2 pages optimised for same keyword... what should I do?
-
Hi,
I have two pages appearing in positions 11 and 12 for the keyword: 80 btl mortgage. These are:
- https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/btl/landlord-advice/mortgages/btl-mortgage-80-ltv/
- https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/btl/product-types/80-buy-to-let-mortgages/
Both pages are good, provide useful information and I would not wish to remove one of them. However, I am concerned that the reason neither one of the pages is on page 1 is because the keywords targeted on both pages is essentially the same.
Should I reoptimise one of them for other variations of 80 BTL mortgage keywords? (e.g. 80% LTV Buy to Let Mortgage, 80 Buy to Let Mortgage, etc etc)
Or, is there another solution I haven't yet thought of?
I welcome your insights!
Thanks!
Amelia
-
Have fun.
-
Thank you for answering this question, it's much appreciated.
-
Thank you. Yes, I use SEMRush - I actually really like their tools for both SEO stuff and Adwords.
I'm going to do as you suggest - make the content more different on each page.
Thanks again for your time to answer this, it's much appreciated.
Best wishes,
Amelia
-
Of course!
Good luck with everything Amelia.
-
If I was you I would check keywords using semrush.com but seems you did a nice job already analyzing them.
I actually agree with what Monica said, theoretically is better to have two pages on serp for CTR.
But if I look at serp for those keywords and I open the two pages I feel a bad taste in my mouth, I have the feeling I have been cheated because the meta title before to click and the content after the click seems too similar (I didn't read through all the content I confess), but I may be biased since I know what you are trying to do, a regular visitor my feel different.
Nevertheless I think the theoretical benefit of having two pages in serp could be balanced by the ranking benefit of merging the two pages; iif a big jump was possible (http://moz.com/ugc/click-through-rates-in-google-serps-for-different-types-of-queries). Which seems highly unlikely, but you can test it.
To merge or not to merge?
I changed my mind, I would not merge. I would start to slightly change one of the pages, both meta-title and content, to remove that bad taste in my. And monitor ranking variation after each change.
-
Thanks Amelia, glad I could help! Good luck!
Monica
-
Thank you Monica. I like your answer best, it's the most positive! I don't want to delete any pages so if I take your experience that the same site can appear for the same keyword more than once on page 1, and that 'all' I need is more links, then that's pretty clear...
You're right, the two pages are NOT identical, I try to be really careful with duplicate content! It's a bugbear of mine.
I will definitely look at the other sites that appear above ours and see if we can do anything to improve ours.
Thank you,
Amelia
-
LOL that's great!
Hmmmm... maybe this should be in my strategy! (KIDDING)
You're right, we don't have many links. I'm not actively building links as I worry about Penguin these days. I am trying to optimise onsite as well as I can, and have a plan to carry out PR work to get national press coverage to earn links that way instead of building them in the old-fashioned way that I used to do back in 2009...! I think this is a better approach as news coverage for companies that offer financial services like we do is more likely to build trust than pretty much any other method of link bulding would.
The upside of this is it kills two birds with one stone - gets us links from authority sites AND builds trust in our brand with the public - I see this as a 'win win' situation.
Thanks for your input today, it is greatly appreciated!
Best wishes,
Amelia
-
(Not Provided) means I don't actually know for sure exactly what keywords are driving traffic to these pages. However, I am tracking 8 related keywords:
<colgroup><col width="333"></colgroup>
|- 80 buy to let mortgages
- 80 ltv buy to let mortgages
- 80 btl mortgage
- buy to let mortgage rates 80 ltv
- 80 buy to let mortgage
- buy to let mortgage deals 80 ltv
- 80 ltv buy to let mortgage
- 80 btl mortgages
|
The product page (https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/btl/product-types/80-buy-to-let-mortgages/) is on page 2 for all the above keywords. The best position is 11, and the worst is 16. Obviously I want page 1!
The Landlord Advice article (https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/btl/landlord-advice/mortgages/btl-mortgage-80-ltv/) is on page 2 for just three of the tracked keywords:
- 80 btl mortgage
- 80 btl mortgages
- buy to let mortgage deals 80 ltv
My concern was that the product page was being held back from page 1 because Google has difficulty distinguishing between them and deciding which to put first. As it stands, the product page is not 'optimised' for all the keywords it appears for as we took the view that trying to get a page to list for multiple keywords was not going to be easy so my colleague wrote the advice page to cover off some of the keywords. This doesn't seemed to have done the trick though!
