Google is showing the "wrong" page in the serps for user queries
-
Our site, cpuboss.com has two main types of pages: comparisons of CPUs, and pages about individual CPUs.
When I google search for "fx8350", a keyword for the cpu "AMD FX-8350", I hoped to see our CPU page ranking, instead I see a comparison of this CPU against another.
http://i.imgur.com/QwNczDj.png?1 (Our page ranks #5)
Any idea? Many of our comparisons rank for CPU keywords, when I think it'd be a better experience for the user if our cpu pages ranked instead.
This particular CPU page is linked to on our homepage with appropriate anchor text, and linked to on that comparison also. I would have hoped the relevance of the cpu page to this keyword would be stronger than the comparison page, and google might use that relevance signal to show the user the right page.
thoughts?
-
Cool, I'd be interested in the outcome! Let us know how it went:)
-
Thats a great idea, I'm going to try that. I think I'll get some descriptions written up for some CPU pages, and leave others without and compare how they do, see if rankings change.
Thanks!
-
Oh yes true, now I see it. You linked to it 21 times, so actually this now looks like you linked too much!
But like you've said, I think relevance is key. Try to add a little bit of content to the CPU page. A quick unique description of it or so. See if that helps. I guess you might have to test a few different approaches to see which ones work. This is actually a really interesting case.
-
Hi Miki, thanks for the response.. just playing devil's advocate here, the site's homepage has a higher page authority than the comparison, and more external links, so would we expect it to show up in the SERPs instead of the comparison page?
This is a class of problem, it seems to happen with keywords for every CPU, so I'd have to implement your solution of building links for hundreds of pages.
Aren't links typically created by third parties? Or do you create all your own links to your site?
-
Hi Moosa, I'm a bit confused.
There are many pages on the internet that are better results than my comparison page, yet they do not show up, because they are not about the cpu. I'm pretty sure we should be focused on relevance here, not authority.
I don't really have any control of how often other people +1 a page, or link to a page. As it happens this comparison page has been +1'd more than the cpu page. I don't see how that is related to google showing a user a relevant page.
Sure, I could try to get this product page some more +1s, but as I mentioned to Philipp, this is a class of problem, e.g. all my cpu pages have this issue, they don't show up in the serps and instead a comparison of the cpu vs some other cpu shows up in instead.
For example, the site's homepage has more +1s and links than the comparison page, it also has a bit of content about the fx8350 on it, yet google is not showing the homepage in the serps for this query.
-
Hey Philipp, thanks for the response. The Comparison page does link to the CPU page many times with the text "FX 8350", also with "AMD FX 8350".
Keep in mind this issue exists for all the CPU pages (over 200), and each CPU of course is searched for by users with a variety of keywords.
-
Completely agree with Philipp’s strategy plus you can also share the page on social media forums (Google+ specially) and get some +1s for that page to let search engine know what is the better result for users!
Linking from the page that is ranking to the page that you want to be ranked is also a good idea to be implemented!
-
What works pretty good for me usually is linking from the page that does (but should not) rank to the page that should (but does not) rank, using the anchor text you want to rank for.
In this case this means linking from the comparison page to the CPU page with the anchor text including "fx8350".
-
Well, the comparison page has a page authority of 32 while the product page only has a page authority of 21.
This is the most important factor.
THe comparison page also has external links from PC Gamer, and Bit-Tech - while the product page has zero external (followed) links.
I would try to build some external links to the product page.
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
-
Sale page ranking for "[blank] for sale" keywords
My company's Ecommerce site has a sale category that is currently out performing some of our normal categories in the SERPs for "[blank] for sale" keywords. For example the sale category landing page is ranking for the keyword "vegetable seeds for sale" rather than the vegetable seed category. Has anyone ever dealt with a similar situation to this? or does anyone have general advice for optimizing (or weakening) sale pages?
On-Page Optimization | | Scoleman1 -
Image heavy pages: Google friendly fonts / seo text etc
Hi Google friendly fonts - are these in wide use now, do they work ? If you have image heavy site do they work just as well as using what we used to call 'seo text'. I have heard that 'seo text' not really used anymore or at least rebranded to 'helpful, informative paragraph or two of body copy about the page with a couple of the pages target keywords in it'. I take it if fonts in image not google friendly then should still ask dev for some space to fit in a para or two of some proper body copy, with couple of pages target kw in it ? Also looking like if i succeed in this request will be below the fold, how hard should i fight for it to be above the fold ? cheers dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
How is this page ranking?
Hi. A client of mine is being outranked by a competitor whose landing page does not include the keyword within their page content AT ALL. Nor does their URL. Nor do any image alts. And their page title features the keyword in the middle of it, not at the start. Their link profile is not great with directories and the like. They are not socially active.. I am confused! I thought content on a page absolutely had to include the keyword to get ranked for it. Here's the page: www.springsoft.ie, keyword is "water softeners" Any thoughts I would appreciate. Many thanks.Christoffa
On-Page Optimization | | Christoffa0 -
Country Name in Google SERP
I am asking similar type of question that i asked before .I want to display country name in SERP like this. Ask an SEO question |SEOmozQ&A http://seomoz.org/-United States .How to display URL with country name like above.
On-Page Optimization | | Alick3000 -
Page Title
Hi All, I am wondering if you could help me please. I am getting the following result after I run my On-Page Analysis Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements _Easy fix _ <dl style="font-style: normal;"> <dt>Page titles</dt> <dd>"Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin -" and "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Web pages are meant to have a single title, and for both accessibility and search engine optimization reasons, we strongly recommend following this practice.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Remove all but a single page title element.</dd> </dl> Does this mean that i have 2 pages that are nearly identical or i should only name a page with one word? The reason i ask is because i have 1 page called "Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin" and another called "Aquashowers-Dublin Shower Repair" I don't have a page called "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin" (with the space inbetween the words and the hyphen) Any help would be great. Thanks again Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0 -
Duplicate Page Content and Duplicate Page Title
Hi All, I'm new in SEOMoz and have some questions after I have already spend 2-3 days trying to resolve the problems identified from Crawling one of my clients websites. I get quite a lot of Duplicate Page Conntent and Page Titles warnings and trying to find a workaround through the forums and posts. I continuously get this error on most of my pages: URL: http://domain.com/benefits with the same Page but with a WWW in front URL: http://www.domain.com/benefits Any advice will be highly appreciated. Thanks, Athos
On-Page Optimization | | athosk0 -
Almost all pages showing under Notices Rel Canonical - why???
Hi, I'm just going through my latest crawl since my new site launch and havce noticed almost all of my websites pages are listed under the notices rel canonical section, Why is this? All pages have the unique pages titles followed by the site name in the title, for example: Product | Site name All pages have unique meta descriptions and content (although we only offer lots of differt varients of the same product). Is this something I should be worried about?
On-Page Optimization | | EclipseLegal0 -
Follow up on "Canonical Tag Placement - Every Page?"
But if it is like Pete said, I don't understand why e.g. SEO Moz has a Canonical Tag on this Page http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps Which leads to the exact same page!? What is the benefit of doing so? Regards
On-Page Optimization | | Here4You0