Non-home page ranking higher, very odd
-
One of my new clients has an eCommerce site selling chair mats, that ranks first page for their primary keyword ("chair mats"), but the serp is not showing their home page... It is an odd "resources" page that mostly just has outbound links. I've never seen this.
Also, there are no external inbound links to this particular page. How can this be ranking higher than the home page... weeeeird.
Update: I haven't done any optimization yet... and yes, I know the site is outdated
- My location is set to San Diego. If I change it (New York City), the Resources2.htm page goes away from the page 1 ranking, and I get a page 2 home page ranking. This is so strange
-
I feel your pain! Although, sometimes cleaning up an outdated site can be the most rewarding because there is so much upward potential. Good luck!
-
I notice that when I navigate to an interior page, then want to go back to the Home page, that the little hyper-link in the upper left inside the home page logo actually took me to this URL:
http://www.thematstore.com/index.htm
instead of http://www.thematstore.com
I loaded them both into OSE: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.thematstore.com&comparisons%5B0%5D=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thematstore.com%2Findex.htm&=Compare
You can see that the /index.html version of your homepage has the lion's share of internal followed links. This might be something you want to correct so all those internal pages are actually linking back to http://www.thematstore.com
I agree with Irving's suggestion to get rid of those footer links to other search engines.
I disagree with Irving's statement that keyword tags "can only hurt" you. I don't think they are hurting you. But he is correct in that you don't really need them. It does help your competitors discover what keywords you're going after.
Since you are so close to page one, I would do just those things and see if your ranking improves. If it does. Proceed cautiously with Irving's suggestions "c" and "d." I'm not saying they aren't good suggestions, but that if you do everything all at once, and your ranking sinks, you won't have any idea what had the negative impact. I would be especially cautious in removing that page and "de-optimizing" things.
Out of recent personal experience, I decided to "de-optimize" a page that had SEO copy in small text way at the bottom of an e-commerce page. I was #2 in Google and hoped that by de-optimizing I could move up to #1. Guess what? I took out my keyword-stuffed copy, and boom, dropped to #4.
This is why I say proceed with caution. Do one thing at a time and evaluate the results before moving on and changing something else.
Hope this helps!
-
Thanks, good suggestions. I just walked into this one and there are a lot of outdated tactics and work to be done.
The ranking is just odd. Right now I'm seeing /resources2.html at number 6, and the home page at 27 in Google. But in other search engines, the home page is ranked on first page, and the resources2 is no where to be found (as it should be).
-
It's actually the "resources2" page that is ranking: http://www.thematstore.com/resources2.html, which has no inbound links and I think the only external link is from resources.html (more resources link).
-
Every page of the website links to it. quickstart.clari.net links to that particular page. And the rest of the site just isn't optimized (as you already stated) so I think that Google takes all of these things and for some reason decided that the resources page is the most relevant for the term.
Taking shots in the dark here... this is really odd At least you know you will be able to correct it with no trouble at all, lol
-
Looks fine to me I see #11 in Google with the homepage. Some suggestions though:
a) lose the footer search engine links, looks outdated and you're leaking PR for no reason and increasing bounce rate.
b) lose the keyword tags, they are stuffed and it's a tag that can hurt only and not help.
c) deoptimize the navigation links for "chair mats" it's overdone
d) completely delete the resources page, especially if this was part of a reciprocal link building strategy. I see a pool supplies link on there so i assume it was.
-
Better on page optimization maybe and better page juice distribution across the site? Are you linking back properly to the homepage globally?
EDIT: ok i see you posted the URL now, i'll take a look that helps
-
Yes, it is www.thematstore.com.
I have personalization disabled in Google search. The weird thing is, the resources page is showing up in Google (for me), but the home page shows up in Yahoo or Bing,
-
Hi Joe,
I am curious to know about how this could happen too.
Is your client in the USA? I just searched "chair mats" and outside of the major brands like Staples, Amazon and Sam's Club, there were only a couple of others listed, and the listing was for their home page. I didn't see any listings on page 1 that went to a subdirectory or resource page. This might be a silly question, but are you private browsing?
Dana
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
-
Is it ok to repeat a (focus) keyword used on a previous page, on a new page?
I am cataloguing the pages on our website in terms of which focus keyword has been used with the page. I've noticed that some pages repeated the same keyword / term. I've heard that it's not really good practice, as it's like telling google conflicting information, as the pages with the same keywords will be competing against each other. Is this correct information? If so, is the alternative to use various long-winded keywords instead? If not, meaning it's ok to repeat the keyword on different pages, is there a maximum recommended number of times that we want to repeat the word? Still new-ish to SEO, so any help is much appreciated! V.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vitzz1 -
Keyword keeps fluctuating between a high rank and no rank?
