Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to get Google to index another page
-
Hi,
I will try to make my question clear, although it is a bit complex.
For my site the most important keyword is "Insurance" or at least the danish variation of this.
My problem is that Google are'nt indexing my frontpage on this, but are indexing a subpage - www.mydomain.dk/insurance instead of www.mydomain.dk.
My link bulding will be to subpages and to my main domain, but i wont be able to get that many links to www.mydomain.dk/insurance.
So im interested in making my frontpage the page that is my main page for the keyword insurance, but without just blowing the traffic im getting from the subpage at the moment.
Is there any solutions to do this?
Thanks in advance.
-
Hi Kate,
Thanks for your reply, im glad for yours and all others contribution, it really make me reflect on which direction i should choose.
The whole page is an insurance page, but there is many different things you can do, you can buy insurance, calculate prize, make a claim and so on, so the frontpage has many purposes.
The reason why i want to be ranked on the frontpage, is because it converts better, and im sure i can get it ranked higher, in the long run, because of the link building oppertunities i have on that page.
So right now, it maybe would preferrebly to focus on /insurance, but in the long run i think the frontpage will be stronger.
It's also important for me to underline, that im a part of a big company, and its not entirely up to me to decide changes and etc. on the homepage.
-
Keith and Bryan are dead on. If your homepage is better for users looking for insurance, then why is there an insurance page? My guess is because your site offers more than insurance.
Yes, getting links to the homepage will be easier, but that should not be the reason for killing a well ranking page that seems to be the better page. I'd recommend updating the insurance page to make it convert like the homepage and let it remain the focus of insurance traffic. Then make sure that your homepage links to the insurance page with good anchor text, and that it doesn't link to another page with any insurance related text.
-
Hi,
Thank you, and all other, for your replies - it's very helpful.
The reason i want the traffic on the frontpage is the following:
-
It's alot easier for me to get link juice to the frontpage, at the moment we havent been working focused with link building, but when we start doing that, it will be alot easier to get links to the frontpage.
-
Im quite sure the frontpage is a better landing page for this traffic than the /insurance page, so the conversion rates and etc. will be better on the frontpage.
-
-
Again, my advise would be the same as Bryan's - leave it alone and build more links to the insurance page.
I don't see a problem with that page out ranking your home page?
-
Rel canonical will kill the insurance page, likely not the best idea!
-
I don't advise 301 redirecting /insurance as it looks to me like it is very strong. It will lose most of its link juice when redirected. Rather optimise your homepage with the desired keyword. Google chooses the most relevant page which is why /insurance is showing up for insurance. As it should! Don't worry about your home page, rather link to the /insurance page and your entire domain will gain strength over time. Actually the deep linked /insurance page will likely get stronger quicker than trying to get the home page stronger.
Once you link all everything to the home page it will eventually get stronger so long as it contains Insurance in the title and is optimised for this word.
-
I would either use rel canonical as Nakul instructed above, although this is a bit of hack IMO.
Or just build some better quality links at the page you want to rank, I don't see a problem with building links to the /insurance page?
-
If that's the case, I would suggest doing a rel=canonical tag on www.tryg.dk/forsikring to your homepage. Essentially, it's like a 301 for search engines but not for the users. The users will be able to come to your homepage, use navigation and or other links to visit www.tryg.dk/forsikring or they can come from external links which are linking to www.tryg.dk/forsikring. But Google will de-index that page and rank the homepage instead.
I hope that helps. The exact canonical tag you would use on www.tryg.dk/forsikring page would be :
-
Hi Keith,
the page is www.tryg.dk and it is ranked, i just want it to rank on keyword "insurance" as well, as the link building oppertunities on that page is alot better than on www.tryg.dk/forsikring.
A 301 redirect wont work, since i still want people to be able to access www.tryg.dk/forsikring.
-
Hi, the domain is www.tryg.dk and it is cached and indexed in Google.
Because of the possibilities to link build to my main page, i would like to optimize that to the keyword "Insurance", and that process i could start right away.
My question is if there is any possibility to get Google to "understand" this, or i has to work my way up with my main page, whilst i stop focus on www.tryg.dk/forsikringer - that is at this moment the page getting the highest ranking on "insurance".
-
I suspect his home page is just not ranking for the keywords, could you post the URL in question?
If not then type
_site:www.yourdomain.com _
Into Google and let us know if your site is listed.
Thanks,
-
are you saying your homepage is not indexed/cached in Google ? If that's the case, there might be something wrong. There might be a noindex tag, some sort of a disallow to your homepage. Personally, I can't remember seeing a similar scenario where inner pages are indexed and the homepage is not. If it's not ranking but is cached, that's another issue.
Please confirm.
-
Optimise your home page for your chosen keyword and 301 the page /insurance to your root domain.
To do this you need to create a .htaccess file in the / directory on your server and enter the following information.
Redirect 301 /insurance http://www.mydomain.dk
About 90% of the link juice "should" flow through if you use a 301 redirect, you can test the above is working by visting http://www.mydomain.dk/insurance and making sure it redirect you to your home page.
Note that a 301 can take a few weeks (possibly longer) for Google to pick up so do not expect overnight changes.
Hope that helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Pages are Indexed but not Cached by Google. Why?
