Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Help! The website ranks fine but one of my web pages simply won't rank on Google!!!
-
One of our web pages will not rank on Google. The website as a whole ranks fine except just one section...We have tested and it looks fine...Google can crawl the page no problem. There are no spurious redirects in place. The content is fine. There is no duplicate page content issue. The page has a dozen product images (photos) but the load time of the page is absolutely fine. We have the submitted the page via webmaster and its fine. It gets listed but then a few hours later disappears!!! The site has not been penalised as we get good rankings with other pages. Can anyone help? Know about this problem?
-
Don't forget that every keyword is different - how you rank depends on what you're doing compared to other sites targeting that term, not just what you're doing on your own site. So some keywords just take a larger, higher-authority link profile to rank for than others. A good place to start with getting links for that page would be to look at the backlinks that other pages that rank for that term have - you may be able to get some links from the same or similar sites.
-
Thanks again!!!
We have just implemented a site footer with keyword targeting the relevant pages. I thought this alone - along with the top navigation, copy (which is 265 words...) would give google enough guidance. But its not!! External links we have just started to do - but I admit - really just started. I was trying in desperation to get the pages right first 
Do you think more link would help? We will try adding more copy...... The weird thing is - other pages on the site rank fine - including the homepage for the right keywords!!! -
Ah OK, thanks for the clarification!
That problem, to me, sounds like you need some links! In general when Google is ranking your home page for a term, instead of the page that is actually about that term, it's because they recognize that your site has some topical relevance for that term, but the individual page doesn't seem that important based on how many links are pointing to it. Are there ways you can flow some additional internal link juice to that page? Are there sites that are linking to your home page right now that are very closely related to the topic of the page in question, that you could ask to point to that page instead? Are there topically-related sites that don't link to that page right now that you could possibly get a link from? All of these will beef up your page authority, which should help.
In terms of your copy being too far down on the page - if you don't think it will negatively impact your user experience, you could try moving it up, or integrating it into the section with the images, but I don't know how much that will help. You also may need more copy on the page - if your page is 300 lines of code long, and only 5 of those lines are unique copy, it's hard to send a strong enough signal of relevance. Can you expand what you say on the page to make it a better resource on the topic at hand?
-
Thanks for the response! The right pages are not showing for the targeted keywords. The homepage is being ranked instead. Yet the homepage doesn't have the keywords represented on it. Google is taking the Dmoz description of the homepage and is using that to rank (for the targeted keywords)???
The pages do show on Google site: search and they do have images on them. Each page has six images on them. We have ensured the size of the images are ok. The copy on the page is at the bottom after the images - could this be an issue?
I have checked on Screaming Frog - nothing in particular stands out.
i know how we can stop google reading dmoz description which will be implemented....but I don't think this will resolve the issue....?
We have noticed - very strangely - the right page gets ranked - then google changes to the homepage????
Any suggestions... It's baffling me...
-
Is the problem that the page isn't appearing in the index, or that it isn't ranking for its target terms?
If the page has a lot of images but doesn't otherwise have much copy, it may be that Google is determining it to be too similar to other pages on your site and so is not displaying it. If it's not being indexed at all (doesn't show up in a site: search or when you search for a block of copy in quotations), double-check that your robots.txt isn't blocking it and that you don't have a meta robots noindex tag on the page. The suggestion of running Screaming Frog on your site to make sure a crawler can find the page is a good one - Screaming Frog will also tell you if the page is returning a weird HTTP status or is blocked by robots.
-
First think i would do is to check the url with Screaming Frog SEO Spider, anyway a link would be really helpful
-
Are you able to share a link to the page in question?
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
-
Fresh page versus old page climbing up the rankings.
Hello, I have noticed that if publishe a webpage that google has never seen it ranks right away and usually in a descend position to start with (not great but descend). Usually top 30 to 50 and then over the months it slowly climbs up the rankings. However, if my page has been existing for let's say 3 years and I make changes to it, it takes much longer to climb up the rankings Has someone noticed that too ? and why is that ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Why some websites can rank the keywords they don't have in the page?
