Linkbait outranks actual target page?
-
Interesting dilemma I've run into. Working in an extremely boring B2B space and started making some quality content to grab some .edu links. Well, it worked. Let's put it this way, our target keyword is "{keyword} services" and we pulled in so many .edu links the resource page which is an educational resource with our target keyword in it, has now surpassed every commercial site and ranks second. The problem is, the page doesn't have much in the way of services on it, it's strictly educational and targets a different audience than our customer. The home page, our desired landing page, jumps back and forth between third and twelfth depending on the week.
Any thoughts on how to make these flip flop? We're getting a ton of traffic to the wrong page and bouncing most of them at the moment.
-
should have mentioned we already have done this. thanks for the head's up, though.
-
The guys @dejanseo mentioned this via Twitter:
link to money page with a contextual kw anchor text from the juiced up page.
-
First to clarify:
Is the link bait on the same domain?
It sounds like the PA (page authority) of the link bait page is higher than that of the domain's home page. My suggestion would be:
- Try to redesign the home page to incorporate the link bait, even if it's at the bottom of the home page.
- Then 301 the linkbait page to the home page
-
Why add the content to the home page?
-
So that Google doesn't penalize you for not having the content your users wanted. If you link without duplicating the content it's grey hat.
SEO Moz was using this tactic back in 2006ish when Matt Inman worked at SEO Moz. They called it the "Link Bait and Switch"
-
So is this a page on your domain that is ranking ? Just making sure. So it's the wrong page ranking for the right keyword ? If yes, does it make sense to add a canonical tag on this wrong page to the right page, which is like a 301 and that should do it. The question is whether it makes sense in your case. Was this all naturally done...was it like a linkbait or an info graphic or a widget kind of something that brought these links ? Once you have these answers, you should be able to act on whether it's okay to do the canonical change. Let me low if that helps.
-
Reoptimize for a different keyword.
Then your desired page will rank at 12th or maybe 10th.
That is my prediction.
Instead of viewing this as a "problem" maybe you could figure out a way to get traffic from that #3 page into your desired page. If people don't want what is on that page it should be easy to funnel them to another page on your site. Now you have success.
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
-
Paginated Pages Page Depth
Hi Everyone, I was wondering how Google counts the page depth on paginated pages. DeepCrawl is showing our primary pages as being 6+ levels deep, but without the blog or with an infinite scroll on the /blog/ page, I believe it would be only 2 or 3 levels deep. Using Moz's blog as an example, is https://moz.com/blog?page=2 treated to be on the same level in terms of page depth as https://moz.com/blog? If so is it the https://site.comcom/blog" /> and https://site.com/blog?page=3" /> code that helps Google recognize this? Or does Google treat the page depth the same way that DeepCrawl is showing it with the blog posts on page 2 being +1 in page depth compared to the ones on page 1, for example? Thanks, Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyRSB0 -
Category Page as Shopping Aggregator Page
Hi, I have been reviewing the info from Google on structured data for products and started to ponder.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alexcox6
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/products Here is the scenario.
You have a Category Page and it lists 8 products, each products shows an image, price and review rating. As the individual products pages are already marked up they display Rich Snippets in the serps.
I wonder how do we get the rich snippets for the category page. Now Google suggest a markup for shopping aggregator pages that lists a single product, along with information about different sellers offering that product but nothing for categories. My ponder is this, Can we use the shopping aggregator markup for category pages to achieve the coveted rich results (from and to price, average reviews)? Keen to hear from anyone who has had any thoughts on the matter or had already tried this.0 -
How should I deal with this page?
