanks Daftdog - yeah, its not ticked :)

When I have built subdomains they have always been treated as separate sites, My understanding is that sub pages pass juice and rank.. perhaps this has changed? Or what does your robot text say?

yes, it is treated a separate site.
There was also an issue with our robots.txt file which has now been corrected.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by playcasino1

yes, it is treated a separate site.
There was also an issue with our robots.txt file which has now been corrected.

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So in that case reagrding robot txt, see what happens after the next crawl, if no change I could only assume it's being treated as a New site the same way subdomains are.. in the past they used to pass rank, but most likely after a lot of abuse of people moving sites around to avoid penalties it may of changed and their high rankings of the main site are no longer passed

Will do WonderPunter.
Hoping that the robot.txt file was the issue.

Will update the thread in about a week or so.

Thanks

Try to link from within your main site as well to your blog articles. It needs to build some reputation that can take a while, but it certainly helps to give it some juice.

Apologies if you have done this already, but my first piece of advice - install Yoast the SEO plugin. Find the sitemap for your blog within Yoast and load that to Google Search Console.

Make sure you have good/unique meta title and descriptions set up for each page/post within your blog.

Those would be mu first steps after installing a fresh wordpress site.

A simple think, but what ist the "Home URL" of the "Home" button in your WP installation and what ist the "Default Blog Homepage" in admin area.
I was never a fan to mix static sites and a blog. There are blog posts featured at homepage or just a link to "Our blog"?