How to get Google to index another page
-
Hi,
I will try to make my question clear, although it is a bit complex.
For my site the most important keyword is "Insurance" or at least the danish variation of this.
My problem is that Google are'nt indexing my frontpage on this, but are indexing a subpage - www.mydomain.dk/insurance instead of www.mydomain.dk.
My link bulding will be to subpages and to my main domain, but i wont be able to get that many links to www.mydomain.dk/insurance.
So im interested in making my frontpage the page that is my main page for the keyword insurance, but without just blowing the traffic im getting from the subpage at the moment.
Is there any solutions to do this?
Thanks in advance.
-
Hi Kate,
Thanks for your reply, im glad for yours and all others contribution, it really make me reflect on which direction i should choose.
The whole page is an insurance page, but there is many different things you can do, you can buy insurance, calculate prize, make a claim and so on, so the frontpage has many purposes.
The reason why i want to be ranked on the frontpage, is because it converts better, and im sure i can get it ranked higher, in the long run, because of the link building oppertunities i have on that page.
So right now, it maybe would preferrebly to focus on /insurance, but in the long run i think the frontpage will be stronger.
It's also important for me to underline, that im a part of a big company, and its not entirely up to me to decide changes and etc. on the homepage.
-
Keith and Bryan are dead on. If your homepage is better for users looking for insurance, then why is there an insurance page? My guess is because your site offers more than insurance.
Yes, getting links to the homepage will be easier, but that should not be the reason for killing a well ranking page that seems to be the better page. I'd recommend updating the insurance page to make it convert like the homepage and let it remain the focus of insurance traffic. Then make sure that your homepage links to the insurance page with good anchor text, and that it doesn't link to another page with any insurance related text.
-
Hi,
Thank you, and all other, for your replies - it's very helpful.
The reason i want the traffic on the frontpage is the following:
-
It's alot easier for me to get link juice to the frontpage, at the moment we havent been working focused with link building, but when we start doing that, it will be alot easier to get links to the frontpage.
-
Im quite sure the frontpage is a better landing page for this traffic than the /insurance page, so the conversion rates and etc. will be better on the frontpage.
-
-
Again, my advise would be the same as Bryan's - leave it alone and build more links to the insurance page.
I don't see a problem with that page out ranking your home page?
-
Rel canonical will kill the insurance page, likely not the best idea!
-
I don't advise 301 redirecting /insurance as it looks to me like it is very strong. It will lose most of its link juice when redirected. Rather optimise your homepage with the desired keyword. Google chooses the most relevant page which is why /insurance is showing up for insurance. As it should! Don't worry about your home page, rather link to the /insurance page and your entire domain will gain strength over time. Actually the deep linked /insurance page will likely get stronger quicker than trying to get the home page stronger.
Once you link all everything to the home page it will eventually get stronger so long as it contains Insurance in the title and is optimised for this word.
-
I would either use rel canonical as Nakul instructed above, although this is a bit of hack IMO.
Or just build some better quality links at the page you want to rank, I don't see a problem with building links to the /insurance page?
-
If that's the case, I would suggest doing a rel=canonical tag on www.tryg.dk/forsikring to your homepage. Essentially, it's like a 301 for search engines but not for the users. The users will be able to come to your homepage, use navigation and or other links to visit www.tryg.dk/forsikring or they can come from external links which are linking to www.tryg.dk/forsikring. But Google will de-index that page and rank the homepage instead.
I hope that helps. The exact canonical tag you would use on www.tryg.dk/forsikring page would be :
-
Hi Keith,
the page is www.tryg.dk and it is ranked, i just want it to rank on keyword "insurance" as well, as the link building oppertunities on that page is alot better than on www.tryg.dk/forsikring.
A 301 redirect wont work, since i still want people to be able to access www.tryg.dk/forsikring.
-
Hi, the domain is www.tryg.dk and it is cached and indexed in Google.
Because of the possibilities to link build to my main page, i would like to optimize that to the keyword "Insurance", and that process i could start right away.
My question is if there is any possibility to get Google to "understand" this, or i has to work my way up with my main page, whilst i stop focus on www.tryg.dk/forsikringer - that is at this moment the page getting the highest ranking on "insurance".
-
I suspect his home page is just not ranking for the keywords, could you post the URL in question?
If not then type
_site:www.yourdomain.com _
Into Google and let us know if your site is listed.
Thanks,
-
are you saying your homepage is not indexed/cached in Google ? If that's the case, there might be something wrong. There might be a noindex tag, some sort of a disallow to your homepage. Personally, I can't remember seeing a similar scenario where inner pages are indexed and the homepage is not. If it's not ranking but is cached, that's another issue.
Please confirm.
-
Optimise your home page for your chosen keyword and 301 the page /insurance to your root domain.
To do this you need to create a .htaccess file in the / directory on your server and enter the following information.
Redirect 301 /insurance http://www.mydomain.dk
About 90% of the link juice "should" flow through if you use a 301 redirect, you can test the above is working by visting http://www.mydomain.dk/insurance and making sure it redirect you to your home page.
Note that a 301 can take a few weeks (possibly longer) for Google to pick up so do not expect overnight changes.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Getting 'Indexed, not submitted in sitemap' for around a third of my site. But these pages ARE in the sitemap we submitted.