Hello guys, Yesterday, I used SEMrush to search for the keyword "branding agency" to see the SERP. The Liquidagency ranks 5th on the first page. So I went to their homepage but saw no exact keywords "branding agency", even in the page source. Also, I didn't see "branding agency" as a top anchor text in the external links to the page (from the report of SEMrush). I am an SEO newbie, can someone explain this to me, please? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Raymondlee0 -
My site shows 503 error to Google bot, but can see the site fine. Not indexing in Google. Help
Hi, This site is not indexed on Google at all. http://www.thethreehorseshoespub.co.uk Looking into it, it seems to be giving a 503 error to the google bot. I can see the site I have checked source code Checked robots Did have a sitemap param. but removed it for testing GWMT is showing 'unreachable' if I submit a site map or fetch Any ideas on how to remove this error? Many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SolveWebMedia0 -
Why is Google ranking irrelevant / not preferred pages for keywords?
Over the past few months we have been chipping away at duplicate content issues. We know this is our biggest issue and is working against us. However, it is due to this client also owning the competitor site. Therefore, product merchandise and top level categories are highly similar, including a shared server. Our rank is suffering major for this, which we understand. However, as we make changes, and I track and perform test searches, the pages that Google ranks for keywords never seems to match or make sense, at all. For example, I search for "solid scrub tops" and it ranks the "print scrub tops" category. Or the "Men Clearance" page is ranking for keyword "Women Scrub Pants". Or, I will search for a specific brand, and it ranks a completely different brand. Has anyone else seen this behavior with duplicate content issues? Or is it an issue with some other penalty? At this point, our only option is to test something and see what impact it has, but it is difficult to do when keywords do not align with content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lunavista-comm0 -
301 doesn't redirect a page that ends in %20, and others being appended with ?q=
I have a product page that ends /product-name**%20** that I'm trying to redirect in this way: Redirect 301 /products/product-name%20 http://www.site.com/products/product-name And it doesn't redirect at all. The others, those with %20, are being redirected to a url hybrid of old and new: http://www.site.com/products/product-name**?q=old-url** I'm using Drupal CMS, and it may be creating rules that counter my entries.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brocberry0 -
There's a website I'm working with that has a .php extension. All the pages do. What's the best practice to remove the .php extension across all pages?
Client wishes to drop the .php extension on all their pages (they've got around 2k pages). I assured them that wasn't necessary. However, in the event that I do end up doing this what's the best practices way (and easiest way) to do this? This is also a WordPress site. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digisavvy0 -
Culling 99% of a website's pages. Will this cause irreparable damage?
I have a large travel site that has over 140,000 pages. The problem I have is that the majority of pages are filled with dupe content. When Panda came in, our rankings were obliterated, so I am trying to isolate the unique content on the site and go forward with that. The problem is, the site has been going for over 10 years, with every man and his dog copying content from it. It seems that our travel guides have been largely left untouched and are the only unique content that I can find. We have 1000 travel guides in total. My first question is, would reducing 140,000 pages to just 1,000 ruin the site's authority in any way? The site does use internal linking within these pages, so culling them will remove thousands of internal links throughout the site. Also, am I right in saying that the link juice should now move to the more important pages with unique content, if redirects are set up correctly? And finally, how would you go about redirecting all theses pages? I will be culling a huge amount of hotel pages, would you consider redirecting all of these to the generic hotels page of the site? Thanks for your time, I know this is quite a long one, Nick
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Townpages0 -
Tool to calculate the number of pages in Google's index?
When working with a very large site, are there any tools that will help you calculate the number of links in the Google index? I know you can use site:www.domain.com to see all the links indexed for a particular url. But what if you want to see the number of pages indexed for 100 different subdirectories (i.e. www.domain.com/a, www.domain.com/b)? is there a tool to help automate the process of finding the number of pages from each subdirectory in Google's index?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0