My homepage no longer ranks for a keyword, instead a page from the blog now appears in the results
-
Hello,
Our site used to rank for a specific keyword - "eco products", with a link going to the homepage. However, in the last few weeks, we've noticed that the home page no longer ranks for this keyword, and instead the second result on the page is a link to a catagory page on our blog.
I'd be very grateful if anyone had any information about why this might have happened, and what possible steps I could take to remedy the situation.
Many thanks,
Sophy
-
Ha, no worries buddy. Great minds and all that.
-
Sorry Marcus, We must have been typing at the same time.
-
Hi Sophy, It's actually in line with what Marcus was saying. Your two pages are competing with each other. If you look at the Title Tag for the home page, there is nothing that says "eco products." But if you look at your category page, you'll see not only does the Title Tag say "Eco Products," but it's also in the URL. So you'll have to make a decision as to whether or not you'll want Eco Products to have it's own page or to have it show up on the home page. If you want it to show on the home page, you'll want that in the Title Tag, and you will need to rename that category page as well as renaming the Title Tag.
-
Hey Sophie
In this instance, I am guessing you don't want to lose that page from ranking but the page itself is called 'eco-products' and the term you are targeting on the homepage is eco-products so you seem to have a conflict of interest between those two pages.
Lets look at the homepage:
**Title: **Nigel's Eco Store - Environmentally friendly products and eco friendly gifts for sustainable living
Keyword Usage: 2 - once in a page title, once in an image title (0 times on the page itself)Lets look at the /eco-products/ page
Title: Eco Products
Keyword Usage: 13 times on page & 27 times in total taking all HTML elements into accountAnchor Text
Additionally, lets look at the anchor text to the pages. The homepage has the standard logo and image links from the main nav but the eco-products page has tons of links with the term 'eco products' from the 'posted in tags'.
Summary
In brief, without looking at the external issues, the ranking is kind of right. Everything on your blog page is saying hey, I am about eco products but your homepage hardly uses this term at all.
Your homepage ranks first (uk at least) for a bunch of other terms:
environmentally friendly products store
eco storeSo, is this such a bad thing? I imagine, if you really want to rank the homepage for this term you could rename that page / tag to something else and work that phrase into the homepage a little more. You seem so strong for eco + x that it would likely be doable (and you have the historical ranking for the term).
Maybe it may be a good chance to look at your landing pages and add a new page to catch this traffic?
There are plenty of options but the approach depends on what you are looking for here but there is certainly no mystery why that page ranks for that term over your homepage. I think the simplest solution is just a case of changing the name of that page/tag to something more suitable and building some relevance for eco products on the homepage OR looking at a new optimised landing page for that term.
Hope it helps!
Marcus -
Hi,
Well, it's good to hear I'm not alone! The link to the homepage which used to appear for this term is http://www.nigelsecostore.com/, and the link to the page which now appears in second place for this term is http://www.nigelsecostore.com/blog/category/eco-products/
Thank you for your suggestions,
Sophy
-
Hi Marcus,
Thanks for getting back to me so promptly, and thanks for the suggestions - very useful.
Here is a link to the page that comes up for this keyword - http://www.nigelsecostore.com/blog/category/eco-products/
Looking in Google Webmaster Tools, I can't see a single link to this page.
Our homepage http://www.nigelsecostore.com/ always used to rank for this term "eco products", and I can understand that its normal for your ranking to go up and down over time for a term, but for the homepage to completely disappear from the search results for this term, and to be replaced by this category page on our blog seems very weird!
Thanks,
Sophy
-
Hi Sophy, I had a similar problem. I combated this by adding url conical. I also removed most of the backlinks to that particular category and redirected it to my index page. It took a couple of weeks to get back to how it was. It will be hard to find out the reason without posting a link though! Thanks
-
Hey Sophy
Could be a lot of things, could you supply a link?
- maybe the blog page is more relevant for that term or you have two competing pages
- maybe the blog page picked up some external links with that anchor so became more relevant than the homepage
- maybe the sites structure or linking gives more relevance to that page for that term
The solutions are kind of similar to the suggestions above
- make sure the homepage is more relevant for that term
- make sure the two pages are not competing for that term
- do some link building for that term to the homepage
- ensure the internal linking and anchors are not promoting that page for that term
Hard to go further than these general hints without a URL but happy to take a look if you want to post a link.
