Google Is Ranking the Wrong Page
-
Howdy Folks-
I have a case where Google is ranking the wrong page for a couple of different keywords.
The home page is: http://healthtn.com
Most notably, we're trying to optimize the home page for "Tennessee Health Insurance" but the below page is what continually ranks for it, and does so very poorly. We used to be page two with the home page, now we are page four and it ranks the following page.
http://healthtn.com/tennessee/health-insurance/student
I have started directing our Internal Linking to reflect the correct anchor text but succeeded in losing ranking for the term, but am still ranking the wrong page.
Any thoughts or help would be much appreciated!
-
Thanks for the help sir, I just dropped a link into the misranked page back to the home page. I haven't been able to do any of the other suggestions yet, but it's a start. Thank you!
-
Thanks for the actionable advice, really helpful!
I went back in and made some of the changes you suggested. It was helpful to revisit some of those points. We've also been attempting too (and succeeded in) ranking for "Health Insurance Alternatives in Tennessee" so some of the meta real estate had been dedicated to that. But I tweaked some things to try to do both.
I've struggled with the amount of content on the home page. The student page that is ranking for "Tennessee Health Insurance", only has it in the keyword in the content twice, but it does have over 1800 words and lots of Heath Insurance and Tennessee references. The home page is designed to have little content on it, as many of them are... If I drop Tennessee Health Insurance a few more times in the 200 ish words on the home page, it may start to get stuffy?
Know anyway around low word counts on the home page?
As for the title, The page is called home for menu purposes, I don't have full control over the design and that is the way the site designer designed it. Not sure if I can do much there...but I agree it is a vital piece of on page ranking options.
-
Looking through your home page's source code, I see that the keyword has been incorporate into the copy once or twice, the meta description and an image alt tag. That's a good start.
I would also incorporate "Tennessee health insurance" into the home page's meta title and h1 header. These are two fairly important hotspots with onsite optimization.
I would also try to naturally incorporate the keyword 1 or 2 more times within the home page's content. Lastly, I recommend brushing up on Chapter 4 of Moz's SEO Guide: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development
-
My advice is to redevelop the content of the ideal page and make it more keyword specific. Give internal link from the page which is ranking to the page which you ideally want it to rank.
Give another link to your site structure and see if you need any improvement on that level.
Also build some good links with anchor text that target your keyword and instead of the home page link should go back to that particular page.
Hope this helps!
-
Hey, thanks for the help!
After spidering the site again I noticed the primary anchor text being directed to http://healthtn.com is "Home" as it's the home page menu Bar. Is there any way to getting around having 100+ links with "home" in the anchor text? I am fairly certain I want to have a link back to the homepage from every internal page for a Quality User Experience?
-
Hi there,
Here are some of the most common reasons for search engines to rank a less relevant page above a more relevant one.
Internal Anchor Text .
External Link Bias
Link Authority & Importance Metrics
On-Page Optimization
Improper Redirects
Topic Modeling / Content Relevance IssuesYou can find out more details right here moz.com/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions
Hope it helps you.
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
-
Does anyone know of a tool where you can get all of the keyword that any given landing page is ranking for?
I'd like to find out what landing pages are ranking for which keywords, but I haven't been able to find a tool that does it. I was hoping there would be something where I could submit the url and get a list of every keyword it is ranking for. Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Powerblanket0 -
Meta Titles On Site Different From Google Index Page
This is very embarrassing but I hope someone can help. The Meta Titles on my site are not being shown correctly on the Google site index. For example, when I got directly to the page the appropriate page title is shown obviously. However when I go view that page on Google, the title in completely different. Page title: <a class="attribute-value">Web Design, SEO, PPC, Mobile Development In Philadelphia, Bucks| Infinity Digital Agency</a> Google Shows: Our Services - Infinity Digital Agency Here is the result page. I am currently running WordPress and Yoast. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.infinitydigitalagency.com%2Fservices%2F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
On-Page Optimization | | infinitydigitalagency0 -
90 days for Google
Hi, I'm new to Moz so still getting a feel of the forums. If my question has been answered then please point me in the right direction. I have noticed with many SEO companies they advertise that they can get you on google front page in 90 days. I'm not really interested in their techniques but more of why google takes 90+ to even appear. I have been working on my site for over a month, adding content, building good links, social media, blogs etc... but have not even come close to appearing in the top 50 pages for google. Is this normal? Is it just a matter of time before it starts to appear? Also, I have checked my backlinks and there is about 8 links that are coming from random pages in the US and some from China and india which i have no idea of. I tried to visit on of the sites but it had malware. I added all these back links to google disavow so hopefully that will fix it. Could that be the reason google would not even list my site? Thanks... Rick
On-Page Optimization | | pureozone0 -
Which page to rank for a Keyword? Home Page or Deep Page?
So, we have a situation where there is one particular keyword we want to rank for. We have been up and down over the years, at our best probably position 4-5, and now at 20ish. Thats for our home page of course, which the majority of our linking is probably pointing at. We also have a sub page which is optimised for that particular service. The term is "web design brisbane".
On-Page Optimization | | MauriceKintek
So as you can imagine, Web Design is in itself a service and we offer others. Should we optimise our home page for it and remove the sub page?
Keep the sub page because its one our services and optimise both?
Do some kind of canonical thing?
Change our interlinking? All our competitors home pages seem to be the ones that rank, and it feels and looks better in results if its the home page, but if switching up to our sub page is better im all ears. Also if our sub page is somehow hurting or leaking SEO from the home page, id like to know as well. Would prefer to not have to provide a link, due to competition but if someone wants to know we can always PM.0 -
Some of my pages have KWs in common and google is switching those resulting in rank loss, how to fix that?
Hello, my site deals with pictures you can download and print for free. Because people search for it I have several page with similar content. For example: picture of dog free printing image of dog free printing painting of dog free printing picture of cat free printing image of cat free printing painting of cat free printing Just as an example. Now after tracking my ranks I found out that google changes those sites in the rankings. For example for the kw picture of dog free printing the site for picture of dog free printing is in the rankings but on another day it is image of dog free printing and on another painting of dog free printing. So those Google is switching the pages for one kw some times and it seems each time it does that I'm loosing rankings. I'm thinking it is because image of dog free printing and painting of dog free printing isn't as well optimized as the page that should appear: picture of dog free printing. With the more general kw of free printing it is even more complicated. I get some traffic through free printing (just an example) and all 6 example pages are being shown in the google search results from one day to another and again it looses some rank each time. What can I do to stop this?
On-Page Optimization | | SeeSharp10 -
Schema.org and Google +
Now that google merged local into Google+, should we be changing the way we do the reviews on our sites to be out of 3? I had one out of 5 and it showed up in the SERPS, but since the change now nothing shows.
On-Page Optimization | | netviper0 -
Why a page with an On Page A grade has a less good rank than a page with a F grade?
Why a page with an On Page A grade is ranked 17 in Google when the home page with a F grade is ranked 9 ? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Amadeus_eBC0 -
Does Too Many On-Page Links on a Page Really Matters?
Does Too Many On-Page Links on a Page Really Matters? Especially if they are pointing to internal page?
On-Page Optimization | | AppleCapitalGroup1