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.
Why does my home page show up in search results instead of my target page for a specific keyword?
-
I am using Wordpress and am targeting a specific keyword..and am using Yoast SEO if that question comes up.. and I am at 100% as far as what they recommend for on page optimization. The target html page is a "POST" and not a "Page" using Wordpress definitions.
Also, I am using this Pinterest style theme here http://pinclone.net/demo/ - which makes the post a sort of "pop-up" - but I started with a different theme and the results below were always the case..so I don't know if that is a factor or not. (I promise .. this is not a clever spammy attempt to promote their theme - in fact parts of it don't even work for me yet so I would not recommend it just yet...)
I DO show up on the first page for my keyword.. however.. instead of Google showing the page
www.mywebsite.com/this-is-my-targeted-keyword-page.htm
Google shows
in the results instead.
The problem being - if the traffic goes only to my home page.. they will be less likely to stay if they dont find what they want immediately and have to search for it..
Any suggestions would be appreciated!
-
Hi and thanks TommyTan
Actually I only recently put the site up and as such..it has zero backlinks..
I think your second guess might be more likely.. but still....it was started with a different theme where this post was NOT on the home page..
-
Hi David,
Your home page might be receiving more backlinks than the keyword targeted page and Google might think that your home page is a better result to the searchers.
Another thought I have from what you described about the theme you used, the posts pops up on the home page. So does that mean it is part of the home page and it doesn't have its own page. If that is true, then it might also be a reason why Google is showing your home page and not your targeted page.
First hypothesis might be a better guess.
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
-
Crawled page count in Search console
Hi Guys, I'm working on a project (premium-hookahs.nl) where I stumble upon a situation I can’t address. Attached is a screenshot of the crawled pages in Search Console. History: Doing to technical difficulties this webshop didn’t always no index filterpages resulting in thousands of duplicated pages. In reality this webshops has less than 1000 individual pages. At this point we took the following steps to result this: Noindex filterpages. Exclude those filterspages in Search Console and robots.txt. Canonical the filterpages to the relevant categoriepages. This however didn’t result in Google crawling less pages. Although the implementation wasn’t always sound (technical problems during updates) I’m sure this setup has been the same for the last two weeks. Personally I expected a drop of crawled pages but they are still sky high. Can’t imagine Google visits this site 40 times a day. To complicate the situation: We’re running an experiment to gain positions on around 250 long term searches. A few filters will be indexed (size, color, number of hoses and flavors) and three of them can be combined. This results in around 250 extra pages. Meta titles, descriptions, h1 and texts are unique as well. Questions: - Excluding in robots.txt should result in Google not crawling those pages right? - Is this number of crawled pages normal for a website with around 1000 unique pages? - What am I missing? BxlESTT
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bob_van_Biezen0 -
Why differents browsers return different search results?
Hi everyone, I don't understand the reason why if I delete cookies, chronology, set anonymous way surfing in Chorme and Safari, I have different results on Google. I tried it from the same pc and at the same time. Searching in google the query "vangogh" the internet site "www.vangogh-creative.it" is shown in the first page in Chrome but not in Safari. I asked in Google webmaster forum, but nobody seems to know the reason of this behavior. Can anyone help me? Thanks in advance. Massimiliano
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vanGoGh-creative0 -
SEO strategy for conversion-optimised home page
I'm working on a very conventional-type site with a home page (why come to us), methods we use, pricing, reviews, FAQs and contact us. After reading the Moz case study at (http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/seomoz-case-study/), I have been working on a conversion-optimised home page that consolidates much of content in all these pages. At the bottom of the home page, I then plan to add a list of blog posts "Want to read more? We have a lot of useful information on our blog. Here are the most popular articles:" with articles that explain more about the methods we use for example (content that was formerly on our methods page). Obviously this new blog will also have more interesting information (but a lot that could actually be converted into pages) This radically changes the site into just a home page full of selling points and calls-to-action and a blog. I have some questions about this strategy: How do we keep our search engine ranking for keywords such as "[our service] prices" or "[a particular method] London". We rank quite well on Google for these and it goes straight to the relevant page. Shall we keep the pages active somewhere even though the information is also on the home page? Is a blog actually necessary here (SEO wise)? The things I'm planning to write could easily be made into more pages. Am I going about this completely wrong by trying using the CRO guide? Should this sort of page be reserved for landing pages? The reason why I'm considering making a conversion-generating home page is because we only sell one service pretty much (although there are differences in how we do it on children vs. adults) and because we are quite niche so most of our traffic comes from organic sources. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LondonAli0 -
My landing pages don't show up in the SERPs, only my frontpage does.
I am having some trouble with getting the landing pages for a clients website to show up in the SERPs.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InmediaDK
As far as I can see, the pages are optimized well, and they also get indexed by Google. The website is a danish webshop that sells wine, www.vindanmark.com Take for an instance this landing page, http://www.vindanmark.com/vinhandel/
It is optimzied for the keywords "Vinhandel Århus". Vinhandel means "Winestore" and "Århus" is a danish city. As you can see, I manage to get them at page 1 (#10), but it's the frontpage that ranks for the keyword. And this goes for alle the other landing pages as well. But I can't figure out, why the frontpage keep outranking the landingpages on every keyword.
What am I doing wrong here?1 -
How to get google to categorize a website in search results?
Hello everyone and thanks in advance for your time. I have a good understanding about SEO, backlinks etc but nowhere near to professional! A good friend of mine has an online store made with opencart e commerce platform he would like to have have category view when his company name is searched on google. Does anyone has any idea how can this be achieved?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | superofelia0 -
Ranking for local searches without city specific keywords?
Hey guys! I had asked this question a few months ago and now that we are seeing even more implicit information determining search results, I want to ask it again..in two parts. Is is STILL best practice for on-page to add the city name to your titles, h1s, content etc? It seems that this will eventually be an outdated tactic, right? If there is a decent amount of search volume without any city name in the search query (ie. "storefont signs", but no search volume for the phrase when specific cities are added (ie. "storefront signs west palm beach) is it worth trying to rank and optimize for that search term for a company in West Palm Beach? We can assume that if there are 20,000 monthly searches for the non-location specific term that SOME of them would be fairly local, so do we optimize the page without the city name and trust Google to display results with a local intent...therefore showing our client's site in the SERPS when someone searches "sign company" and they are IN West Palm Beach? If there is any confusion, please just ask me to clarify! I think this would be a great WhiteBoard Friday topic for Rand!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Is it better to use geo-targeted keywords or add the locations as separate keywords?
For example... state keyword (nyc real estate) or keyword, state (nyc, real estate) = 2 keywords Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cyclone0 -
NOINDEX listing pages: Page 2, Page 3... etc?
Would it be beneficial to NOINDEX category listing pages except for the first page. For example on this site: http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/101/fsx-missions/ Has lots of pages such as Page 2, Page 3, Page 4... etc: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aflyawaysimulation.com+fsx+missions Would there be any SEO benefit of NOINDEX on these pages? Of course, FOLLOW is default, so links would still be followed and juice applied. Your thoughts and suggestions are much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640