Hey Mozzers, I was looking for a little guidance and advice regarding a couple of pages on my website. I have used 'shoes' for this example. I have the current structure Parent Category - Shoes Sub Categories - Blue Shoes
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATP
Hard Shoes
Soft Shoes
Big Shoes etc Supporting Article - Different Types of Shoe and Their Uses There are about 12 subcategories in total - each one links back to the Parent Category with the keyword "Shoes". Every sub category has gone from ranking 50+ to 10-30th for its main keyword which is a good start and as I release supporting articles im sure each one will climb. I am happy with this. The Article ranks no1 for about 20 longtails terms around "different shoes". This page attracts around 60% of my websites traffic but we know this traffic will not convert as most are people and children looking for information only for educational purposes and are not looking to buy. Many are also looking for a type of product we dont sell. My issue is ranking for the primary category "Shoes" keyword. When i first made the changes we went from ranking nowhere to around 28th on the parent category page targeted at "Shoes". Whilst not fantastic this was good as gave us something to work off. However a few weeks later, the article page ranked 40th for this term and the main page dropped off the scale. Then another week some of the sub category pages ranked for it. And now none of my pages rank in the top 50 for it. I am fairly sure this is due to some cannibalisation - simply because of various pages ranking for it at different times.
I also think that additional content added by products on the sub category pages is giving them more content and making them rank better. The Page Itself
The Shoes page itself contains 400 good unique words, with the keyword mentioned 8 times including headings. There is an image at the top of the page with its title and alt text targeted towards the keyword. The 12 sub categories are linked to on the left navigation bar, and then again below the 400 words of content via a picture and text link. This added the keyword to the page another 18 or so times in the form of links to longtail subcaterogies. This could introduce a spam problem i guess but its in the form of nav bars or navigation tables and i understood this to be a necessary evil on eCommerce websites. There are no actual products linked from this page. - a problem? With all the basic SEO covered. All sub pages linking back to the parent category, the only solution I can think of is to add more content by Adding all shoes products to the shoe page as it currently only links out the the sub categories Merging the "Different Type of Shoe and Their Uses" article into the shoe page to make a super page and make the article pages less like to produce cannibalistic problems. However, by doing solution 2, I remove a page bringing in a lot of traffic. The traffic it brings in however is of very little use and inflates the bounce rate and lowers the conversion rate of my whole site by significant figures. It also distorts other useful reports to track my other progress. I hope i have explained well enough, thanks for sticking with me this far, i havn't posted links due to a reluctance by the company so hopefully my example will suffice. As always thanks for any input.0 -
Swapping page keyword?
If we have swopped the keyword (leaflet printing) from this page http://www.fastprint.co.uk/leaflet-flyer-printing/ and moved it to http://www.fastprint.co.uk/ But the inner page is still ranking for the keyword is there a way to tell Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Our client's web property recently switched over to secure pages (https) however there non secure pages (http) are still being indexed in Google. Should we request in GWMT to have the non secure pages deindexed?
Our client recently switched over to https via new SSL. They have also implemented rel canonicals for most of their internal webpages (that point to the https). However many of their non secure webpages are still being indexed by Google. We have access to their GWMT for both the secure and non secure pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB
Should we just let Google figure out what to do with the non secure pages? We would like to setup 301 redirects from the old non secure pages to the new secure pages, but were not sure if this is going to happen. We thought about requesting in GWMT for Google to remove the non secure pages. However we felt this was pretty drastic. Any recommendations would be much appreciated.0 -
Where is the best place for Landing Pages to reside on the Home Page?
On this site http://www.austintenantadvisors.com/ I have my main landing pages listed in the navigation under "Types". The reason why I did this is because I am not sure where to insert those on the home page where it does not look spammy to Google and looks natural for users. Obviously they need to appear somewhere on the home page for Google to be able to continue crawling and indexing them. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0 -
Google Filter? Drop from top first page to bottom second page?
My site has dropped from the first page top spots to the bottom second page, about 2 month ago. From time to time it reappears in the first page, is this some kind of google filter? How do I solve this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ofer230 -
Duplicated Pages (Travel Industry)
Hi, I have 6 duplicated pages. I want to know the best way to resolve this issue. The title for all pages is 'Paradisus All Inclusive Luxury Resorts - Book your stay at Paradisus Resorts' http://www.paradisus.com/booking-template.php | http://www.paradisus.com/booking-template.php?codigoHotel=5889 |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia
| | http://www.paradisus.com/booking-template.php?codigoHotel=5891 line 9 http://www.paradisus.com/booking-template.php |
| | http://www.paradisus.com/booking-template.php?codigoHotel=5910 line 9 http://www.paradisus.com/booking-template.php |
| | http://www.paradisus.com/booking-template.php?codigoHotel=5911 line 9 |0