As in the title, we have a site with around 40k pages, but around a third of them are showing as "Indexed, not submitted in sitemap" in Google Search Console. We've double-checked the sitemaps we have submitted and the URLs are definitely in the sitemap. Any idea why this might be happening? Example URL with the error: https://www.teacherstoyourhome.co.uk/german-tutor/Egham Sitemap it is located on: https://www.teacherstoyourhome.co.uk/sitemap-subject-locations-surrey.xml
Technical SEO | | TTYH0 -
Paginated pages are being indexed?
I have lots of paginated pages which are being indexed. Should I add the noindex tag to page 2 onwards? The pages currently have previous and next tags in place. Page one also has a self-referencing canonical.
Technical SEO | | WTH0 -
Google not index main keyword on homepage in 2 countries same language, rest of pages no problem
Hello, Two the same websites, two countries, same language http://www.lavistarelatiegeschenken.nl / http://www.lavistarelatiegeschenken.be The main keyword "relatiegeschenken" in top 10 of netherlands (steady position for 2 years) and in ** belgium** not in top 15****0 the main keyword "relatiegeschenken| but other keywords good positions, thats so strange I didn't understand and now every thing turned around suddenly: Now the main keyword "relatiegeschenken suddenly " not anymore in top 10 in the netherslandsits gone and other kewyords still good positions , now **main keyword suddenly in top 10 of belgium 2 years was not **other pages still ok. It are exactly the same websites and the same language. So double content But my programmer told me in google webmaster tools settings are right, so no problem with double content ? I really dont understand first main keyword in netherland in top 10 and in belgium not, now changed, now in belgium top 10 and not findable in the netherland on the main keyword. Maybe problem in code ? Maybe problems in code because websites are identical and active in two different countries wit same language ? No message about a penalty message in WMT, no spam links week i delete two strong but according to Linkdetox a bad links. I can not find a solution but its really important keyword that my customer want back in top 10 in netherland, like it was. All other positions and visitors are the same. Befor i have had this with belgium site, also main keyword google not index homepage. But suddenly no google show in belgium in top 10 Its turned around Kind regards, Marcel
Technical SEO | | Bossie720 -
Google Crawling Issues! How Can I Get Google to Crawl My Website Regularly?
Hi Everyone! My website is not being crawled regularly by Google - there are weeks when it's regular but for the past month or so it does not get crawled for seven to eight days. There are some specific pages, that I want to get ranked but they of late are not being crawled AT ALL unless I use the 'Fetch As Google' tool! That's not normal, right? I have checked and re-checked the on-page metrics for these pages (and the website as a whole, backlinking is a regular and ongoing process as well! Sitemap is in place too! Resubmitted it once too! This issue is detrimental to website traffic and rankings! Would really appreciate insights from you guys! Thanks a lot!
Technical SEO | | farhanm1 -
Can Google show the hReview-Aggregate microformat in the SERPs on a product page if the reviews themselves are on a separate page?
Hi, We recently changed our eCommerce site structure a bit and separated our product reviews onto a a different page. There were a couple of reasons we did this : We used pagination on the product page which meant we got duplicate content warnings. We didn't want to show all the reviews on the product page because this was bad for UX (and diluted our keywords). We thought having a single page was better than paginated content, or at least safer for indexing. We found that Googlebot quite often got stuck in loops and we didn't want to bury the reviews way down in the site structure. We wanted to reduce our bounce rate a little, so having a different reviews page could help with this. In the process of doing this we tidied up our microformats a bit too. The product page used to have to three main microformats; hProduct hReview-Aggregate hReview The product page now only has hProduct and hReview-Aggregate (which is now nested inside the hProduct). This means the reviews page has hReview-Aggregate and hReviews for each review itself. We've taken care to make sure that we're specifying that it's a product review and the URL of that product. However, we've noticed over the past few weeks that Google has stopped feeding the reviews into the SERPs for product pages, and is instead only feeding them in for the reviews pages. Is there any way to separate the reviews out and get Google to use the Microformats for both pages? Would using microdata be a better way to implement this? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | OptiBacUK
James0 -
Targeting multiple keywords with index page
Quick keyword question.... I just started working with a client that is ranking fairly well for a number of keywords with his index page. Right now he has a bunch of duplicate titles, descriptions, etc across the entire site. There are 5 different keywords in the title of the index page alone. I am wondering if it OK to target 3 different keywords with the index page? Or, if I should cut it down to 1. Think blue widget, red widget, and widget making machines. I want each of the individual keywords to improve but don't want to lose what I have either. Any ideas? THANKS!!!!
Technical SEO | | SixTwoInteractive0 -
Noindex Pages indexed
I'm having problem that gogole is index my search results pages even though i have added the "noindex" metatag. Is the best thing to block the robot from crawling that file using robots.txt?
Technical SEO | | Tedred0 -
Blank pages in Google's webcache
Hello all, Is anybody experiencing blanck page's in Google's 'Cached' view? I'm seeing just the page background and none of the content for a couple of my pages but when I click 'View Text Only' all of teh content is there. Strange! I'd love to hear if anyone else is experiencing the same. Perhaps this is something to do with the roll out of Google's updates last week?! Thanks,
Technical SEO | | A_Q
Elias0