Hello, We have magento 2 extensions website mageants.com since 1 years google every 15 days cached my all pages but suddenly last 15 days my websites pages not cached by google showing me 404 error so go search console check error but din't find any error so I have cached manually fetch and render but still most of pages have same 404 error example page : - https://www.mageants.com/free-gift-for-magento-2.html error :- http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mageants.com%2Ffree-gift-for-magento-2.html&rlz=1C1CHBD_enIN803IN804&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mageants.com%2Ffree-gift-for-magento-2.html&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1569j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 so have any one solutions for this issues
Technical SEO | Sep 27, 2018, 3:05 AM | vikrantrathore0 -
Indexing Issue of Dynamic Pages
Hi All, I have a query for which i am struggling to find out the answer. I unable to retrieve URL using "site:" query on Google SERP. However, when i enter the direct URL or with "info:" query then a snippet appears. I am not able to understand why google is not showing URL with "site:" query. Whether the page is indexed or not? Or it's soon going to be deindexed. Secondly, I would like to mention that this is a dynamic URL. The index file which we are using to generate this URL is not available to Google Bot. For instance, There are two different URL's. http://www.abc.com/browse/ --- It's a parent page.
Technical SEO | Mar 28, 2018, 2:43 AM | SameerBhatia
http://www.abc.com/browse/?q=123 --- This is the URL, generated at run time using browse index file. Google unable to crawl index file of browse page as it is unable to run independently until some value will get passed in the parameter and is not indexed by Google. Earlier the dynamic URL's were indexed and was showing up in Google for "site:" query but now it is not showing up. Can anyone help me what is happening here? Please advise. Thanks0 -
How to check if an individual page is indexed by Google?
So my understanding is that you can use site: [page url without http] to check if a page is indexed by Google, is this 100% reliable though? Just recently Ive worked on a few pages that have not shown up when Ive checked them using site: but they do show up when using info: and also show their cached versions, also the rest of the site and pages above it (the url I was checking was quite deep) are indexed just fine. What does this mean? thank you p.s I do not have WMT or GA access for these sites
Technical SEO | Aug 25, 2015, 6:45 PM | linklander0 -
Google indexing despite robots.txt block
Hi This subdomain has about 4'000 URLs indexed in Google, although it's blocked via robots.txt: https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch&oq=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch This has been the case for almost a year now, and it does not look like Google tends to respect the blocking in http://www1.swisscom.ch/robots.txt Any clues why this is or what I could do to resolve it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | May 7, 2014, 2:14 PM | zeepartner0 -
How to block text on a page to be indexed?
I would like to block the spider indexing a block of text inside a page , however I do not want to block the whole page with, for example , a noindex tag. I have tried already with a tag like this : chocolate pudding chocolate pudding However this is not working for my case, a travel related website. thanks in advance for your support. Best regards Gianluca
Technical SEO | Feb 16, 2014, 11:25 PM | CharmingGuy0 -
Google Cache is not showing in my page
Hello Everyone, I have issue in my Page, My category page (http://www.bannerbuzz.com/custom-vinyl-banners.html) is regular cached in past, but before sometime it can't show the cached result in SERP and not show in cached result , I have also fetch this link in google web master, but can't get the result, it is showing following message. 404. That’s an error. The requested URL /search?q=cache%3A http%3A//www.bannerbuzz.com/custom-vinyl-banners.html was not found on this server. That’s all we know. My category page rank is 2 and its keyword is on first in google.com, so i am little bit worried about this page cache issue, Can someone please tell me why is this happening? Is this a temporary issue? Help me to solve out this cache issue and once again my page will regularly cache in future. Thanks
Technical SEO | Jul 3, 2012, 10:01 AM | CommercePundit0 -
Does Google index XML files?
Does Google or other search engines include XML files in their index? More specifically, I am wondering how Google knows the difference between an xml filetype and an RSS feed.
Technical SEO | Jul 7, 2011, 1:40 PM | nicole.healthline0 -
How to use overlays without getting a Google penalty
One of my clients is an email subscriber-led business offering deals that are time sensitive and which expire after a limited, but varied, time period. Each deal is published on its own URL and in order to drive subscriptions to the email, an overlay was implemented that would appear over the individual deal page so that the user was forced to subscribe if they wished to view the details of the deal. Needless to say, this led to the threat of a Google penalty which _appears (fingers crossed) _to have been narrowly avoided as a result of a quick response on our part to remove the offending overlay. What I would like to ask you is whether you have any safe and approved methods for capturing email subscribers without revealing the premium content to users before they subscribe? We are considering the following approaches: First Click Free for Web Search - This is an opt in service by Google which is widely used for this sort of approach and which stipulates that you have to let the user see the first item they click on from the listings, but can put up the subscriber only overlay afterwards. No Index, No follow - if we simply no index, no follow the individual deal pages where the overlay is situated, will this remove the "cloaking offense" and therefore the risk of a penalty? Partial View - If we show one or two paragraphs of text from the deal page with the rest being covered up by the subscribe now lock up, will this still be cloaking? I will write up my first SEOMoz post on this once we have decided on the way forward and monitored the effects, but in the meantime, I welcome any input from you guys.
Technical SEO | Apr 4, 2011, 6:50 PM | Red_Mud_Rookie0
