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.
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,
-
Thank you that confirms my thinking
-
We run into this a lot at the agency I work for. Many of our clients have outstanding sub-pages for their specific services – such as bike tours – but none of those sub-pages ever rank. Their home page ranks for just about any relevant keyword.
We find that 9/10, this is an authority issue. Any backlinks the site has are to the homepage, and the majority of their sub-pages have zero backlinks, therefore very little authority – if any at all.
Our solution to this is do short-term link building campaigns with a focus on the sub-page. Perhaps writing content specifically on bike tours, with a link from the post to the service page, could be helpful. You can even submit your site to local directories, and when appropriate, link to that specific page, opposed to the home page, to gain some authority.
Best of luck, I hope this helps!
-
I think you should improve the content the France page... It's a pleasure to have been useful
-
I got the structure si all I can do now is remove the links that say bike tours france and that go to the homepage or improve the content of the france page ? Correct ?
Thank you for your detailled reply,
-
The structure of a website or a blog is of great importance for its chances to rank in search engines.
1. A decent structure makes sure Google ‘understands’ your site.
The way your website is structured will give Google important clues about where to nd the most important content. Your site’s structure determines whether a search engine can understand what your site is about, and how easily it will nd and index the content relevant to your site’s purpose and intent.2 A decent structure makes sure you do not compete with your own content.
On your site, you will probably write multiple pages about similar topics.If we would write eight different articles about bike tours, Google would not know which of the articles or page is the most important one. If you do not solve this by creating a clear site structure, you will be competing with our own articles for a high ranking in Google. Solving this problem requires a good internal linking structure and/or taxonomy structure, resulting in higher rankings. This means that you should pick one article (the flagship article/page/product ) for every major keyword you want to be found for and link to that article from all of your other content about the same keyword.How this apply to your website ?
So you need to create a site structure who reflects that hierarchy. You mentioned that your main products/service is "bike tours Europe".Let's take an example1. bike tours Europe
1.1 bike tours France
1.2 bike tours Spain
1.3 bike tours ItalySo probably in your case your case your homepage is optimized for "bike tours in France"
there are many links pointing to your site with that anchor text (Make a backlink analysis)
if Google is putting your homepage in the first place you need figure out why?Once you do that you need to define your structure in order to make it easy for Google to understand your website.
IF THIS ANSWER WERE USEFUL MARK IT AS A GOOD ANSWER
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
-
Sitemap with homepage URL repeated several times - it is a problem?
Hello Mozzers, I am looking at a website with the homepage repeated several times (4 times) on the sitemap (sitemap is autogenerated via a plugin) - is this an SEO problem do you think - might it damage SEO performance, or can I ignore this issue? I am thinking I can ignore, yet it's an odd "issue" so your advice would be welcome! Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Best Practices for Homepage Title Tag
Hi, I would like to know if there is any update about the best practices for the homepage title tag. I mean, a couple of years ago, it was still working placing main keywords in the homepage title tag. But since the last google SERP update, the number of characters that are being shown were reduced, and now we try to work with 55 and 56 characters. That has reduced our capacity of including many keywords on the title tag. Besides, search engines are smarter now to choose the correct inner page to show in SERP. But I am wondering if the Homepage Title should have a branded orientation or should include main keywords, cause it is still working that strategy. I would appreciatte any update in this issue. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite0 -
URL Injection Hack - What to do with spammy URLs that keep appearing in Google's index?
A website was hacked (URL injection) but the malicious code has been cleaned up and removed from all pages. However, whenever we run a site:domain.com in Google, we keep finding more spammy URLs from the hack. They all lead to a 404 error page since the hack was cleaned up in the code. We have been using the Google WMT Remove URLs tool to have these spammy URLs removed from Google's index but new URLs keep appearing every day. We looked at the cache dates on these URLs and they are vary in dates but none are recent and most are from a month ago when the initial hack occurred. My question is...should we continue to check the index every day and keep submitting these URLs to be removed manually? Or since they all lead to a 404 page will Google eventually remove these spammy URLs from the index automatically? Thanks in advance Moz community for your feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peteboyd0 -
When doing a site search my homepage comes up second. Does that matter?
When I do a site: search the homepage comes up second. Does this matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
What makes a site appear in Google Alerts? And does it mean anything?
Hi All, I recently started using Google Alerts more and more and while sites I support never appear there (not surprising) I recently noticed few very poor and low quality sites that do. This site for example appears quite a bit in its niche. So to my questions... What makes a site appear in Google Alerts? And does it mean anything? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
How to NOT appear in Google results in other countries?
I have ecommerce sites the only serve US and Canada. Is there a way to prevent a site from appearing in the Google results in foreign countries? The reason I ask is that we also have a lot of informational pages that folks in other countries are visiting, then leaving right after reading. This is making our overall Bounce Rate very high (64%). When we segment the GA data to look at just our US visitors, then the Bounce Rate drops a lot. (to 48%) Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregB1230 -
How to get video thumbnails to appear in SERPs
What's the best way to get video thumbs to appear in SERPs?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline1