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.
No matter what the keyword, only the homepage shows in the SERP
-
Hi, wondered if someone could help. My clients website shows up well for terms but its always the homepage rather than the targeted landing page. For example, if you search for "teeth whitening anglesey" they appear http://goo.gl/ohJdua however, its the homepage rather than the tooth whitening page http://goo.gl/uVI8gK
Thanks
Ade
-
Thanks Kathy, yeah is an odd one. Ive seen it happen before with some other sites we have done and its always confused me why it happens.
Regards
Ade
-
Perhaps this page is cannibalizing off of the one you want: http://www.marquess-dental.co.uk/tooth-whitening-marquess-dental/ They share essential the same title tag.
also in looking at your competition, they have a very strong architecture. Search on site:www.thecosmeticdentistry.co.uk "teeth whitening" and you can see all the pages in that "directory."
This is a tough one because you don't even have the word whitening on your home page! It's as if Google is saying, I know you're relevant but I don't know what page to show so I'll just show the home page instead. Makes no sense, but most of these home page cannibalizations make no sense either. Sure hope someone can crack this nut.
-
Thanks for the answers. great idea as well Inbound Boulder
-
In addition to all of these suggestions, try adding some more internal links with that keyword phrase pointing to the page you wish to rank for that phrase.
-
Hi Adrian
I would take a look at your backlink profile / rankings via the following tools:
Google Webmaster Tools
Majestic
SEMRushI would assess your anchor texts, the topical relevance of your backlinks, age of your links, and also your backlinks individual metrics. Not only for your own backlinks, but your competitors as well based on keywords/queries you want to rank for.
Also, take a look at Moz's On-Page Grader and see if there are any opportunities you may be missing out on.
From there, I would also look into Schema.org - they offer keyword markup opportunities that can help you better assist crawlers in understanding the topics/meanings of a particular page. Also - take a look at their medical markup opportunities as well.
Lastly, for the time being, if you have a lot of traffic coming to the homepage for these keywords and queries, take a look at A/B testing your homepage to get users to those internal pages more quickly. You have quite a bit of navigation going on and your rotating banner is quite large and confusing, especially when you click the arrows. I see images, but then I click on one that I think is taking me to whitening, but then I am taken to dental warning signs.
Consider this area your opportunity to grab users attentions, get them to where they were searching for, and utilize internal linking in a more effect manner.
You can use the following tools if you want to test:
Visual Website Optimizer (GREAT resource section)
Google Experiments
OptimizelyAlso, check your robots.txt/meta robots and sitemap (and check that it's submitted to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools) to make sure everything is being properly indexed and crawled.
Just some things to think about - hope this helps! Good luck!
-
I guess it's related to the keyword + location. If you do a tooth whitening site:yoursite - the tooth whitening pages appear first - if you repeat the query with the location - the homepage gets the first result. You could try to add the location on the title / metadescription / H1 / url of the detailed pages - to make it more obvious that the page is not only about tooth whitening but about tooth whitening in your city.
Also check what is more popular - you mention teeth whitening as example - the article however talk about tooth whitening - Google knows it's similar - but I would go for the more popular term.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Google picks the page it thinks is most relevant for the search, so you can look at why you think your homepage is more relevant than the other page, is this from meta tags, content (including keywords), robots, links etc.
It may be a matter of making the teeth whitening page more appealing to Google this can be via some content really drilling down that niche etc.
If you're having problems you can always try to direct users from the homepage to the correct page which will in tern help Google understand the right page etc.
Hope that gives you some insight that helps you a bit.
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
-
Primary versus secondary keyword
Hello, Can someone give a example of what primary and secondary keywords are and how to implement that in a sentence ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics2 -
Homepage appearing instead of subpage
Hi, I have my homepage which has links saying "bike tours and bike tours in France" because in the past I was only doing bike tours in France. I now do tours all over Europe and I have a page about "bike tours in Franc" only. The issue I have is that my page about "bike tours in France" never appears in the search ranking it is always my homepage that does for tjhe keyword "bike tours in France". My guess is that it is due to the links that my homepage has ? How could I make sure my France page appears instead of my homepage ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
How ot optimise a website for competitive keywords?
Hi guys, I hope to find some good answers to my questions, because here are some of the best SEO's in the world. I'm doing SEO as a hobby for a few years and had some very good results before the latest Google updates. Now I'm not able to rank any website for competitive keywords. The last project I started is this website (man and van hire company targeting London market).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nasi_bg
The problem is that I can't rank even in Top 100 in Google UK for the main keywords like: "man and van london" , "man and van service london" ,"london man & van"...
The site has over 1k good backlinks (according to Ahrefs), unique content, titles and descriptions but still can't rank well. Am i missing something? Few years back that was more than enough to rank well in Google.
I will be very grateful to hear your suggestions and opinions.0 -
Is it alright to repeat a keyword in the title tag?
I know at first glance, the answer to this is a resounding NO, that it can be construed as keyword stuffing,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MIGandCo
but please hear me out. I am working on optimizing a client's website and although MOST of the title tags
can be optimized without repeating a keyword, occasionally I run into one where it doesn't read right if I
don't repeat the keyword. Here's an example: Current title:
Photoshop on the Cloud | Adobe Photoshop Webinars | Company Name What I am considering using as the optimized title:
Adobe Photoshop on the Cloud | Adobe Photoshop Webinars | Company Name Yes, I know both titles are longer than recommended. In both instances, only the company name gets
truncated so I am not too worried about that. So I guess what I want to know is this: Am I right in my original assumption that it is NEVER okay to
repeat keywords in a title tag or is it alright when it makes sense to do so?0 -
Google places keyword variations
Hi all, I have a site that is ranking #1 in Google Places for its main <city><keyword>search... but it does not rank for any of its basic keyword variations, which I find very confusing.</keyword></city> ie (just an example) Chicago Caterer (ranked #1 in google places)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | x2264983x
Chicago Caterers (not ranked in google places)
Chicago Catering (not ranked in google places)
Chicago Catering Company (not ranked in google places)
Chicago Catering Companies (etc..) How can I secure a google places ranking for these simple keyword variations? Do I build links to the google plus page using that anchor text? Do I get citations that contain that keyword somewhere on the page? Do I optimize for these keyword variations on the actual website itself? (not the places listing). Obviously I don't stuff these keywords into the google places listing. Any help would be much appreciated!0 -
Keyphrase / Keyword arrangement
Hi all, What are your thoughts on the arrangement of keyphrases / words? For example, does it make a difference if the words are arranged in the following way: "Keyword 1 Keyword 2" or "Keyword 2 Keyword 1" Both ways make a phrases which is favourable in the search engines. Can I stick with 1 way or should I be going with both arrangements. Hope that is clear 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wtfi0 -
Should I remove Meta Keywords tags?
Hi, Do you recommend removing Meta Keywords or is there "nothing to lose" with having them? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Old Redirecting Website Still Showing In SERPs
I have a client, a plumber, who bought another plumbing company (and that company's domain) at one point. This other company was very old and has a lot of name recognition so they created a dedicated page to this other company within their main website, and redirected the other company's old domain to that page. This has worked fine, in that this page on the main site is now #1 when you search for the other old company's name. But for some reason the old domain comes up #2 (despite the fact that it's redirecting). Now, I could understand if the redirect had only been set up recently, but I'm reasonably sure this happened about a year ago. Could it be due to the fact that there are many sites out there still linking to that old domain? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VTDesignWorks1