Sending signals to Google to rank the correct page for a set of Keywords.
-
Hi All,
Out of all our keywords their are 3 that are showing our home page in the serps rather than the specific product page URL on Google.co.za (Google.com ranks the correct URL)
Im not sure why this is happening as most links built using the anchor text are pointing to the correct page. Why would google prefer ranking our home page on local search and rank the correct page on Google.com? (only 3 keywords have this problem)
I have tried to correct this by creating links from strong internal pages with anchor text pointing to the correct URL. I have also concentrated on building links from .co.za domains using the anchor text and correct URL but to no avail.
It has been 2 weeks now, since i tried to sort it out, but im not sure what else i can do to tell Google to rank the correct page.
Any ideas?
Regards
Greg
-
This post from Rand about the "wrong page" ranking may also help.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions
-
Thank you Tommy,
I will keep at it until it changes.
Thanks for the advice.
Regards
Greg
-
Hi Andre!
This is a common problem and I know several people that have met it.
Tips for fixing this problem:
1. Make sure that your prefered landing page are relevant for the keyword, title, H1 and content.
2. Use the power of internal links, if you mention the keyword on other pages, make a link to the prefered page with that keyword (naturally sometimes, not always). It will give Google a signal on what page you want to rank for the targeted keyword.
3. Check incoming links in OSE, if you find "good" links that are pointing to the wrong url, make contact and ask them to update the URL.
4. Make more signals by using social media-links (G+, Facebook and Twitter) to preferred URL.
Hope this will help you!
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
-
2 pages ranking for same keyword.. Need some advice on what to do.
Here's my question. When I first started my website we started Using keyword anchor building links To my homepage . Over the years Our business has expanded to more than just baby headbands. I now have a baby headband page. When tracking my rankings. I sometimes see Both pages in Google for the same keyword. Other days I do not see both of them. My question is Should I continue building links and keyword anchor text for the home page Or should I switch them and start building keyword-rich anchor text for my baby headband page. I'm just wondering if the Search engine is confused by the two. When searching for the keyword baby headbands. I will sometimes show up for eight and nine. 8 is my home page and 9 is for the baby headband page. I have always shown up for the keyword "baby Headbands" for my home page.
Technical SEO | | PB20070 -
Home Page Not Ranking... Need an EXPERT
Hi, for about a year now, our home page seems to have been "removed" from Google (except for our branded keywords). The home page is clearly indexed, but none of the keywords for the home page rank in the top 500 (again, except for our brand, trophycentral). Other pages in the site are fine and we rank in the top 10 positions for hundreds of keywords. We are also okay on Yahoo and Bing. So the issue is the home page from non-branded words. There have been no manual penalties, but since the words, such as trophies and trophies and awards are all but gone, something is going on. It has been almost exactly a year now and I have tried everything from removing backlinks (although I still can't tell which are "bad links", to changing titles, to improving speed and structure. I have had quite a few really nice people try to help, but their suggestions don't seem to work or are too vague. I really need an expert as the impact to the business of not having a home page performing is very damaging. Thank you!!!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Google truncating or altering meta title - affect rankings?
I have a site that the title tag is too long and the title is simply the name of the site (I think they get it from ODP, not sure) Anyway, the rankings for the home page have dropped quite a bit. I'm wondering if the change that Google makes affects rankings (i.e. name of site doesn't have all the keywords).
Technical SEO | | santiago230 -
Description and Title keyword Not showing in Google SERP?
