Two points of view on optimizing our search pages. What should we go with?
-
So we're in the process of going back and forth with our designer about optimizing our search results, which also doubles as a landing page for visitors searching with keywords like "Meeting Rooms Seattle" and "Seattle Meeting Spaces" We're on the front page in the SERPs, but still have a way to go.
This is our current page: http://www.evenues.com/Meeting-Spaces/Seattle/Washington
And this is something we've proposed for our designer to work with: http://imgur.com/JU1zg
There search page text and links in the top left corner were to be placed for onsite SEO purposes ie we have no real text/content on the page for relevancy.
We're currently in the process of writing the copy for each city on the search pages.
Our designer made this argument:
After giving it some thought I came to the conclusion that we may want to take a step back, and focus on the overall goal of this exercise.
From what I have gathered, you would like to generate more click-throus and improve SEO, right?
In my opinion, adding all of the provided copy and the link farm to the search results page would not necessarily help that. In fact, I think it would actually push the actual results way down. The content you provided me is more suited for a landing page, not a search results page (that is taking into consideration that you want similar content for other locations).
Redfin has done a ton of great SEO work on their site. Using them as an example, if you go to Redfin.com, you will find tiny links in the footer that say "home for sale in seattle" etc.
If you click on those, it puts you on a page like this: http://www.redfin.com/cities/1/seattle?src=homepage and then from there you can click to a neighborhood page like this: http://www.redfin.com/city/1387/WA/Bellevue.
I would recommend that we create a set of location pages with the content the client is asking for, that are specifically optimized for SEO, and provide links in the footer of the site to get to those pages. Then the links on the new landing pages would land the user on the search results page.
By keeping two different pages for two different purposes separate would help keep content more organized and help user find specific info they are looking for.
As a quick fix we could put one line of text under the H1 text on search results as well, maybe with a strong tag.
By doing that we will be able to keep the page looking clean and easy to navigate through.
Anyways, that's just my two cents.
Any ideas/input on this?
-
I like that idea! Thanks!
-
If users have to click from the landing page to the search results page to see the listings, that's an extra click = fewer people seeing the search results.
You could have two very similar pages - one with the extra text and images, and one without. Add a canonical tag to the one without so all the link juice goes to the one with the extra text and images.
-
Hi Adam,
Thanks a lot for your detailed reply!
We certainly only want to optimize only one page for similar terms. To be more clear, perhaps we should have a landing page with larger pictures/more text optimized for those terms that link to a search page that we don't care about getting indexed? I'm not sure if we have the resources to do this at this time however.
Very helpful, thanks! I'll pass this on to our CEO
Kenji
-
Here are my thoughts:
- I would not use http://www.redfin.com/cities/1/seattle?src=homepage as a template for a good page to emulate - it's just a page with a bunch of links. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future Google decides that page is not providing value to the user.
- You probably want to optimize a single page for "Meeting Rooms Seattle" and "Seattle Meeting Spaces"
- You should probably send users who search for "Meeting Rooms Seattle" and "Seattle Meeting Spaces" to the same page, too. I see no reason to have them see two different pages for those queries.
- Be wary of creating separate pages for SEO purposes. If you have an existing page for Seattle that most users see, there is no reason to create a second page for SEO. In fact, it could hurt you - having two pages for the same basic purpose (for users to see seattle meeting rooms) will divide your social likes/shares and organic backlinks among two pages. (On the flip side, you could work on getting both pages ranked, but I don't think that is what you were asking about...)
- If you don't want your text content pushing the listings down the page, put your textual content on the right side of the page or even at the bottom, like Zappos does.
Hope these are helpful.
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
-
New Page Not ranking?
One of this client's top keyword is "oak beams". They already rank well in the UK for other related terms like "reclaimed oak beams" at /reclaimed-oak-beams/ and "air dried oak beams" at /air-dried-oak-beams/ We have created a page at /oak-beams/ but this page ranks nowhere? Instead the reclaimed oak beams or air dried oak beams page ranks for the term "oak beams". Any ideas why Google is swapping between those pages and not choosing the /oak-beams/ page? A few notes are that the /oak-beams/ page is newest page on the site and yes I know there are no links pointing to it but there are no links pointing to the other pages either?
On-Page Optimization | | Marketing_Today0 -
How do I create multiple page URLs that are optimized for location and keywords that may be overlapping or the same?
