Home Page Keywords not Ranking and Assigned to Inside Pages
-
Hi, thank you for taking the time to read this. We have a few websites with the same problem. I will use http://www.prepared-meals.com as an example:
The home page was ranking on page one for keyword "Prepared Meals". The site is about 6 months old. We use the Moz page optimizer on all pages of our websites to score an A rating.
Recently we found the home page is no longer showing up in search results and the keyword "prepared meals" now points to an inside page that is not relevant: http://www.prepared-meals.com/Senior-Meals/Moms-Meals-Reviews.html this page shows up for Prepared Meals around page 15 in Google results.
We have read keywords in the URL might be the issue, even though the page optimizer in MOZ says to do that. We are wondering if this is the issue or there is some other problem we are not aware of.
Again, thank you for you for your time.
-Craig
-
Hi Craig,
To me it kinda looks like an 'Exact Match Domain' issue and that over this year's algorithm updates it may have now flagged your domain as of low quality. The fact that your site is very young as well and that this looks like an EMD for your target search query it's likely it is now going against you. There is low historical data that the search engines can go on so it's likely to be devaluing your site to searchers.
Ref. "We have read keywords in the URL might be the issue, even though the page optimizer in MOZ says to do that. We are wondering if this is the issue or there is some other problem we are not aware of." A page's URL yes is used as an indicator of a page's relevancy but this is more about domain name address name rather than a page's URL.
This article is somewhat old but still helpful http://www.seroundtable.com/google-emd-update-15776.html
Best
David
-
Hi Craig -
I think Google has penalized the site for over optimization or trying to trick google for the keyword 'prepared meals'.
Looking into the backlinks you have via keyword 'Prepared Meals' - sample here http://prntscr.com/1yzst1, i notice that they are from sites which are blog networks that commercially sell backlinks. If that is the case, it is not a good practice.
I'd propose that you check the backlinks and take corrective measures.
Other than this, I cannot find anything else that would be the cause for the same.
It also aligns with the recent google release of penguin 2.1 which is to fight these spammy links -- more details here http://searchengineland.com/penguin-2-1-and-5-live-173632
Regards,
K
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
-
Combine poorly ranking pages into a single page?
I'm doing on-page optimizations for an apartment management company, and they have about seven apartments listed on their site. Rather than include everything on the same page - /apartments/apartment-name/ - they have the following setup: /apartments/apartment-name/contact /apartments/apartment-name/features /apartments/apartment-name/availability /apartments/apartment-name/gallery /apartments/apartment-name/neighborhood With very few exceptions, none of these pages appear to rank for anything, and those that do either rank very poorly for seemingly random keywords or for keywords like the apartment complex name (alongside the main landing page for the complex). I'm of the mind to recommend combining the pages into a single one that contains all the info, eliminates the chances for duplicate content (all of the neighborhood pages contain the same content verbatim), and prevents keyword cannibalization. Thoughts? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Alces1 -
Why are http and https pages showing different domain/page authorities?
My website www.aquatell.com was recently moved to the Shopify platform. We chose to use the http domain, because we didn't want to change too much, too quickly by moving to https. Only our shopping cart is using https protocol. We noticed however, that https versions of our non-cart pages were being indexed, so we created canonical tags to point the https version of a page to the http version. What's got me puzzled though, is when I use open site explorer to look at domain/page authority values, I get different scores for the http vs. https version. And the https version is always better. Example: http://www.aquatell.com DA = 21 and https://www.aquatell.com DA = 27. Can somebody please help me make sense of this? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Aquatell1 -
Trying to understand why i do not rank well for this keyword
Hi, i am working on a page at the moment and i am trying to work out why i do not rank well for the keyword gastric band hypnotherapy or gastric band hypnosis. The page is http://www.in2town.co.uk/Gastric-Band-Hypnotherapy any help on what i need to change to start ranking well would be of a great help
On-Page Optimization | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Site is not ranking for a particular keyword !!
One of my site is ranking for all the main keywords except one. This keyword is just a variant of those keywords which are all ranking in top 10 (page 1) in Google. Why is it happening? Does Google punishes site for one keyword. I know competition of keyword matters but other keywords with similar competition are ranking. And even the site is very well optimized for this keyword (titles and site copy without any stuffing) Any Solutions ?
On-Page Optimization | | Personnel_Concept0 -
Duplicate Page Content for Product Pages
Hello, We have one website which URL is http://www.bannerbuzz.com & we have many product pages which having duplicate page content issue in SEOMOZ which are below. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-1.html
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-10.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-11.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-12.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-13.html We haven't any content on these pages, still getting duplicate page content errors for all pages in SEOMOZ. Please help me how can i fix this issue. Thanks,0 -
Can Your Site Get Penalized For Keyword Stuffing On An 'Untarged' Keyword?
My site has dropped since the EMD/Panda 20 roll out and I am looking for reasons why. I am looking at Keyword Stuffing as one potential problem. My web site is on the topic of WordPress Security with that being the main keyword I want to target. Now I can limit the number of occurrences of 'wordpress security' to below the recommended 15, but it is impossible to do this for 'wordpress' without severely compromising the user experience. I've got other content on topics such as WordPress Backup and WordPress Security Plugins etc, so obviously the word 'wordpress' is bound to appear frequently. Is there a risk that Google will penalize me for Keyword Stuffing on 'wordpress' and thus pull down the site or page for other keywords? Or would it simply mean I won't be able to rank for 'wordpress' (which I am quite happy about)? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | andersvin0 -
Should you try to rank for misspelled keywords?
Hi there, 2 part question: Is it best practice to try to rank for misspelled keywords that bring in lots of traffic or should you instead just try to rank for the correct spelling of that keyword and hope that you rank better on the misspelling as an indirect result? E.G. The misspelled keyword "Hamilton island accomodation" is a common misspelling that brings in traffic but we have an "F" rank for that term (obviously because we spell accommodation correctly on our site). We don't want to misspell anything but are there techniques to rank better for misspellings that won't hurt content quality? The On-Page Optimization tool says that our website doesn't rank in the top 50 on Google Aus for "Accomodation Hamilton Island" or "Hamilton Island Accomodation" but when i do a manual search, we actually are the first result. Is this an error with the On-Page optimization tool? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | HamiltonIsland0 -
Creating New Pages Versus Improving Existing Pages
What are some things to consider or things to evaluate when deciding whether you should focus resources on creating new pages (to cover more related topics) versus improving existing pages (adding more useful information, etc.)?
On-Page Optimization | | SparkplugDigital0