It appears our description and title have disappeared in Goggle and Bing search results. We currently did a update to Magento 1.7 and the robots.txt included this: User-agent: * Disallow: / But that is fixed in Google Webmaster tools and everything else looks good. Here is the site: http://www.oxygenconcentratorstore.com/ Any help would be awesome. Thanks. google_serp.jpg
Technical SEO | | chuck-layton0 -
Changed cms - google indexes old and new pages
Hello again, after posting below problem I have received this answer and changed sitemap name Still I receive many duplicate titles and metas as google still compares old urls to new ones and sees duplicate title and description.... we have redirectged all pages properly we have change sitemap name and new sitemap is listed in webmastertools - old sitemap includes ONLY new sitemap files.... When you deleted the old sitemap and created a new one, did you use the same sitemap xml filename? They will still try to crawl old URLs that were in your previous sitemap (even if they aren't listed in the new one) until they receive a 404 response from the original sitemap. If anone can give me an idea why after 3 month google still lists the old urls I'd be more than happy thanks a lot Hello, We have changed cms for our multiple language website and redirected all odl URl's properly to new cms which is working just fine.
Technical SEO | | Tit
Right after the first crawl almost 4 weeks ago we saw in google webmaster tool and SEO MOZ that google indexes for almost every singlepage the old URL as well and the new one and sends us for this duplicate metatags.
We deleted the old sitemap and uploaded the new and thought that google then will not index the old URL's anymore. But we still see a huge amount of duplicate metatags. Does anyone know what else we can do, so google doe snot index the old url's anymore but only the new ones? Thanks so much Michelle0 -
Pages plummeting in ranking
Hi all, I have a question, which i hope you can answer for me. I have a site www.betxpert.com (a danish betting site) and we have tried to do some SEO to improve conversions. One of the steps we have taken was to link to all of our bookmaker reviews in our menu (a mega menu). All of our bookmakers have an img and text link in the menu. The menu is shown on every page of the site. Since we have made this change we have been plumeting down the SERPs. For the search "betsafe" this page http://www.betxpert.com/bookmakere/betsafe is no longer in the top 50. We also added the "stars" so that the google result will show our over all review for the bookmaker, in order to stand out in the SERPs. Can anyone explain to me what the problem might be? Over extensive internal linking or?
Technical SEO | | rasmusbang0 -
Sub-Page Ranks for a Main Keyword
A sub page now ranks for my main key word (the file name is exact match to the key word) it completely replaced my index page in rankings. Would 301 redirecting the sub-page to my index page (which is more informative and has a whole lot more links pointing towards it) be a good idea or vice versa? Or would optimizing that page (the sub page) be the best way to go (the sub page doesn't have single inbound link pointing to...). This happened about a week ago. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Benj7070 -
Google rankings tanked....Now what?
We just experience a drop in Google rankings, some pretty harsh, across all of the keywords we have been ranking greater than 50. I’m a noob at SEO, but a technical noob so I started doing my home work. I’ve seen references to the “google dance” and “Honeymoon”, but this hit seems to have effected competitors too. Everyone seems re-ranked with several junk directories jumping up more than I think they should. Has anyone else seen this? Is this more Google algorithm adjustment or a natural settling based on our new SEO attempts? In either case, what should we do next? I know there is a holistic approach and everything is important however, we need bang for the buck at this point to before we start bleeding. One or two next steps? Our industry is residential cleaning and the site is www.bitabliss.com Here is a little history:
Technical SEO | | BitABliss
The site that’s been running for about 2 years. We initially put up a very basic “throw something up” site without much thought of SEO except for some basics and a long tail approach with a blog, FaceBook and Twitter. We launched an updated site on Feb 23. with new theme and this time some, “on page” work to better hit the basics. The site structure was kept the same and we added on some more localized content in hopes to take advantage of local searches. Also, enter SEOMoz to get us tracking things (Yay MOZ). Until yesterday, we had been doing pretty well in some of our target cites even with the more basic site. When we launched the new site focusing on page titles, descriptions and page content, and a few directory attempts. We started to see some incremental growth. It seemed to me that this kind of growth meant that we were doing the right things and doing a better job than some of the other sites. Any way, yesterday we got smacked down. This seems too harsh for a for the slow increases we have seen over the last month. Any thoughts you have would be great appreciated. Thanks! -Shawn1