What would cause the wrong category page to come up?
-
I am trying to figure out why the wrong thing is coming up in the serps. For example, we are trying to rank for used widgets. But when you type in used widgets in google the primary widget page doesn't come up, one of the secondary categories under used widgets comes up. What would cause this? What are things I should check?
-
Is it possible for you to give a clearer description of the categories? You say they are different products but that one is a second category of the other
Does the page you want to rank show up for any other searches? In your analytics are you getting any traffic from Google to that page?
-
I did the site search that you suggest- site:www.site.com widgets and it was in the correct order.
When I added the word used to the search it came up in the wrong order. They both have the word used, used the same amount of time. It makes no sense to me.
-
They actually are two separate types of items so I don't think I can canonical because I still want people to find the other category if that is what they are looking for. The names are so similar it is a problem.
I have an x category, y category, and xy category. Even though the names are the same, they are very different products.
-
Hi,
The best way I find to see what the search engines thinks is the best page from your site for a term is to do a site search with the term you are checking.
E.g.
site:yousite.com + Term
In your case : yousite.com + used widgets
This shows you the pages in order that Googles ranks them. Also its a good way to identify duplicated title tags.
Now there is an article published by Rand Fishkin on this issue to know what could be the possible reason to showing wrong category pages and how you can correct them .Please check once below article
http://moz.com/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions
I hope it helps
Thanks
-
You could use a canonical tag to tell google which page is the desired page. Unless the other page also had targeted key terms on it. Then I would avoid the canonical tag and try to find a better way to optimize the other page for key terms not so closely related.
-
It is unfortunate, but they have almost the exact same name. I don't know how to differentiate them.
-
These titles are so close that google is probably flipping a coin.
-
For the term "used widget" ,the title for the page I want to rank is "used widget for sale". For the page I do not want it to rank for this term it is "used widget - type for sale".
-
It It has breadcrumbs and it shows the category in the level up mechanism for the category sort.
-
What are things I should check?
Proofread the title tags. Be sure that the one that you want to rank is the best optimized.
-
it can be that both pages are semantically similar and the robot is not sure which one from both should it rank
You could try to create an internal link in secondary category "url" to the url you want to rank, using the keyword as anchor. It may helps
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 do we decide which pages to index/de-index? Help for a 250k page site
At Siftery (siftery.com) we have about 250k pages, most of them reflected in our sitemap. Though after submitting a sitemap we started seeing an increase in the number of pages Google indexed, in the past few weeks progress has slowed to a crawl at about 80k pages, and in fact has been coming down very marginally. Due to the nature of the site, a lot of the pages on the site likely look very similar to search engines. We've also broken down our sitemap into an index, so we know that most of the indexation problems are coming from a particular type of page (company profiles). Given these facts below, what do you recommend we do? Should we de-index all of the pages that are not being picked up by the Google index (and are therefore likely seen as low quality)? There seems to be a school of thought that de-indexing "thin" pages improves the ranking potential of the indexed pages. We have plans for enriching and differentiating the pages that are being picked up as thin (Moz itself picks them up as 'duplicate' pages even though they're not. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggiaco-siftery0 -
Multiple pages for a Profile
Hi All, We have a Biography website in which we have Celebrity News, Videos, Images etc. We have a main page which shows the biography and sides we show 5 blocks of News, Videos, Images etc and have a More option when clicked the page goes to a page where it shows 100's of news of that celeb or Videos etc This is the main page : sitename.com/celebrityname news: sitename.com/celebrityname/news Videos: sitename.com/celebrityname/videos Images: sitename.com/celebrityname/Images Now these 3 pages have no content in them and when we scan via SEMRUSH it shows as "with duplicate title tags". We have 20K such bio's so 20K * 3 such pages is 60K duplicate title tags How can we deal with such pages? Any help please. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | leengsro870 -
New pages not ranking
I published some new landing pages about a month a go which are much better quality than previous pages and on an optimised URL. The old pages never ranked and the new pages aren't ranking either although they are much better. The old pages 301 redirect to the new pages. Any quick ways I can at least get them ranking? Not expecting Page 1 overnight but to at least see the new pages on Page 5 would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
What is the best strategy for linking to sub category pages?
My site is set up like this (i have x6 categories and all are similar) Home Page - Category - sub category - X4 detail pages My category page provides a summary/introduction of the subject, my sub category page is the "money page" with ability to quote & buy - my detail pages provide supporting material. What is the best internal linking strategy between these pages? (in addition, in one category i have x6 sub categories but only one of them is a "money page", should i be linking all of these pages back to the money page?) Thanks Ash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep10 -
What may cause a page not to be indexed (be de-indexed)?
Hi All, I have a main category page, a landing page, that does not appear in the SERPS at all (even if I serach for a whole sentence from it). This page once ranked high. What may cause such a punishment for a specific page? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Duplicate Page Title/Content Issues on Product Review Submission Pages
Hi Everyone, I'm very green to SEO. I have a Volusion-based storefront and recently decided to dedicate more time and effort into improving my online presence. Admittedly, I'm mostly a lurker in the Q&A forum but I couldn't find any pre-existing info regarding my situation. It could be out there. But again, I'm a noob... So, in my recent SEOmoz report I noticed that over 1,000 Duplicate Content Errors and Duplicate Page Title Errors have been found since my last crawl. I can see that every error is tied to a product in my inventory - specifically each product page has an option to write a review. It looks like the subsequent page where a visitor can fill out their review is the stem of the problem. All of my products are shown to have the same issue: Duplicate Page Title - Review:New Duplicate Page Content - the form is already partially filled out with the corresponding product My first question - It makes sense that a page containing a submission form would have the same title and content. But why is it being indexed, or crawled (or both for that matter) under every parameter in which it could be accessed (product A, B, C, etc)? My second question (an obvious one) - What can I do to begin to resolve this? As far as I know, I haven't touched this option included in Volusion other than to simply implement it. If I'm missing any key information, please point me in the right direction and I'll respond with any additional relevant information on my end. Many thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DakotahW0 -
A Landing Page Goldmine?
If anyone can take a minute to help me out with this, I'd really love to get some expert opinions. I can produce really strong content like a machine and, over the years, I've had tons of pages on my website that had links pointing to them (didn't know about SEO then) deleted and now I'm starting to dig them up. I have dozens with a moz rank higher than 25. My question is what do I do with these urls, should I rewrite them and get the innerlinking strength or should I do a 301 redirect to a similar page? Considering the incoming links and individual seomoz pr rank of these pages , am I sitting on something valuable?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ksundheim10 -
How do you transition a keyword rank from a home page to a sub-page on the site?
We're currently ranking #1 for a valuable keyword, but the result on the SERP is our home page. We're creating a new product page focused on this keyword to provide a better user experience and create more relevant content. What is the best way to make a smooth transition to make the product page rank #1 for the keyword instead of the home page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | buildasign0