I've searched around and I can't seem to find anyone else describing the issue I'm seeing. Basically for a very long time our website (snappages.com) has always ranked in the tens and twenties for "create a website". It's a high volume keyword and we get a lot of traffic from it. Around May 16th it suddenly disappeared completely from search results on Google and now it will sporadically show back up with a SERP in the twenties every 5-10 days for a few hours and then completely disappear again. This pattern has continued to this day. I've checked and there are no manual penalties and nothing has really changed dramatically from a content perspective or anything like that. I would understand if we got penalized and our ranking dropped, or even if it just completely disappeared? This is the only keyword that this is happening for, all the others remain unaffected. Anyone know how I can find out why this is happening or have suggestions on how to fix it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stestone0 -
Google is indexing wrong page for search terms not on that page
I’m having a problem … the wrong page is indexing with Google, for search phrases “not on that page”. Explained … On a website I developed, I have four products. For example sake, we’ll say these four products are: Sneakers (search phrase: sneakers) Boots (search phrase: boots) Sandals (search phrase: sandals) High heels (search phrase: high heels) Error: What is going “wrong” is … When the search phrase “high heels” is indexed by Google, my “Sneakers” page is being indexed instead (and ranking very well, like #2). The page that SHOULD be indexing, is the “High heels” page (not the sneakers page – this is the wrong search phrase, and it’s not even on that product page – not in URL, not in H1 tags, not in title, not in page text – nowhere, except for in the top navigation link). Clue #1 … this same error is ALSO happening for my other search phrases, in exactly the same manner. i.e. … the search phrase “sandals” is ALSO resulting in my “Sneakers” page being indexed, by Google. Clue #2 … this error is NOT happening with Bing (the proper pages are correctly indexing with the proper search phrases, in Bing). Note 1: MOZ has given all my product pages an “A” ranking, for optimization. Note 2: This is a WordPress website. Note 3: I had recently migrated (3 months ago) most of this new website’s page content (but not the “Sneakers” page – this page is new) from an old, existing website (not mine), which had been indexing OK for these search phrases. Note 4: 301 redirects were used, for all of the OLD website pages, to the new website. I have tried everything I can think of to fix this, over a period of more than 30 days. Nothing has worked. I think the “clues” (it indexes properly in Bing) are useful, but I need help. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MG_Lomb_SEO0 -
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 -
Yellow pages, how to improve rankings?
We have a huge database of companies in the baltic region (www.business-baltics.com) the page is completely yellow pages with no unique texts or anything. How would you improve the Search Engine Rankings for a website like this? And how do you do a link building for a page like this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkasKR0 -
To land page or not to land page
Hey all, I wish to increase my sites rankings on a variety of keywords within sub categories but I'm unsure where to be spending the time in SEO. Here's an example of the website page structure: General Home Page > Sub Category 1 Home Page
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DPSSeomonkey
> Searching / Results pages
- Sub Category 1
- Sub Category 2
- Sub Category 3
- Sub Category 4 > Sub Category 2 Home Page
> Searching / Results pages
- Sub Category 1
- Sub Category 2
- Sub Category 3
- Sub Category 4 We've newly introduced the Sub Category Home Pages and I was wondering if SEO is best performed on these pages or should landing pages be built, one for each of the 4 sub categories in each section. Those landing pages would have links to the "Searching / Results pages" for that sub category. Thanks!0 -
What to do if the wrong page is ranking?
What to do if the wrong page of your website is ranking and you cannot 301 it? Apparently an outsourced company the previous manager hired build anchor text links to the homepage, when those links should have been pointing to a deeper page. As a result, the hompage is now ranking for that term. But I think we can convert a lot more of the visitors if the deeper page is there instead. Obviously, I can't 301 the homepage. What would you do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrep0 -
How to increase the page rank for keyword for entire site
sorry for my bad english is there any way to increase the ranking for a keyword for the entire site .i know that seo is done per page basis .my site contains 1000ds of posts and i cant get back links for each and every post .so i picked 4 keywords which are mostly used while searching my products , is there any method i can increase my ranking for those keywords like increasing domain authority EXAMPLE :like if i want to increase my ranking for "buy laptop" .if any user searches In google with buy laptop i want my site or any of related pages that match the user search query must show up in front
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | prakash.moturu0