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.
No matter what the keyword, only the homepage shows in the SERP
-
Hi, wondered if someone could help. My clients website shows up well for terms but its always the homepage rather than the targeted landing page. For example, if you search for "teeth whitening anglesey" they appear http://goo.gl/ohJdua however, its the homepage rather than the tooth whitening page http://goo.gl/uVI8gK
Thanks
Ade
-
Thanks Kathy, yeah is an odd one. Ive seen it happen before with some other sites we have done and its always confused me why it happens.
Regards
Ade
-
Perhaps this page is cannibalizing off of the one you want: http://www.marquess-dental.co.uk/tooth-whitening-marquess-dental/ They share essential the same title tag.
also in looking at your competition, they have a very strong architecture. Search on site:www.thecosmeticdentistry.co.uk "teeth whitening" and you can see all the pages in that "directory."
This is a tough one because you don't even have the word whitening on your home page! It's as if Google is saying, I know you're relevant but I don't know what page to show so I'll just show the home page instead. Makes no sense, but most of these home page cannibalizations make no sense either. Sure hope someone can crack this nut.
-
Thanks for the answers. great idea as well Inbound Boulder
-
In addition to all of these suggestions, try adding some more internal links with that keyword phrase pointing to the page you wish to rank for that phrase.
-
Hi Adrian
I would take a look at your backlink profile / rankings via the following tools:
Google Webmaster Tools
Majestic
SEMRushI would assess your anchor texts, the topical relevance of your backlinks, age of your links, and also your backlinks individual metrics. Not only for your own backlinks, but your competitors as well based on keywords/queries you want to rank for.
Also, take a look at Moz's On-Page Grader and see if there are any opportunities you may be missing out on.
From there, I would also look into Schema.org - they offer keyword markup opportunities that can help you better assist crawlers in understanding the topics/meanings of a particular page. Also - take a look at their medical markup opportunities as well.
Lastly, for the time being, if you have a lot of traffic coming to the homepage for these keywords and queries, take a look at A/B testing your homepage to get users to those internal pages more quickly. You have quite a bit of navigation going on and your rotating banner is quite large and confusing, especially when you click the arrows. I see images, but then I click on one that I think is taking me to whitening, but then I am taken to dental warning signs.
Consider this area your opportunity to grab users attentions, get them to where they were searching for, and utilize internal linking in a more effect manner.
You can use the following tools if you want to test:
Visual Website Optimizer (GREAT resource section)
Google Experiments
OptimizelyAlso, check your robots.txt/meta robots and sitemap (and check that it's submitted to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools) to make sure everything is being properly indexed and crawled.
Just some things to think about - hope this helps! Good luck!
-
I guess it's related to the keyword + location. If you do a tooth whitening site:yoursite - the tooth whitening pages appear first - if you repeat the query with the location - the homepage gets the first result. You could try to add the location on the title / metadescription / H1 / url of the detailed pages - to make it more obvious that the page is not only about tooth whitening but about tooth whitening in your city.
Also check what is more popular - you mention teeth whitening as example - the article however talk about tooth whitening - Google knows it's similar - but I would go for the more popular term.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Google picks the page it thinks is most relevant for the search, so you can look at why you think your homepage is more relevant than the other page, is this from meta tags, content (including keywords), robots, links etc.
It may be a matter of making the teeth whitening page more appealing to Google this can be via some content really drilling down that niche etc.
If you're having problems you can always try to direct users from the homepage to the correct page which will in tern help Google understand the right page etc.
Hope that gives you some insight that helps you a bit.
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 Much Domain Age Matter In Ranking?
I am very confused about domain age. I read many articles about domain age, some experts say domain age does matter in ranking and some experts say it doesn't matter in the ranking. Kindly guide me about domain age.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MuhammadQasimAttari0 -
Keyword difficulty and time to rank
Hello, Is there a correlation between the keyword difficult and the time it takes to rank ? In other words let's say I try to rank for the keyword "seo" and it is going to take 2 years to rank 1 st whereas if I go for "best seo tools in 2018" and it takes just 2 weeks ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Keywords in URL: sub-directory or single layer keywords?
Hi guys, im putting together a proposal for a new site and trying to figure out if it'd be better to (A) have a keyword split across multiple directories or duplicate keywords to have the keyword hyphenated? For example, for the topic of "Christmas decor" would you use; (A) - www.domain.com/Christmas/Decor (B) - www.domain.com/Christmas/Christmas-Decor in example B the phrase 'Christmas' is duplicated which looks a little spammy, but the key term "Christmas decor" is in the URL without being broken up by directories. which is stronger? Any advice welcome! Thanks guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JAR8971 -
My website is not ranking for primary keywords in Google
I need help regarding some SEO strategy that need to be implemented to my website http://goo.gl/AiOgu1 . My website is a leading live chat product, daily it receives around 2000 unique visitors. Initially the website was impacted by manual link penalty, I cleaned up lot of backlinks, the website revoked from the penalty some where around June'14. Most of the secondary and longtail Keywords started ranking in Google, but unfortunately, it do not rank well for the primary keywords like (live chat, live chat software, helpdesk etc). Since I have done lot of onsite changes and even revamped the content but till now I dont find any improvement. I am unable to understand where I have got structed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sandeep.clickdesk
can anyone help me out?0 -
My landing pages don't show up in the SERPs, only my frontpage does.
I am having some trouble with getting the landing pages for a clients website to show up in the SERPs.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InmediaDK
As far as I can see, the pages are optimized well, and they also get indexed by Google. The website is a danish webshop that sells wine, www.vindanmark.com Take for an instance this landing page, http://www.vindanmark.com/vinhandel/
It is optimzied for the keywords "Vinhandel Århus". Vinhandel means "Winestore" and "Århus" is a danish city. As you can see, I manage to get them at page 1 (#10), but it's the frontpage that ranks for the keyword. And this goes for alle the other landing pages as well. But I can't figure out, why the frontpage keep outranking the landingpages on every keyword.
What am I doing wrong here?1 -
Subpage ranking for homepage keyword
Hi all, May seem like a simple scenario and I might be missing something, but my subpage seems to be ranking for my main homepage keyword. The subpage PR is 28 and my domain authority is 17, how can I get my main home page to rank instead of the sub page (product page)? I want to stay away from exact match anchor text links, any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SO_UK0 -
Google places keyword variations
Hi all, I have a site that is ranking #1 in Google Places for its main <city><keyword>search... but it does not rank for any of its basic keyword variations, which I find very confusing.</keyword></city> ie (just an example) Chicago Caterer (ranked #1 in google places)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | x2264983x
Chicago Caterers (not ranked in google places)
Chicago Catering (not ranked in google places)
Chicago Catering Company (not ranked in google places)
Chicago Catering Companies (etc..) How can I secure a google places ranking for these simple keyword variations? Do I build links to the google plus page using that anchor text? Do I get citations that contain that keyword somewhere on the page? Do I optimize for these keyword variations on the actual website itself? (not the places listing). Obviously I don't stuff these keywords into the google places listing. Any help would be much appreciated!0 -
Should I remove Meta Keywords tags?
Hi, Do you recommend removing Meta Keywords or is there "nothing to lose" with having them? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0