Inner pages not ranking well
-
Hi Guys
I'm currently working on a website and scratching my head. It seems certain pages of the website rank absolutely fine. The homepage, certain pages on footer and the primary navigation pages are ranking fine.
Pages, however, that sit on the inner navigation (e.g 3rd level navigational pages) - do not rank well at all.
Looking in webmaster, it is apparent these are fluctuating in and out of the Google index - sometimes they are there - sometimes not.
I fully understand issues with Google penalties but I don't believe this is case as other pages are ranking fine. Link building has been done to these pages but to no effect. We have also increased internal links e.g by putting the pages on the footer - but still nothing.
One thing that may impact the ranking is possibly the URL structure
The website URLs are all www.Example.com/widgets - even if they sit on the 3rd level of the user navigation. Could this be a reason why? Would it help if 3rd level pages had the URL structure www.Example.com/services/widgets ?
If anyone can provide help that would be great!!!
thanks, Duncan
-
It doesn't sound like a penalty problem at all, otherwise you'd see more of your pages impacted.
You're saying you've done internal links to them - but only mention footer links. Have you also put internal links in your texts, pointing to these pages) I honestly don't put much value on footerlinks, as they're not part of the main content on a page. From my experience these don't really add much compared to links in the main content (the category/product descriptions or whatever text you have on there).
I would focus on a few of the deeper pages and give them some internal links from your stronger pages to see if you can boost their authority.
-
Hi Duncan,
Hmmm, seems like there might be something else going on here. Are you able to share the domain so I can take a deeper look?
And no, the URL structure wouldn't be causing this.
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
-
Should I optimize the login page? Will it affect the website SEO ranking?
I'm trying to resolve the site crawl issues that we have on our website. One of the links that has different issue types together is our login page. Currently we have two login pages that have the same content but different sub domains. **However I'm wondering if optimizing SEO on our login pages affects our website SEO ranking and if it's something better to do or not. ** To point out the details of the issues, the issue types that the logins pages have are "duplicate title", "duplicate content", "missing H1", "missing description", "thin content", "missing canonical tag" I'd appreciate your help, thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kaylie0 -
Does having alot of pages with noindex and nofollow tags affect rankings?
We are an e-commerce marketplace at for alternative fashion and home decor. We have over 1000+ stores on the marketplace. Early this year, we switched the website from HTTP to HTTPS in March 2018 and also added noindex and nofollow tags to the store about page and store policies (mostly boilerplate content) Our traffic dropped by 45% and we have since not recovered. We have done I am wondering could these tags be affecting our rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimJ0 -
Do 403 Forbidden errors from website pages hurt rankings?
Hi All, I noticed that our website has lot of 403 errors across different pages using the tool http://www.deadlinkchecker.com/. Do these errors hurt website rankings? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
301 redirect for page 2, page 3 etc of an article or feed
Hey guys, We're looking to move a blog feed we have to a new static URL page. We are using 301 redirects but I'm unsure of what to regarding page 2, page 3 etc. of the feed. How do I make sure those urls are being redirected as well? For example: Moving FloridaDentist.com/blog/dental-tips/ to a new page url FloridaDentist.com/dental-tips. So, we are using a 301 on that old url to the new one. My questions is what to do with the other pages like FloridaDentist.com/blog/dental-tips/page/3. How do we make sure that page is also 301'd to the new main url?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Any downsides of (permanent)redirecting 404 pages to more generic pages(category page)
Hi, We have a site which is somewhat like e-bay, they have several categories and advertisements posted by customers/ client. These advertisements disappear over time and turn into 404 pages. We have the option to redirect the user to the corresponding category page, but we're afraid of any negative impact of this change. Are there any downsides, and is this really the best option we have? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vhendriks0 -
Home Page Rankings Drop
Hi all we have being working with a small local client in the last few weeks getting good rankings using onsite op, and business listings we have been getting good ranking ie top 15 then today we drop right out the top 50, after completing manual checks i see the keywords as all related | glasgow catering | Not in Top 50 | down > 42 | |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Will_Craig
| catering glasgow | Not in Top 50 | down > 41 | |
| glasgow caterers | Not in Top 50 | down > 39 | |
| caterers in glasgow | Not in Top 50 | down > 37 | |
| caterers glasgow | Not in Top 50 | down > 32 | Also when completing manual checks on the above keywords, the home page is not ranking what so ever, infact its missing i went 300 results deep and cant find it, other inner pages rank but not the home. The only other recent change is that we now have a listing under the Google maps section of the homepage on page 1 any advice www.georgieporgies.co.uk0 -
My homepage doesn't rank anymore. It's been replaced by irrelevant subpages which rank around 100-200 instead of top 5.
Hey guys, I think I got some kind of penalty for my homepage. I was in top5 for my keywords. Then a few days ago, my homepage stopped ranking for anything except searching for my domain name in Google. sitename.com/widget-reviews/ previously ranked #3 for "widget reviews"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wearetribe
but now....
sitename.com/widget-training-for-pet-cats/ is ranking #84 for widget reviews instead. Similarly across all my other keywords, irrelevant, wrong pages are ranking. Did I get some kind of penalty?0 -
How to get subdomains to rank well?
Hi All, I am setting up a new site and I want to make use of subdomains to target multiple countries as follows: uk.mydomain.com us.mydomain.com australia.mydomain.com etc. Now i know what you're all going to say, why not use folders as they are more effective. Well I did think of this but decided against it because I would like to make the best of a low competition industry. I want to push my competitors as far down in the SE's as possible and i plan to do this by targeting generic non locational search terms with both sites so I can hog the top 4 spots.as follows: www.mydomain.com www.mydomain.com/keyterm uk.mydomain.com uk.mydomain.com/keyterm-in-the-UK Whats steps can I take to ensure rank passes to my subdomains? Is it better to start the site with folders like www.mydomain.com/us/keyterm and then 301 them to subdomains at a later stage or should i start with the subdomains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith1