Internal URLs competing for keyword
-
I have an affiliate site where we have reviews of bookmakers, which are optimized for the bookmakers name as a key word. We have seen a drop in rankings and at this point we are out ranked by a lot of pages including our own.
We also have a community forum and write news and articles about the the bookmakers. The thing is, that these forum threads and articles often out rank our review pages, which are the pages we need people to land on in order to convert.
This page: http://www.betxpert.com/bookmakere/bet365 is optimized for "bet365" and is at this point outranked by http://www.betxpert.com/artikel/ny-funktion-hos-bet365-afslut-vaeddemaal-foer-tid.
This page actually links to the review.
What should i do in order to increase ranks for my pages?
Make the forum threads and articles crappy for the key word?
Would it help to add a canonical link to the articles?
Would it help to remove the meta tag for update time of the review, such that Google does not downrank for not being recent?
-Rasmus
-
The menu is on ALL pages. Is this a problem?
I feel that the link is relevant for any new user coming to the site. Will not seem spammy, i think.
-
Often, a direct link from the homepage can help the search visibility of the internal page being linked to (and others being linked to from that internal page). Exact match anchor text in your internal links won't get you penalized like they can in external links but you want to be sure they don't look spammy to visitors.
-
One follow up question.
A couple of years ago, i removed links to our reviews from our menu because i was afraid it would seem spammy. But as far as i can see, all the pages in our menu have good Page Authority. Would it be a good "trick" to put the bookmaker reviews back in the menu in order to give the pages more of the internal link juice?
-Rasmus
-
Well, perhaps it is due to the affiliation with gambling. But, the pages outranking us, are also in affiliation with gambling.
Will try a little work towards link building and try to internally pass the link juice from the articles to the reviews.
Thank you for the replies!
-
I agree with everything Chris has said it's right on the money.
"Would it help to remove the meta tag for update time of the review, such that Google does not down rank for not being recent?"
Absolutely not it will make no difference whatsoever. Like Chris is explained Google is taking signals from many places however they are not going to be influenced or tricked by metadata tags.
It is possible because of your affiliation with gambling that Google is cracking down on that sort of site. However I could be wrong on that last one.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Rasmus,
You've got to build the value of the review pages in the eyes of your target audience. If Google's not ranking them highly enough, it's because Google's not thinking they're important enough. You have to take a really hard look at those pages as compared to those of the competitors that rank at the top of page one and come to terms with what's helping those pages rank well--it's probably links but could be discussion and engagement socially.
Today's SEO is less about the words you use on the page and more about how many people are showing that it's useful to them. When you construct your reviews, you need to keep a laser focus on who the target audience member who will share your content and you have to give them a reason to share yours over the competitors'. It's like concept research, instead of the old fashioned keyword research--you have to conceive of content that has an audience --an audience you can reach out to socially---and which doesn't have so many competitors that you can't get a foothold in the mindshare of your intended audience.
I say that because to me, your review page appears kind of run-of-the-mill (though I can't read it) and that there might not be much there that gives the audience a reason to chose it over someone else's review. It's time to beef up the content and then hit the social networks and bloggers to promote it.
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
-
Any tools to scan URL to identify keyword opportunities
Hi guys, Looking for tools which can scan content and identify keyword opportunities. I know you can use Google Keyword Planner or tools like Semrush. But was wondering what else there is on the market? Specifically looking for tools which can pull relevant keywords by scanning the content, exactly the same as Google Keyword Planner. Cheers.
Keyword Research | | jayoliverwright0 -
Where to use which keywords...
After doing keyword research and coming up with a list of keywords/phrases that I'd like to optimise a specific page for (an additional page to an existing website), I get confused about WHERE to use which keywords. For example, choosing between two keywords like home insurance and specialist home insurance. Let's say home insurance is more searched than the other, and but is more difficult to rank for, and specialist home insurance is less searched but easier to rank for. Firstly, which one should I use as my "main keyword" and secondly, what benefit does the other keyword(s) then have on the rest of the page, and were do I use them? I hope this makes sense. Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Keyword Research | | Jana_Joubert1 -
Low Competition Keywords
My blog, which started in May, is doing really well except with Google. My traffic is growing and so are my subscribers etc but my keywords have very high competition. I don't really like google's new keyword research tool. Any advice for finding keywords I have a chance with? I am only ranking in the top 50 for one keyword (#1-2 spot) but it doesn't give me a lot of traffic. Thanks!
Keyword Research | | blogger20130 -
SEO beginner- How to decide what keyword to go after?
I started a website called Think and Grow Entrepreneur. I'm not sure where to start with Keywords and which ones to go after. Should I input the same keywords over and over my blog to rank in those or should I look at every post as a single entity and try to rank different keywords in each blog. Ideally I would like to rank for the keyword Entrepreneur, but there are already very powerful companies with the same keyword. How should I go about this situation? I appreciate any feedback. Thanks!
Keyword Research | | johnmoon60 -
Keyword difficulty %age
I am using the Seomoz keyword tool to do some research. Some of the keywords I am researching are returning with a difficulty of 20 - 30% , are these good percentage keywords to target. I will obviously be following Seomoz tips / methods etc
Keyword Research | | wtfi0 -
Worried about keyword cannibalization
I've been reading a lot about keyword cannibalization and I'm worried that some of my sub pages may be pulling rank from my home page. If I'm trying to rank my home page for the keyword phrase "blue widget manufacturing" and I have sub pages with the titles "blue manufacturing services", "blue widget enginnering", "medical widget manufacturing" is it possible that those pages could be causing me to commit keyword cannibalization? I'm looking at a lot of the results for my keyword phrase and they don't seem to have additional pages with similar keyword phrases. Wondering if I should change my titles so they don't look as optimized.
Keyword Research | | TRICORSystems1 -
What is the maximum lenght in url for keyword ?
Howdy, I was looking at the maximum lenght of url for ntfs and they told me it was 255 character for url and/or folder ect. Does that mean that i could use the full lenght of 255 filled whit keyword for the url on my site ? Thx.
Keyword Research | | Promoteam0 -
The importance of meta keywords
Hello, I am looking into Meta keywords in the attempt to understand their importance. I have been reading about this in several blogs and get the feeling that the general view is that they are no longer very valuable. Some say it is because Google and Bing no longer use them, that in terms of SEO they carry little importance and that they are a great indicator to your competitors about which keywords you believe are important... My question is this: Without Meta keywords, how do you deal with misspelt search keywords on your website? For example, if you were looking for a product called 'El Mundo en Espa_ñ_ol' but spelt it using the normal 'n' instead of the Spanish 'ñ', and the keyword 'Espanol' was not included in the Meta keywords, would you still find the product? English speaking people commonly search without the ñ because this is more convenient to them. So how can I make sure that the page is optimised for these type of common misspellings? Thanks!!!
Keyword Research | | languedoc0