Wrong sitelinks & landing pages in Google
-
I've recently launched a well-optimized website with good-content category landing pages and then I've added a blog to the website (as supporting content to the landing pages, the only links pointing to the blog are from the category landing pages)
What happened is that Google is now using the Blog pages as the site - sitelinks and also as the landing pages for most keywords
I only have inbound links to the reg. landing pages and none to the blog, how do I get Google to change that?
I know I can demote sitelink URL's in webmaster tools, but would that help me with getting the right sitelinks, it sure wont help much with the landing pages
Thanks
-J -
I dont think Demoting links will be a good idea!
-
Thanks, that sounds about right, do you recommend then demoting the sitelinks in WT?
-
As per my experience it is the right way to solve your problem you can demote site link URL's in webmaster tools, because i have face that problem in my site, so i implement that thing in my site and it is working, now Google not taking that link as my site link so demoting URL is most preferable way to solve your problem.
-
Joel, this happens to one of my client that few of his targeted land pages were not ranking and supporting pages were performing well instead of the main pages...
At that time there was no option to demote site links, so what i did is to get internal links from within the content to major pages and get some quality external links points to the major pages and boom... search engine gets it...
I guess in your thing you have to get more external links pointing to the major URL (off course if all other on-pages issues related to indexing are already fixed!)
Hope this helps!
-
Thank you so much for the reply, but there is none of that I've tried everything and can't get to the bottom of it
-
Hard to say without looking at the pages in question. Are the landing pages indexed?
Some ideas as to why this might be happening:
- the blog pages have better on page SEO than the landing pages - titles, descriptions etc.
- the blog has a sitemap listing the blog's pages, but not the landing pages
- internal links don't point to the landing pages
- some sort of page header problem on the landing pages but not the blog pages
- broken html on the landing pages, but not the blog pages
- rss based links back to the blog pages
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
-
Keywords used to land on specific page?
Hi all, Does anyone know if there's anywhere where I can see what keywords are used in search engines to land on a specific page? I have access to the Google Analytics account and linked it to Moz as a campaign, but I can't find this data. I'm curious about this because a very uncommon word is used in a page title for a page I try to optimize. It's the Dutch translation of 'malicious'. And now I wonder if it's better to switch to a word that's used more often. Or if it's better to 'win the battle' on this (probably) rarely used word. I've used Google trends to see how many people use it, but it says there's not enough data to show the interest over time.
On-Page Optimization | | RaoulWB0 -
Does having landing page text beneath the products at the base of the page hinder SEO?
I have a site that is capable of hosting the landing page description either above the products under the H1 or below them at the bottom of the page before the footer. I have always chosen to keep the text "above the fold" as presumably this would be crawled sooner in relation to the rest of the page content than had it been at the bottom. However, this means that I can only really write just a few sentences for each landing page - otherwise the products would shift further down the page - and I don't think this is good from a UX POV. Question: If I move the bulk of my landing page descriptions to the text snippet located underneath the products, could this negatively affect my SEO? Text at the bottom of the page is obviously not significant for users, so is there a chance this could be seen as spam?
On-Page Optimization | | Silkstream0 -
Local Service Pages
We've all been here before if you do local. What type of content should go on a local service page when dealing with multiple service locations? You could: Describe Services List Local News Articles List staff in that location (although I would prefer in the staff page for that city) Testimonials from that location or service But what happens when you are describing something that needs no explanation. Or a medical procedure that requires no localization and altering the wording can actually cause legal problems if misstated. Matt Cuts recommends a few sentences to a paragraph to describe a service, but my experience hasn't found this to hold up locally. Any ideas or suggestions about how this could be remedied?
On-Page Optimization | | allenrocks0 -
Google vs. Bing
We are having some really good results with our SEO strategies for local search and long tail searches for our clients on Google; however, Bing is a completely different story in a couple of cases. What is Bing looking for that Google is not? We have even noticed that something may rank well in Bing then not show up at all in Google? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | Strategexe0 -
DMCA Complaint to Google
I have several sites copying the content from my pages. I filed numerous complaints with Google and checked under the DMCA dashboard and it's showing my requests are approved; however, still several days later the infringing pages still remain. I'm a bit confused by this as I thought Google was supposed to remove the page. I guess I'm not understand why it was "approved" when I don't see changes. Am I supposed to contact the site's owner to get the pages down now? I don't want to show duplicate content to my site. Please help!
On-Page Optimization | | tutugirl0 -
Removing OLD pages
Dear all, I was removing tons of old pages from my directory (about 400 pages), I was setingup a 404 custom page, all is fine, so when I go to an existing page I get a 404 and redirected to my 404 page. The problem is Google Webmaster tools list all these pages as 404, and never clean my list (1 year til now), so I assume something is wrong. Question what is the best way or natural to remove old pages from one directory? Note: previously I tryed add on these pages the NOINDEX/NOFOLLOW meta tag and I got from google Soft-404. Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | SharewarePros0 -
Page Rank Drop
Just trying to get more feedback - so we recently edited title and meta descriptions for existing website SEO and we've noticed in the past several weeks, our client's website has dropped out of the top 50 in a variety of terms we were targeting that they used to show up for (note: when updating SEO, we DID NOT remove any relevant terms we were targeting). When the website does come up in searches, it is the old meta description and title. So far, the feedback we've gotten is that first, it takes Google a few weeks to recrawl and index - however, we are now on week 3 after the changes and still no rebound in rankings. We were also told to check with the SEO Moz page grader to be sure the keywords were being optimized correctly - got As and Bs for the test terms I tried. We also submitted an XML site map to speed up the crawl process as another user suggested. We've tested the site with various tools to make sure there are redirect errors, etc. and everything looks fine. Again, it's now been 3+ weeks and no ranking rebound. Any other suggestions on what could be happening?
On-Page Optimization | | laidlawseo0