Your point about customers is really important. You're absolutely right: we need to determine what visitors are expecting when they search for these keywords - I suspect they want to see rates, which is why we created the macros to place at the top of the pages to display the most up-to-date rates (updated twice daily, which is more often than our competitors do!), but that does homogenise the content somewhat. I did wonder if we should display more than three rates on one page but, the market for these products is small so I think there may ONLY be three products available anyway...
I don't think people particularly read the content on any of our pages (nobody has the time) but I can use SessionCam to spy on visits. I think I will do this to see if the content is actually being read. It may be that all we need to do is display a rates table because that's all people want, but Google wants content....
Thank you so much for taking time to answer my question, I really appreciate it.
Best wishes,
Amelia
-
We have you at positions 7 & 8 now, which is a little surprising to be honest. It looks like you have done a solid job with on-page SEO, however, the amount of links pointing to either pages is low compared to the competition on page one.
I'm thinking that you may have inadvertently moved yourself up by having us search this term and most likely click on your webpages.
Either way, you're on page 1 now!
-
Thank you - I question the logic behind this though... The two pages are not identical, so I don't believe that a canonical tag is appropriate here. I am open to being persuaded otherwise though!
I am appreciative of the time you have taken to answer this question.
Best wishes,
Amelia
-
Thank you, yes one page definitely gets more traffic and converts better than the other. I have a third 80% BTL mortgage page, which targets longtail: https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/btl/landlord-advice/mortgages/80-buy-to-let-mortgages/ - this was written to be an informational article rather than a sales page. It links through to the product page (https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/btl/product-types/80-buy-to-let-mortgages/) and other, similar product pages (other high LTV mortgage pages - e.g. 85% LTV BTL mortgages - this is the highest LTV the market goes on BTL mortgages at the moment).
I appreciate your answer and input and am grateful to you for putting the time in to answer.
-
Thank you for your input, it's much appreciated.
-
I disagree with these two. I have 3 SERPs currently for one keyword in positions 2,3 and 5. The more repetitively you show in the SERPs the higher your CTR will be. I don't believe having two results is preventing you from being on page one. I wouldn't 301 redirect one of them either, since they are both relative to the key term. Obviously the pages are different, or Google would only show one of them and not both.
I don't believe these pages are in competition with each other. My advice would be to take a look at who is on page one and the differences in your metrics. Is it a link thing? Do you need to add a little bit of content? Compare the metrics for the other sites, not the two pages on your site and see if there are few tweaks you can make to get those results on page one.
-
What keywords are driving traffic to each page?
If semantically they share the same traffic, and if after merging the content and skimming the fat you don't loose too much, I would merge them and 301 one url into the other.
If each page is having traffic from different keywords you have the option of just do nothing and leave them the way they are.
Imagine being a visitors of those pages. Would they better serve your need for information split or merged?
-
I would basically take a different approach.
You could just add a canonical tag to the page that you want to keep ranking in the serps. Then add the same canonical to the other page (the page thats going to be deleted from the serps).
rel="canonical" href="https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/btl/landlord-advice/mortgages/btl-mortgage-80-ltv/"/>
add the above to both pages..
-
Hi!
I usually choose one of the two pages, surely one of them has some disadvantage to the other facing sales and optimise it for a term long tail such as "buy 80 BTL mortgage".
-
You could rewrite them to combine all of the information on one of the pages, then 301 redirect the other one to the new, improved combined page.
