Google Is Ranking the Wrong Page
-
Howdy Folks-
I have a case where Google is ranking the wrong page for a couple of different keywords.
The home page is: http://healthtn.com
Most notably, we're trying to optimize the home page for "Tennessee Health Insurance" but the below page is what continually ranks for it, and does so very poorly. We used to be page two with the home page, now we are page four and it ranks the following page.
http://healthtn.com/tennessee/health-insurance/student
I have started directing our Internal Linking to reflect the correct anchor text but succeeded in losing ranking for the term, but am still ranking the wrong page.
Any thoughts or help would be much appreciated!
-
Thanks for the help sir, I just dropped a link into the misranked page back to the home page. I haven't been able to do any of the other suggestions yet, but it's a start. Thank you!
-
Thanks for the actionable advice, really helpful!
I went back in and made some of the changes you suggested. It was helpful to revisit some of those points. We've also been attempting too (and succeeded in) ranking for "Health Insurance Alternatives in Tennessee" so some of the meta real estate had been dedicated to that. But I tweaked some things to try to do both.
I've struggled with the amount of content on the home page. The student page that is ranking for "Tennessee Health Insurance", only has it in the keyword in the content twice, but it does have over 1800 words and lots of Heath Insurance and Tennessee references. The home page is designed to have little content on it, as many of them are... If I drop Tennessee Health Insurance a few more times in the 200 ish words on the home page, it may start to get stuffy?
Know anyway around low word counts on the home page?
As for the title, The page is called home for menu purposes, I don't have full control over the design and that is the way the site designer designed it. Not sure if I can do much there...but I agree it is a vital piece of on page ranking options.
-
Looking through your home page's source code, I see that the keyword has been incorporate into the copy once or twice, the meta description and an image alt tag. That's a good start.
I would also incorporate "Tennessee health insurance" into the home page's meta title and h1 header. These are two fairly important hotspots with onsite optimization.
I would also try to naturally incorporate the keyword 1 or 2 more times within the home page's content. Lastly, I recommend brushing up on Chapter 4 of Moz's SEO Guide: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development
-
My advice is to redevelop the content of the ideal page and make it more keyword specific. Give internal link from the page which is ranking to the page which you ideally want it to rank.
Give another link to your site structure and see if you need any improvement on that level.
Also build some good links with anchor text that target your keyword and instead of the home page link should go back to that particular page.
Hope this helps!
-
Hey, thanks for the help!
After spidering the site again I noticed the primary anchor text being directed to http://healthtn.com is "Home" as it's the home page menu Bar. Is there any way to getting around having 100+ links with "home" in the anchor text? I am fairly certain I want to have a link back to the homepage from every internal page for a Quality User Experience?
-
Hi there,
Here are some of the most common reasons for search engines to rank a less relevant page above a more relevant one.
Internal Anchor Text .
External Link Bias
Link Authority & Importance Metrics
On-Page Optimization
Improper Redirects
Topic Modeling / Content Relevance IssuesYou can find out more details right here moz.com/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions
Hope it helps you.
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
-
Keyword ranking for different page than the page optimized
I have optimized "equipment trailer for rent" on this page: http://www.bigtrailerrentals.com/flatbed-trailer-rentals/equipment-deckover. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me why Google has chosen to rank the keyword phrase for this page: http://www.bigtrailerrentals.com/flatbed-trailer-rentals/equipment-24 This is just one example. It has happened on several of my pages / keywords.
On-Page Optimization | | BigTrailerRentals0 -
Google Console returning 0 pages as being indexed
HI there, I submitted my site notebuster.net to Search Console over a month ago and it is showing 0 pages as being indexed under the index status report. I know this isn't right as I can see that in google alone by typing in (site:notebusters.net) there are 113 pages indexed. Any idea why this might be? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | CosiCrawley0 -
Which is better? One dynamically optimised page, or lots of optimised pages?
For the purpose of simplicity, we have 5 main categories in the site - let's call them A, B, C, D, E. Each of these categories have sub-category pages e.g. A1, A2, A3. The main area of the site consists of these category and sub-category pages. But as each product comes in different woods, it's useful for customers to see all the product that come in a particular wood, e.g. walnut. So many years ago we created 'woods' pages. These pages replicate the categories & sub-categories but only show what is available in that particular wood. And of course - they're optimised much better for that wood. All well and good, until recently, these specialist page seem to have dropped through the floor in Google. Could be temporary, I don't know, and it's only a fortnight - but I'm worried. Now, because the site is dynamic, we could do things differently. We could still have landing pages for each wood, but of spinning off to their own optimised specific wood sub-category page, they could instead link to the primary sub-category page with a ?search filter in the URL. This way, the customer is still getting to see what they want. Which is better? One page per sub-category? Dynamically filtered by search. Or lots of specific sub-category pages? I guess at the heart of this question is? Does having lots of specific sub-category pages lead to a large overlap of duplicate content, and is it better keeping that authority juice on a single page? Even if the URL changes (with a query in the URL) to enable whatever filtering we need to do.
On-Page Optimization | | pulcinella2uk0 -
Ranking for "synonym" terms on separate pages?
(My title says "synonym" but it's not exactly the most accurate word, but works best for the title_) I have a site that ranks #1 for a term, and let’s pretend it’s “cheap phone”. It’s also ranks #1 for “cheap phone service” and #3 for “cheap phone plans”. These are all the home page with those rankings I have a sub page whose natural title would be “Cheap Phone Plans” or “Cheap Phone Service”. I have it named something these and it is not optimized for either of these terms because I think it would be best to not mess with the good rankings I have already for those two terms So here’s my question: what would likely be the outcome if I optimized that subpage for “Cheap Phone Plans” or “Cheap Phone Service”? If Google began to direct searchers of this term to my subpage rather than my home page, would my home page lose some of it’s ranking with it’s main and most popular keyword, “cheap phone? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | bizzer0 -
On Brand Queries Google does not shows my home page first instead of it shows internal pages.
Also on my brand query it doesn't shows sitelinks. What may be the reason?
On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore0 -
Page rank check
Hello everyone, How long should I wait to see if page rank for optimized pages have improved? cheers
On-Page Optimization | | PremioOscar0 -
Landing Pages
Howdy Guys, We currently have around 19 landing pages that are near enough identical for each make of car. The content on each page isn't identical but you can tell its a template. Do you think we should change this and just target models instead of makes. Thanks, Scott
On-Page Optimization | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
How long would it take for On-Page Optimization to have an effect on Google Rankings?
Hi there, I have a page on our website with an Interview with the author Tess Gerritsen. There has been a reasonable amount of Social Media buzz related to the page and lots of links. According to SEOMoz we are an A grade for the keyword Tess Gerritsen, we currently rank 29th on Google.co.uk for a 'tess gerritsen' search. My question is - how long would it take for any new changes to have an effect? I presume the answer would be whenever the page is crawled again. But is it wise to change one thing, then get crawled and see what the effect is, then the next day change something else and see what the effect is. Or is it wise to change one thing and then leave it a week or so to see the full effect of the change? Apologies for the vague question, if you need any more clarification just let me know. Thanks. Benj
On-Page Optimization | | Benj250