Keyword drop with its own appropriate landing page
-
I have a question to ask. I have these two generic keywords - e.g. shoe and shoes. These two keywords have its own landing pages - www.example.com/shoe.aspx and www.example.com/shoes.aspx
Now here is my dilemma. Every time I do link building on these keywords using its own landing pages (www.example.com/shoe.aspx and www.example.com/shoes.aspx), the landing page which is "www.example.com/services.aspx" is the one that ranks on the SERPs while the appropriate landing pages (www.example.com/shoe.aspx and www.example.com/shoes.aspx) go down in the results. So what I did was I started using the services page ( www.example.com/services.aspx) for both keywords - shoe and shoes. Now what happened then and now was that, the shoe and shoes appropriate pages (www.example.com/shoe.aspx and www.example.com/shoes.aspx) go up in the SERPs while the services page (www.example.com/services.aspx) go down.
I do not know what to do. Pls help
-
Hi Matti,
First, I think you have to seriously evaluate the criteria you're using to determine whether independent pages "deserve" to exist. If I take the example you provided literally, there is no way that individual URLs need to exist for plural versus singular versions of the same root term. I used to see a lot of that in the online education space about 8 or 9 years ago, and it was very effective - you could get different URLs ranking for "online college" and "online colleges" just through aggressive on-page optimization, even though there was nothing materially different about the content on the pages. Back then it was a pretty spammy tactic, but these days there's no excuse. Depending on the extent that you pursue this strategy, you could have a lot of very low-value content on your site that paints a big bulls-eye on your site for Panda.
However, taking a look at your other problem - a more general category page out-ranking the more specific product page, this often comes down to a link authority issue. Sometimes a category page will only have one or two instances of the target keyword on it (e.g. a link to the Shoes page), but that will be the page that ends up ranking instead of the Shoes page. An engine is trying to surface results based on 1) relevance and 2) authority, so in this case, the authority of the category page (more link juice) trumps the fact that it's less specifically relevant than to product page. The engine is telling you that you need a link authority of X to rank for that term, and right now the category page has that level of link authority, while the product pages don't.
If your product pages really do deserve to exist (e.g. address keyword markets that have search volume, provide valuable services, and present value-added content not available elsewhere on the web), then I would maintain the structure of a category page linking to individual product pages, with the product pages targeting the most specific terms. As the product pages gain link authority over time (because they're valuable and worth linking to, right?), they will displace the category page in the SERPs.
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
-
How can I find page 1 google keyword rankings for a certain page?
Not sure if someone has a tool for this yet or not... Say I have a page like this: http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/Spokane.Painting.Pros.509-210-2799 and I would like to find out what keywords this page ranks for on google. Is there any tool that I can paste in that link and it would give me keywords that it ranks well for? Other than the SEO moz rank checker. It's not like I want to run a campaign just for links like that but I might want to build some links to citations like that so I can move those citations up in the rankings.
Link Building | | Superflys0 -
Diverse SEO On & Off page questions!
Hey everybody. I have been reading several resources on SEO, and wanted to know your opinion on these topics. I know they are diverse and should be on a different set of questions, but i wanted to give it a try. I run a Heavily Specialized Steel B2B eCommerce Site. So my question would be what is the importance of the following topics, taking into mind the nature of my site. The importance on how often the page is updated ? Recommendations on updating relatively static pages ? How important is to meet HTML and W3C Standards, also its validation. The NoFollow and Follow ratio of incoming links. Your opinion onthe inclusion of outbound links to other relevant pages. Is there a best practice? Any comment is welcome, and would be deeply appreciated. Regards,
Link Building | | JesusD1 -
Google has a problem with this keyword
I've been trying to get one of my clients to rank in the first page for a word which I think has no serious competition at all. Every tool I tried so far including SEOMoz's on-page diagnostics tool seem to have no positive SEO results whatsoever. According to most tools out there our page is optimized for SEO more than every website who is ranked for this keyword. The competition also has less backlinks and social awareness. We even advertise on Google for this word. But Google says no...keeps dropping us in results. We have many FB and twitter followers to. But Google is committed to rank bad sites. Funny thing is that recently our site has received a PR6. No matter what we do Google is convinced to list pretty ugly looking sites for this specific keyword and I have ran out of options. This is really driving me crazy. The keyword we try to rank is "doktor" and we want to rank in google.com.tr. If you look the search results you will see a lot of youtube videos and some sites that don't even provide meaningful content. Please help.
Link Building | | mertsevinc0 -
1 Domain - 2 Links Pointing to 2 Different Pages
Hi Guys, I wonder if you can give me any pointers: We have an exact match domain name that is ranking #5 for our main keyword and is getting some good traffic through the site. We have just created a landing page for another keyword with fresh content that will be updated every week. The question is, I've been building links to my domain name and I'm just wondering if we built another link from 1 of the sites we already have a link on and point it to this new landing page would this help it rank better or not? Hope the above makes sense. Thanks, Scott
Link Building | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Homepage vs specific page Backlink
Hello, I have a local business and have been working on getting backlinks for highly relevant keywords. I have keyword optimized pages (keyword in URL, title, H1, etc) but I have been sending backlinks to the homepage, as these keywords represent the core of what we offer. See example below: car repair car repair london auto repair auto repair london I have been sending backlinks (with the correct anchor text of course) to the homepage, am I better off sending them to the specific pages? One more thing: the SEOMOZ report talks about cannibalisation of keywords, where for example the page optimised for "car repair" links to "Car repair london". I have links to the optimised pages in a footer at the bottom of every single page on the website, is this bad practice? (considering SEOMOZ talks about cannibalisation? Should I do something else instead (or eliminate the footer links altogether?) I would appreciate your expert advice.
Link Building | | dpaq20110 -
SEO value of expired Pages
We run a classified site and after every day there are thousands of ads/pages that get expired which has no use to visitors. What is the best practice to deal with them keeping SEO factor in mind? Should we keep them as they are linking to home page. redirect 301 to existing, 404 to home page or any other practice. Please advise.
Link Building | | razasaeed0 -
SEO Optimization is causing rankings to drop
The more I improve my site and the more links I try to get it seems that my site is just ranking worse and worse. Any ideas? domain name: www.musillawfirm.com Top Keywords wanting to rank for: Melbourne FL DUI lawyer Melbourne FL immigration lawyer cocoa FL DUI lawyer cocoa FL immigration lawyer
Link Building | | musillawfirm0