Hi guys, I am attempting to create unique URLs for several different pages on a website. Let's say hypothetically that this is a website for a chain of Ice Cream Shops in Missouri. Let's say they have 15 locations in Springfield, Missouri. I would ideally like to optimize our Ice Cream Shop's in Springfield, Missouri with the main keyword (ice cream) but also the geo-specific location (Springfield), but we obviously can't have duplicate URLs for these 15 locations. We also have several secondary keywords, think things like: frozen yogurt or waffle cone that we can also use, although it would most likely be more powerful if we use the primary keyword. Any suggestions for how to go about doing this most effectively? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | GreenStone0 -
Impact of number of outgoing links on Page Rank of an optimized page?
What is the current best practice on preferred number of outbound links on a page you are trying to rank with: According to online resources form a pure page rank perspective a high number of outbound follow links can have a negative impact not only on child pages but also the page itself
On-Page Optimization | | thomaspro
http://pr.efactory.de/e-outbound-links.shtml Other resources suggest that particularly placing high quality outbound links on a page (nofollow) increases the trust and authority of a page Are there any other elements to keep in mind? Is the best practice to avoid any follow links on a page you want to rank well in Google for? Thanks /T0 -
Noindex child pages (whose content is included on parent pages)?
I'm sorry if there have been questions close to this before... I've using WordPress less like a blogging platform and more like a CMS for years now... For content management purposes we organize a lot of content around Parent/Child page (and custom-post-type) relationships; the Child pages are included as tabbed content on the Parent page. Should I be noindexing these child pages, since their content is already on the site, in full, on their Parent pages (ie. duplicate content)? Or does it not matter, since the crawlers may not go to all of the tabbed content? None of the pages have shown up in Moz's "High Priority Issues" as duplicate content but it still seems like I'm making the Parent pages suffer needlessly... Anything obvious I'm not taking into consideration? By the by, this is my first post here @ Moz, which I'm loving; this site and the forums are such a great resource! Anyways, thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | rsigg0 -
Optimize On-Page Mobile Version
Hello, Do we need optimize on-page for mobile version, such as: How about title tag, description tag? Should mobile have another sitemap or not? Does google penalty my webpages mobi vs desktop are duplicated content? Thanks for any your advice!
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Home Page SEO
Hi! We recently re-designed our home page in early March. After Google panda, we re-tweaked it again, before we take it live, we really want to get some expert's opinions. We would be grateful for any comments/suggestions/feedback, particularly in the following area (you will need to click a few times to get the page to real size): is the bottom content ok? please scroll down all the way. 2) We used semantic keywords for 5-6 anchor interlinks to the same page to promote core products from the home page. Is this too much? 80% links on the footer is a repetition of header navigation links, do these footer serve any SEO value or is it over - optimization? Here is the URL: https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/36547134/1/WebDesign?h=109d4a Thanks a lot!
On-Page Optimization | | ypl0 -
301 redirects from several sub-pages to one sub-page
Hi! I have 14 sub-pages i deleted earlier today. But ofcourse Google can still find them, and gives everyone that gives them a go a 404 error. I have come to the understading that this wil hurt the rest of my site, at least as long as Google have them indexed. These sub-pages lies in 3 different folders, and i want to redirect them to a sub-page in a folder number 4. I have already an htaccess file, but i just simply cant get it to work! It is the same file as i use for redirecting trafic from mydomain.no to www.mydomain.no, and i have tried every kind of variation i can think of with the sub-pages. Has anyone perhaps had the same problem before, or for any other reason has the solution, and can help me with how to compose the htaccess file? 🙂 You have to excuse me if i'm using the wrong terms, missing something i should have seen under water while wearing a blindfold, or i am misspelling anything. I am neither very experienced with anything surrounding seo or anything else that has with internet to do, nor am i from an englishspeaking country. Hope someone here can light up my path 🙂 Thats at least something you can say in norwegian...
On-Page Optimization | | MarieA1 -
Canonical home page
I have a site that shows duplicate page content for: www.autoserviceexpertsonline and www.autoserviceexpertsonline/index.html When looking at the files using the cms (intuit) file manager, I only see the /index.html version. I added the Caononical tag referencing/pointing to both the domain name only and then changed to .../index.html No matter how I code this, the seomoz On-Site SEO Grader still has a problem with it. Is this a bug with the Grading program or am I doing something wrong? Please help as I think this is causing me problems with Google and I'd like to get this right for future sites I will be working on. Thanks, Bill
On-Page Optimization | | Marvo0