Homepage ranking above category page, but no keywords in there! Why?
-
So...we have a 5 year diary product page at TOAD diaries. It's had a lot of on page treatment: keyword in title, alt text, decent copy, pictures of the product etc. Find it here - http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/shop/5-year-diary
So we rank 22nd for 5 year diary, but google sends the customer to the home page! There no mention of 5 year diaries on there. Seems ridiculous! I can't help but think we should rank better for this as it's a low difficulty term (according to keyword difficulty tool on MOZ).
Any thoughts on why this might be?
Oh, Google HAS indexed the 5 year diary page. Used a search operator to check that first (thanks to you guys on here:) )
Thanks.
-
Understood. Thank you so much Andy. This info is invaluable to use as a small company.
Isaac.
-
Hi Isaac,
A link from the homepage would be good - build it into the content somewhere though. The same goes for links from other pages.
Yes, you can tell Google that 404 pages have been fixed, if they are just pages that you have removed. Just remember to make sure no other pages or links lead to these dead pages, as that can cause issues.
-Andy
-
Hey thanks Andy! Still quite new to this.
It seams wired though because 5 year diaries are a quite unusual 'long tail' type product. The search intent is clear, they want a 5 year diary. Not any old type of diary. Anyways, really appreciate the response.
So perhaps have a link from the home page? And add internal links from say the "multi year" category? Hmm all so mysterious
Another quick question if I may? If I update the site via webmaster tools all the 'dead links' should be sorted right?
Isaac.
-
Hi Isaac,
It isn't always about exact page matching in this manner - Google knows that a diary and 5-year diary are related and will deliver the page that they think is best suited - in this case, the homepage. However, I would be tempted to look at internal linking from the homepage to the 5-year diary page, and perhaps other related pages from within the site. It's all about creating a self-explanatory structure that gives weight to a page.
You could also look at strengthening this by building some backlinks to some of these internal pages too.
Also, you have a dead page that Google has indexed at the moment: http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/shop/5-year-diary/castelli-5-year-diary
-Andy
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
-
How would you push up a page that is already ranking in the top 20?
One of our pages is currently ranking around the 11th position in Google. According to MOZ page grader its page optimization score is an A. I've manually checked the on page optimization and it's done properly. Our page speed is in the 20s according to google page speed insight tool and when I look at one of our top competitors their scores are in the 60s. So that may be an issue. Our DA is 70 and our top competitor's DA is 85. However we have more backlinks and social shares for our page. So do you think our page speed may be working against us? What else would you check or consider optimizing? I'm just trying to come up with other possible causes that would be working against us. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | eddys_kap1 -
Product Description Blurb on Category Page
Hey Everyone, Working with a client who currently has category pages that contain its respective product's description (or about 30 words from it) in each of their product blocks on that category page. We are currently playing with the idea of switching it down to just being the product title and image. We think this will be much more aesthetically pleasing, but aren't sure if it will effect our SEO either negatively or positively. A couple of things to note: The category pages have a description (many of them still need work, but they are unique). The product's description inside the product block is duplicate content of the first 30 or so words on the product page. If you have 30 products on the page, you end up with a page that contains about 900 words + the unique description at the top of the page. Will dropping those 900 words hurt our SEO?
On-Page Optimization | | frankandmaven0 -
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 -
Do i optimise only the page that i want to rank or do i have to optimise my entire website.
I'm looking at 2 keywords and i have optimized my main page towards it. My website consist of other pages like, "About Us, Contact Us, Testimonials". My SEO title and Meta Description for these pages are just the basic. Q: My question is, do i have to optimize the pages that i do not want to rank? Is there any way to utilise these pages to help my main page to rank?(besides using them for internal links)
On-Page Optimization | | kevinbp0 -
Keyword at homepage
Hi there, this is the url of my homepage: http://www.sehaidoyamama.com/piensapiensa/ PiensaPiensa is not my keyword. I have selected a keyword to optimize the homepage. Does anyone know how to include the keyword in the url of the homepage? I tried to do it in the "pages" section of wordpress but I wasn't able to do it. The home page doesn't allow to change the url. Is it important to set up a keyowrd in the url of the homepage? Is it appropiate from the usability perspective? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Site is not ranking for a particular keyword !!
One of my site is ranking for all the main keywords except one. This keyword is just a variant of those keywords which are all ranking in top 10 (page 1) in Google. Why is it happening? Does Google punishes site for one keyword. I know competition of keyword matters but other keywords with similar competition are ranking. And even the site is very well optimized for this keyword (titles and site copy without any stuffing) Any Solutions ?
On-Page Optimization | | Personnel_Concept0 -
Tag clouds: good for internal linking and increase of keyword relevant pages?
As Matt Cutts explained, tag clouds are OK if you're not engaged in keyword stuffing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYPX_ZmhLqg) - i.e. if you're not putting in 500 tags. I'm currently creating tags for an online-bookseller; just like Amazon this e-commerce-site has potentially a couple of million books. Tag clouds will be added to each book detail page in order to enrich each of these pages with relevant keywords both for search engines and users (get a quick overview over the main topics of the book; navigate the site and find other books associated with each tag). Each of these book-specific tag clouds will hold up to 50 tags max, typically rather in the range of up to 10-20. From an SEO perspective, my question is twofold: 1. Does the site benefit from these tag clouds by improving the internal linking structure? 2. Does the site benefit from creating lots of additional tag-specific-pages (up to 200k different tags) or can these pages become a problem, as they don't contain a lot of rich content as such but rather lists of books associated with each tag? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | semantopic0 -
SEO Value of Within-Page Links vs. Separate Pages
Title says it all. Assuming that you're talking about similar content (let's say, widgets), which is better: using within-page links for variations or using separate pages? I.e., do we have a widget page and then do in-page links to describe green, blue, and red widgets, or separate pages for each type of widget? In-page pro: more content on a single page, thus more keywords, key phrases, and general appearance of real content. In-page con: Jakob Neilsen says they're confusing. Also, for SEO, you only get one page title, rather than a separate page title for each. My personal bias is for in-page, since I hate creating dozens of short pages for what could be on one page, but my suspicion is that separate pages are better for SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | maxkennerly0