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
-
Keyword in URL - SEO impact
Hi, We don't have most important keyword of our industry in our domain or sub-domain. How important it is to have keyword in website URL? Most of our competitors pages with "keyword" urls been listing in SERP. What is back-links role in this scenarion? And which URL have more advantage? keyword in sub-domain or page with keyword. Like for "seo" keyword..... seo.example.com or example.com/seo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Drop in SERPS and little movement after redesign
I took over a project in mid-March 2015. Rankings went from 5th page to roughly #11 - #13 (but never into first page). Launched a redesign on August 15, 2015. Rankings dropped from #11 - #13 down to #20. Weird part: On 3 different Mondays since Mid-August, I have noticed that the rankings shoot back up to about #11 in the morning, then drop back down to #20 by the evening. Three questions: 1. Has anyone seen a drop like this after redesign? (Assuming you kept the same content, just different layout). 2. Did it seem like the redesign resulted in some sort sandbox effect, where the rankings wouldn't move for a period of time? 3. Any advice on how to get it moving again? Or is this just a function of time? Ps. The interior pages are moving well. domain: getinjuryanswers.com KW: San Diego Personal Injury Lawyer, Personal Injury Lawyer San Diego I understand these are hyper-competitive terms. What puzzles me is how calcified the rankings appear to be.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Xml sitemap only shows up sometimes (magento)
Hi Moz community, I'm using Magento platform. I can generate a sitemap using their xml generator, but it will only pull up sometimes in web explorers, the rest of the time it will show a 404 page. GWT also tells me that I get a 404 error when testing the sitemap, but sometimes it will acknowledge that it's there. Anyone had this problem before or know how to help. sitemap= www.ice.com/sitemap.xml Let me know what other information I can provide to help. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IceIcebaby0 -
Do my redirects on my homepage need to be 301?
Our domain name is something like www.I-am-cool.com but most people just type in iamcool.com After doing some research I found that those are 302 redirects and I think they should be 301. If I am correct do I need to redirect www.iamcool.com and iamcool.com or just one or the other?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Google Preview not showing images
No matter which our pages i find in the SERP the Google Preview does not show images for www.spies.dk Try searching for "rejser til malaysia" on google.dk. The result www.spies.dk/malaysia is not showing images. Why is that? Using the "google preview tool" under labs in Google Webmaster Tools sys it found 13 errors on that page: | Ressource: | Information: http://images2.spies.dk/images/SiteID11/SiteLayout/logo-spies.png?v=4 | Indekseret http://images1.spies.dk/images/StaticLayout/Spies_hori_sRGB.png?v=1 | Indekseret http://images1.spies.dk/images/SiteID11/Button/search-button-text3.png?v=2 | Indekseret http://images2.spies.dk/images/Country/my1001_10_48.jpg?v=1 | Indekseret http://images2.spies.dk/images/SiteID11/Button/Opdater_bt.png?v=2 | Indekseret http://images1.spies.dk/images/SiteID11/Button/Sog_bt.png?v=3 | Indekseret http://images2.spies.dk/images/Country/my1002_2_22.gif?v=1 | Indekseret http://images2.spies.dk/images/Resort/bkikki1001_4_11.jpg?v=1 | Indekseret http://images2.spies.dk/images/SiteID11/Button/Vaelg_bt.png?v=7 | Indekseret http://images1.spies.dk/images/Resort/bkiskn1001_4_11.jpg?v=1 | Indekseret http://images1.spies.dk/images/Resort/kulkum1001_4_11.jpg?v=1 | Indekseret http://images1.spies.dk/images/Resort/lgklak1001_4_11.jpg?v=1 | Indekseret https://track.adform.net/serving/scripts/trackpoint/async/ | Indekseret |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alsvik0 -
Keyword research with smart search suggestions?
I found a smart search suggestion plugin that looks amazing and thought I'd see if anyone has experience with it. www.suggest.io looks like a great usability improvement and even helps to do keyword research with what your visitors are searching on your site. I'm excited about it and feel like it is too good to be true. Does anyone have experience with this plugin or something similar?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude0 -
Keyword Self-Cannibalization
Hi, Happy Friday! I was advised to look at the SEO strategy of a UK SEO company and copy a technique they used, however, I have doubts that this technique is any good. So mydomain.com targets My Domain For my main keyword phrase, I was told to place a link to a newly created inner page in my footer, targeting the main keyword and on this page, create unique content which points back to my homepage. Now I also have mydomain.com/my-domain.php which has a link to mydomain.com with anchor text My Domain. Based on the SEOMoz reports, this now seems to be Keyword Self Cannibalisation and I think that it is diluting link juice and the value of my SEO on my homepage for this term rather than helping. Can you advise if this technique is wrong?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tdsnet0 -
How Many Results Does Google Show From The Same Domain?
Hi, From a few years ago I know 'double listings' were considered prime real estate. These days I can see triple listing, google places, PDFs all from the same domain. Im confused as the what the standard is now. I have been asked for some reverse SEOing to push down some bad press (keyword is the brand name) and am curious to know whether I still can get some high results by making a sub domain, optmising some more internal pages etc. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DigitalLeaf0