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
-
Why home Page is not showing showing in search results?
The USA Glitz I search the exact title & keyword but still its not showing though there is no related websites in this term. What can i do ? What kind of strategy needs to follow ? Kindly help me out . Thanks 😢
On-Page Optimization | | henrichjrr4201 -
Question about creating content pages for keywords
Good morning, We are trying to rank our India based company which provides the following services
On-Page Optimization | | harshal.khatavkar
Engineering Design Services
Architectural Design Services
MEP Design Services Our target audiences are in the US and UK. Offcource, we are targetting above services keywords on most of our main pages and created dedicated services pages too. But lately, we found out that we are ranking well for keywords like Outsourcing Engineering Design Services, Outsourcing Architectural Design Services, etc... which are actually very very good keywords in terms of closing the leads/inquiries as people are actually looking out for outsourcing but the search count for those keywords is low. (though we closed 2 inquiries from those keywords). These pages we created in past just to increase the content of the website. I really want to give it a try to target those keywords by creating more pages, blog posts, backlinks, etc... My question is if we create more and more pages around those keywords then will it affect the rankings of the pages which are already ranking for those keywords or will the new pages compete against those pages or the new pages will help to boost current pages? We can write good content and blog posts on the outsourcing topic but not sure if we should create new pages or increase the length of the existing pages. Can you guys please help with some directions on this as I really don't want to take the wrong route. Look forward! Regards0 -
Homepage and keywords
hello, another problem i am facing is that if i see in my rankings over 90% of keywords are connected with my home page. When i go to moz pro in Page Optimization Score wanting to optimize the page to rank better there are some propositions the issue is that it is impossible to have over 100 keywords in home page title to optimize it better for each one of these. I have more specific build more specific sites for many of these keywords in the site but google continues to rank all those keywords for the home page and not for the more specific page that could also be optimized for every keyword it deals with. In adition the question i posted in moz with url: https://moz.com/community/q/greek-language-distinctiveness is also mainly connected with above issue. Please help thanks
On-Page Optimization | | anavasis0 -
Wrong page ranking on SERP, above more relevant page
Often I will see the wrong page, something less relevant to a particular search, appear higher on the SERP than a more relevant page. Why does this happen and how can it be remedied? I found this Moz article, has anything been written on this topic more recently. Thanks! https://moz.com/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions
On-Page Optimization | | NicheSocial0 -
How do you find out all the keywords Google is ranking you for?
Hello, Is there anyway of finding out all the keywords that Google is currently ranking our website for so that we can then build on those keyword positions? Many thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | mblsolutions0 -
Any idea how Google is doing this? Is it schematic? http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/28/google-adds-full-restaurant-menus-to-its-search-results-pages/
Google is now showing menus on select searches. Any idea how they are getting this information? I would like to make sure my clients get visibility this way.
On-Page Optimization | | Ron_McCabe0 -
How to rank Product pages over its Resource counterpart?
So, I have a resource page coming up in the SERPs above the product page, obviously both pages are targeting a lot of the same terms... it's like one is how to use the product and the other IS the product. What's your take on getting the money page to rank instead of the resource page? The only things I can think of include making sure that (internal) anchor text hyperlinks are all powering up the product page, and possibly adding more content to the product page and it's sub-pages. Possibly even including the how to use the product info on the product page itself. Any other ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | wiredseo0 -
Website went from page 10 to 31 for a keyword
Hey Everyone I hope someone could really help me here. My website: goo.gl/5fLqv, it is an ecommerce website and just in the last few days for one my keywords "Wedding Favours" it dropped to page 31 from page 10. Could someone help me please on how to resolve this? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | VIVOWeb0