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 in URL
I have an ecommerce store and i am using moz to get it into the best seo situation... my question is this..... I want to know how important it is to have the targeted keyword actually in the product page url.... I working on meta title and description which is good, but if i start changing all my product urls, it has major impact on the work i have to do since i would have to redo all my product links in ads, and all my product urls in emails, etc. So how much of a part do the urls play in seo?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bkhoward20010 -
Ranking Page #1 for Keyword without Hypen, Not at all for Keyword with Hyphen
Hi There! So I work in an industry where there are different conventions for referring to, searching on and spelling the industry name. For example, let's pretend there were a variety of different conventions for referring to the SEO industry. So someone could search for S-EO, SEO, sEO, etc. and those would all be accepted and understood means of referring to the industry. If we use the SEO example as a comparison for our industry, the two most common conventions would be S-EO and SEO. Using this example, we rank on the first page for the term "SEO" but do not rank AT ALL for the term "S-EO". We have a high-value piece of content that is targeted in the following way: "S-EO (SEO): The Basics Guide" so it is more targeted at the hyphenated word but does not rank at all for the hyphenated version, whereas it is page one for the non-hyphenated term. As additional pieces of context: -In general, our site is more targeted at the hyphenated term and there are places where we rank in the top spot for both the hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions. For example, we rank in a top 2 position for both S-EO & SEO software but do not rank at all for the broader "S-EO" term. -There are times when we do appear on page one for the term "S-EO" but it's typically only for a matter or hours or days and then we disappear entirely from the SERPs for that term. We consistently appear for "SEO." -I currently do not believe we are dealing with a penalty of any sort - our link profile is clean and our spam score per Moz is 2 / 17. Any thoughts or ideas as to what is going on here and how we can potentially rank for the term "S-EO?"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dpayne10 -
My website is ranking well on most of keywords. How do I find more keywords in order to drive more traffic to my website?
I have a website which is ranking well on some good keywords ie generic and long tail. It is also ranking for some really competitive keywords. and now getting constant traffic. I want to increase organic traffic to my website. What are the best possible ways to do this? How to research more keywords and how to identify that they will really work? Please help, I am confused.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rishi.ast0 -
I have removed over 2000+ pages but Google still says i have 3000+ pages indexed
Good Afternoon, I run a office equipment website called top4office.co.uk. My predecessor decided that he would make an exact copy of the content on our existing site top4office.com and place it on the top4office.co.uk domain which included over 2k of thin pages. Since coming in i have hired a copywriter who has rewritten all the important content and I have removed over 2k pages of thin pages. I have set up 301's and blocked the thin pages using robots.txt and then used Google's removal tool to remove the pages from the index which was successfully done. But, although they were removed and can now longer be found in Google, when i use site:top4office.co.uk i still have over 3k of indexed pages (Originally i had 3700). Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening and more importantly how i can fix it? Our ranking on this site is woeful in comparison to what it was in 2011. I have a deadline and was wondering how quickly, in your opinion, do you think all these changes will impact my SERPs rankings? Look forward to your responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | apogeecorp0 -
Keyword cannibalization
I ran the SEOMoz onpage diagnostic, and i got an alert for keyword cannibalization. My taxonomy is: www.mysite.com www.mysite.com/category (category page) www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword (supporting page) Links will be exact match in the primary navigation. www.mysite.com anchor text "category" => www.mysite.com/category www.mysite.com anchor text "category keyword" => www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword www.mysite.com/category anchor text "category keyword" => www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword and example would be /IT-support linking with anchor text "IT Support Servers" => /IT-Support/IT-Support-Servers I'm not going to have a cannibalization problem, am I?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Optimize short tail keyword by optimizing long tail keyword
Many SEO's said that if i have a keyword suppose 'coat stand' that is very competitive and second keyword is 'cheap coat stand' that is less competitive .If we promote long tail keyword (cheap coat stand) than ranking of 'coat stand' will improve.Is it true?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alick3000 -
301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?
Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi0 -
Google swapped our website's long standing ranking home page for a less authoritative product page?
Our website has ranked for two variations of a keyword, one singular & the other plural in Google at #1 & #2 (for over a year). Keep in mind both links in serps were pointed to our home page. This year we targeted both variations of the keyword in PPC to a products landing page(still relevant to the keywords) within our website. After about 6 weeks, Google swapped out the long standing ranked home page links (p.a. 55) rank #1,2 with the ppc directed product page links (p.a. 01) and dropped us to #2 & #8 respectively in search results for the singular and plural version of the keyword. Would you consider this swapping of pages temporary, if the volume of traffic slowed on our product page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JingShack0