Some of my pages are ranking for terms which I want other pages to rank for. What can I do to effectively switch the ranking?
-
Some of the pages are ranking for terms I have optimised other pages for. The pages which are ranking are quite rightly falling, because they aren't optimised for the terms they're showing for. However, I have pages which are optomised for those terms. How do I switch the SERPS to the page I want?
-
Thanks for the help guys. I think I've got a handle on the problem now.
-
Rand also made a post about what to do if the "wrong" page is ranking last year at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions
-
#1 Make sure you don't have a cannibalization issue
#2. If the pages you DO want to rank for contain relevant content for your selected keyword (ideally one keyword/key-phrase per page) and the content is on-page optimized as it should be then
#3. It's all about the links - both internal and external. So
a. Make sure your site architecture is created in such way that your want-to-rank-for content gets a lot of links from your other underpages
b. Try to get as many links from outside as possible towards your want-to-rank-content. Don't worry about follow and no-follow - you need both and ideally from sources with related content.
c. Don't spam the web with zillions of blog comments, forum spam and other nasty stuff.
Good luck!
Alex
-
It's annoying when this happens. My first step is to make sure the target page is optimised well and that internal links are signalling that it is the most relevant page to the keyword. Next I reinforce this with blogs linking to the target page and social media signals. If the keyword is on my priority list I will spend additional time on link building to the target page as well. If I've done enough the target page pops up in the SERPs within a few weeks. If it doesn't work I go back to square one and see what more I can do.
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
-
Can service request pages be indexed for a service site?
I think there is no point in indexing service request pages for a service site. And it causes the indexing of the main pages to be done with a delay. Does anyone have experience with indexing service request pages and their results?
On-Page Optimization | | sora.ya04680 -
If Product Pages Perform Well In Google then Is It Possible That Category Page Can perform Well In Google?
Hi All, For my ecommerce site I have optimized my product pages very nicely like good images, detailed information about products, good reviews, implemented schema for my product and reviews and very perfect onpage. Now my query is if my products pages performing well in google then there are chances that my category page rank well in google too? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | wright3350 -
Listing all services on one page vs separate pages per service
My company offers several generalized categories with more specific services underneath each category. Currently the way it's structured is if you click "Voice" you get a full description of each voice service we offer. I have a feeling this is shooting us in the foot. Would it be better to have a general overview of the services we offer on the "Voice" page that then links to the specified service? The blurb about the service on the overview page would be unique, not taken from the actual specific service's page.
On-Page Optimization | | AMATechTel0 -
Description tag not showing in the SERPs because page is blocked by Robots, but the page isn't blocked. Any help?
While checking some SERP results for a few pages of a site this morning I noticed that some pages were returning this message instead of a description tag, A description for this result is not avaliable because of this site's robot.s.txt The odd thing is the page isn't blocked in the Robots.txt. The page is using Yoast SEO Plugin to populate meta data though. Anyone else had this happen and have a fix?
On-Page Optimization | | mac22330 -
Ranked page is not desired page
I have a question on a problem I am currently faced with. There is a certain keyword that my employer wants to rank for. The good news is that sometimes it does rank in the top 5 pages of Google. (It drops in and out) The bad news is that it is going to a page that we need to keep, but not the ideal place we want people who are looking for that keyword to go to. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this type of situation and what tactic they used to get people to the better page.
On-Page Optimization | | trumpfinc1 -
Why is the seomoz showing it crawled 3 pages when i only have 2 pages?
I had seomoz crawl my site. I only have 2 pages. The site url is www.autoinsurancefremontca.com.
On-Page Optimization | | Greenpeak0 -
Can't canonical, but need pages to show in Google News
We are a news media site in which much of our content is third-party, and already published by several other sources. Our current version of our CMS doesn't expose head tags, so I can't canonical to the original and avoid a duplicate content penalty. Is it ok for news sites NOT to use canonical, or do I have to NOINDEX until our CMS is fixed?
On-Page Optimization | | Aggie0 -
On-page: Over optimized images?
Hello guys. I have a small question about an on-page optimization for images. What I have: good title tag / good url structure good content (NOT keyword shuffled, its real content, for real people) images / gallery uploaded to folder named same as article name. For example: Great tips for bloggers [article name], great-tips-for-bloggers [folder name]. So my question is: Will Google harm me for this "too good" paths to images, article related image filenames, with mask like [gtips-img01], and if all images have titles / alt tags? Thank you guys.
On-Page Optimization | | infoo130