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
-
Difference LSI and and secondary related keywords
Hi, It is confusing to me. So far what I understand is the following: LSI are synonyms of the keyword your target (the one in the H1 and title tag). For example my keyword would be "Tuscany bike tour" and my LSI would be "Tuscany cycling vacation", "bicycle tour in Tuscany" etc... Then secondary related keyword are for me the other topics I need to cover in my content. In this case for example it would be "Florence", "Siena". But from what I understand a good writer wouldn't use "Siena" or "Florence" multiple times in it's content it would replace it by keywords that support them such as "the town of Florence", "the city of Siena"," the Palio of Siena" etc...Is my understanding correct ? If so what is the use of using those secondary related keyword, is it to rank on other keywords such as Palio of siena tuscany bike tour ? or just not to repeat a secondary keyword too many times. If i write the Palio of Siena isn't it considered as another topic that the topic siena ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
301 Redirect Showing Up as Thousands Of Backlinks?
Hi Everyone, I'm currently doing quite a large back link audit on my company's website and there's one thing that's bugging me. Our website used to be split into two domains for separate areas of the business but since we have merged them together into one domain and have 301 redirected the old domain the the main one. But now, both GWT and Majestic are telling me that I've got 12,000 backlinks from that domain? This domain didn't even have 12,000 pages when it was live and I only did specific 301 redirects (ie. for specific URL's and not an overall domain level 301 redirect) for about 50 of the URL's with all the rest being redirected to the homepage. Therefore I'm quite confused about why its showing up as so many backlinks - Old redirects I've done don't usually show as a backlink at all. UPDATE: I've got some more info on the specific back links. But now my question is - is having this many backlinks/redirects from a single domain going to be viewed negatively in Google's eyes? I'm currently doing a reconsideration request and would look to try and fix this issue if having so many backlinks from a single domain would be against Google's guidelines. Does anybody have any ideas? Probably somthing very obvious. Thanks! Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sandicliffe0 -
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 -
Two Webstites Targeting the Same Keywords
If I aquire a website in the same industry targeting the same keywords. Should I merge them into one? I understand it's a bad idea to have multiple websites promoting the same thing, but i'd like to capture the customer base of a competing website. What's everyone's thoughts? A- Merge new to main website with 301's? will google like that? B- Keep them separate? Will google like that? C- Don't bother. D- Toss the computer and get into Horticulture
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | residualboulders0 -
Blog posts not showing in serps for exact match title search
hi- my first client ranks #1 for the exact phrase of each blog post title the 2nd client doesnt rank anywhere when i search for the exact post title 2nd client has robots.txt User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ezpro9
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/ so that shouldnt noindex any posts right? his site ranks for many kw's - but oddly none of his blog posts are anywhere to be found - i dont mean for a kw search - i mean for searching for the entire title he doesnt rank anywhere in first 5 pages for any of 6-7 posts i checked any idea what could cause this? thanks0 -
How to Target Keyword Variations?
I have a list of keywords I'm trying to target and they are essentially different variations of each other: Example: blue yankees baseball hat yankees blue baseball hat yankees baseball hat in blue Should I be targeting all these on the same page, or should I be making a new page for each one? Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
How to Target Keyword Permutations
I have a client that wants to rank for a keyword phrase that has many permutations.. ex. "Alaska Hill Country Resort", "Hill Country Resort Alaska", "Hill Country Alaska Resort" But I'm wondering if I should target these all on the same page or not. I'm assuming all of these permutations are actually valid searches because I did my keyword research for 'exact match' keywords and got results like this.. (let me know if I'm missing something here, or if this sounds right) [Alaska Hill Country Resort] - 230 Local Searches [Hill Country Resort Alaska] - 140 Local Searches [Hill Country Alaska Resort] - 30 Local Searches The phrase we're targeting is their main keyword phrase, so I've chosen their home-page as the page to rank for this phrase. My thought is to optimize for the most popular phrase (ex. "Alaska Hill Country Resort"), and sprinkle in the other phrases throughout the copy. Next I would run a link-building campaign targeting the main phrase first.. then the next phrase, and so on, so that my anchor text is more heavily focused on the more popular terms, but I would also make sure to include the less popular terms. Do you think this is the best way to go about this? Do I really need to make individual pages for each of the permutations, or is it okay to target them all on one page since they are essentially the same keyword?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Subdomains for niche related keywords
I wanted to know how efficient using a subdomain is, taking in consideration all the updates Google has made lately. I am looking to use a subdomain for a well branded website for a niche specific part of their website. The subdomain will end-up having more than 100 pages. I'd like to see in what cases do you guys recommend using a subdomain? How to get the same benefit out of a subdomain as i am getting from the actual main domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CMTM0