Hope it helps!
Marcus
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
-
Shifting target keyword to a new page, how do we rank the internal page?
I have been targeting one keyword for home page that was ranking between the postilion 6-7 but was never ranking on 1st as there were 2 highly competitive keywords targeted on the same page, I changed the keyword to an internal service page to rank it on 1st, I have optimized the content as well but the home page is still ranking on 11th, how do I get the internal page rank on that keyword
On-Page Optimization | | GOMO-Gabriel0 -
Keywords ranking on Homepage but are not mentioned.
I was wondering why some of my keywords are ranking in my homepage but are not mentioned even once. Is it maybe because they are semantically related with the keywords targeted on the homepage? What are the reason(s) for this? Thanks for enlightening me with this one.
On-Page Optimization | | TWSOM0 -
Page rank question
Hi all, pretty standard SEO question that I'm sure you are all getting asked day in, day out... the following page: http://www.3wisemonkeys.co.uk/dvd/portable-dvd-player-car/ It's targetting keywords "portable dvd", "portable DVD player", "portable DVD players" & "portable dvd player for car". The page gets a grade A via Moz analytics On-page grader for the keywords. We have incoming links and I believe the page is structured correctly with all meta tags, H1 etc and tried not too overload the tags with keywords. We have the keywords in the URL etc. We are still stuck on page 2 for all phrases. Any thoughts or suggestions as to what we are doing wrong please? Any help would be great.
On-Page Optimization | | jasef0 -
Is the use of some keywords necessary to be included in many of the pages?
Hello, I have a website about SEO and webdesign. I want to ask will mentioning these two keywords in many of my articles have any benefit for particular landing pages that I have. F.e.: I have two pages: example.com/seo example.com/web-design They are optimized and have Grade A in SEOMOZ's onpage tool for their two keywords. So my question is: Will broad use of my keywords SEO and webdesign in the text, title or alt not only on my two landing pages but also in other articles of my website also help these two pages to rank higher for their keyword. I see in Webmaster Tools (http://images.seroundtable.com/google-content-keywords-1351084751.jpg) there is an option to see the content keywords in your website. May be that shows that the content in my website is more relevant to particular topic and that also can influence the ranking of my two landing pages.
On-Page Optimization | | HrishikeshKarov0 -
Should I use bolded keywords for keywords in the content throughout the page?
If I'm trying to optimize for a specific keyword, should I bold all of the keywords that appear in the content of the page or just one or two? or none at all?
On-Page Optimization | | globalrose.com0 -
Break-up content into individual pages or keep on one page
I am working on a dental website. Under menu item "services" lists everything he does like.. Athletic Sports Guards
On-Page Optimization | | Czubmeister
An athletic sports guard is a resilient plastic appliance that is worn to protect the teeth and gum tissues by absorbing the forces generated by traumatic blows during sports or other activities. Digital X-Rays We use state of the art digital x-rays and digital cameras to help with an accurate diagnosis of any concerns. Digital Imaging On initial visits, and recall visits, we take a series of digital photographs to aid us in diagnosis as well as to give you a close-up view of your mouth and any oral conditions. Smile Makeovers
We offer a number of different options including bleaching, bonding, porcelain veeners, and in some cases, implants and/or orthodontic care is utilized in our smile makeover planning. Nitrous oxide for your Comfort Would it be better to break these services up into individual pages? I was thinking I would because then I could add more pictures and expand on the topic and try to get an "A" grade on each page. I'm not sure how I could rank a page if I have 35 services listed on the page. That would be an awfully big H1! Suggestions?0 -
Changing the page a term ranks for
Hi all, I hope you can help advise me of the best way to change the page that is ranking for a particular keyword/term. Is it just a case of on-page optimizing the term/keyword on the new-page and getting good links/traffic to that page and leaving the old one as it is, or is some sort of "de-optimization" of the old page a something that could help? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | bunac10 -
Keyword rich domains - Which are the best domain extensions for ranking in the UK other than .com or .co.uk
Hey there, In the absence of getting a keyword rich .com or .co.uk domain am wondering how influential .info, .org, .net domains (or any others) are in comparison? Does anyone have any comparison info to share please?
On-Page Optimization | | Wallander0