Why is our login page ranked higher than our homepage?
-
Hello everyone,
When you search "ProtonMail", our Login page always ranks #1 while our homepage ranks #2. We're unsure why this is happening. The PA for our homepage is higher than the login page, and the login page itself basically has zero content except for a login form. We don't want to put the login page on robots.txt, we want to do our best to preserve it so that people can login. However it still does not make sense to us how the login page ranks higher, even though it has a lesser PA.
I'd appreciate any help or advice you might have.
Thank you.
-
I have no evidence of this but maybe Google is taking into account your clickthrough rate. If people search "ProtonMail", and almost always go to the login page they might have bumped it up.
-
I actually think the result makes sense. If you do a Google search for Protonmail (or Hotmail or Gmail) are you most likely:
a) a current user who wants to login
b) a new user searching only for the brand keyphrase?
Your login page is most likely to be the page someone is searching for. Nearly every big service I could find worked this way with the exception of ebay. On a search for Hotmail, the first result is "Sign in"
Nearly everyone in my family types in the website they want to visit and searches Google for it. It drives me NUTS but it's how they browse. I've watched my brother type "facebook" into Google more than I care to admit. But from a user point of view, that's an "address bar" so I typed in Facebook. I want to go to "the Facebook" to see my friends.
I think that's why login would be a preferred page by Google. They expect most people searching to try you would be searching protonmail reviews, protonmail vs gmail, things like that. They wouldn't just search the brand unless they already know you. And of those who know you and are Googling you, most want to login. Make sense?
-
Hi there
I honestly wouldn't consider this an issue. You're login and homepage rank at the top. I would let the nature of the SERPs run it's course.
That being said, I would include a link (other than the logo in the upper left hand corner) to the homepage of sort on the login page. That way you cater to two users - the ones who want to login and the ones that want to learn more about your services.
Also, between you login and homepage, I occasionally get a 408 error when clicking through. I attached a screenshot below. You can learn more about those here.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
Thank you for the response Patrick!
We do have several sitemaps and a sitemap index set up at https://protonmail.ch/sitemap_index.xml, and our homepage is given the highest priority.
We'll have to look into disavowing spammy backlinks and see if that helps.
If we put the login page on robots.txt to prevent google from indexing, and then reversed the process to allow google to index it again, do you think it would reconcile the problem possibly? I have a feeling the reason why the login page is kept at that rank is due to the history of that link, because the homepage used to link directly to the login page, however it no longer does (sign in is integrated on homepage), except for the footer.
-
Hi there
I wouldn't be too alarmed, you will find this with some searches for email providers:
Yahoo
Hotmail
AOLI noticed you don't have a sitemap, I recommend creating one and give the most priority to the homepage. From there, I would upload those to both Google and Bing. This will help crawlers understand the website in importance.
I would also take a look at your backlinks - your site (especially your homepage) seems to be getting quite a few spammy backlinks - example. Look which ones can be removed or disavowed.
Try this method and let me know if you see any changes. Hope this helps a bit! Good luck!
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
-
Why does Google's search results display my home page instead of my target page?
Why does Google's search results display my home page instead of my target page?
Technical SEO | | h.hedayati6712365410 -
Homepage not ranking main keywords - structure error?
Dear, Moz community We have an issue. We have a classified advertisement website. Our website is built like this**homepage (**Optimized for main keyword, has latest listings from all categories ) - category 1 (we did not want to add alteration of the keyword we want to rank homepage, as we thought this would "compete" with homepage) - category 2 - category 3 - **category **4 The listing URLs look like this www.example.com/categoryname/listingname Now the issue is that the homepage is not ranking at all for the main keywords. When we used URL structure like this "example.com/main-keyword-listing-id" homepage was ranking (other sites). Now with new site we used the best practice and added url's as described above (/categoryname/listingid).This caused our homepage not to rank at all for the main keywords.What did we do wrong? We want our homepage to rank for the main keyword and categories for theirs. Should we 1. Change the category 1 name to main keyword (maybe some long tail) so we have the main keyword in URLs? So at least one of the main categories has the main keyword in the listing URLs2. Should we change the category listing urls all back to /main-keyword-listing-id? We thought that this was a bit spammy, so that´s why we used categories. _This means that all listings have same URL name and not best for ranking cateogries_3. Just link back to homepage internally with the main keyword and google should catch that? _Currently in menu you go to homepage clicking HOME but we can add for example our main keyword there - Latest car advertisements _I would be happy of any feedback.
Technical SEO | | advertisingtech0 -
Overdynamic Pages - How to Solve it?
Hi everyone, I'm running a classified real estate ads site, where people can publish their apartment or house they want to sell, so we use multiple filters to help people find what they want. Lately we added multiple filters to the URL to make the search more precise, things like: Prices (priceAmount=###) Bedrooms (BedroomsNumber=2) Bathrooms (BathroomsNumber=3) TotalArea (totalArea=1_50) Services (Elevator, CommonAreas, security) Among other Filters so you see the picture, all this filters are on the URL so that people can share their search on multiple social media, that makes two problems for moz crawl: Overdynamic URLs Too long URLs Now what would be a good solution for this 2 problems, would a canonical to the original page before the "?" would be ok? Example:
Technical SEO | | JoaoCJ
http://urbania.pe/buscar/venta-de-propiedades?bathroomsNumber=2&services=gas&commonAreas=solarium The problem I have with this solution is that I also have a pagination parameter (page=2), and I'm using prev and next tags, if I use a such canonical will break the prev and next tag? http://urbania.pe/buscar/venta-de-propiedades?bathroomsNumber=2&services=gas&commonAreas=solarium&page=2 Also thinking if adding a noindex on pages with paramters could also be an option. Thanks a lot, I'm trying to address this issues.0 -
Worth redirecting non-www to www due to higher page authority with www?
When checking my domain I receive higher page authority for www vs non-www. I am considering moving to the www url and applying the necessary redirections but wanted to quickly check if this is worth it. The root page authority https://www.diveidc.com : PA 40 https://diveidc.com : PA 35 By redirecting would I just be transferring over negative signals to the www domain, thus voiding the point for doing any redirect at all?
Technical SEO | | MAGNUMCreative0 -
Site Crawl -> Duplicate Page Content -> Same pages showing up with duplicates that are not
These, for example: | https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php/?utm_campaign=july15&utm_medium=organic&utm_source=blog | 1 | 2 | 29 | 2 | 200 |
Technical SEO | | writezach
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?_ga=1.145821812.1573134750.1440742418 | 1 | 1 | 25 | 2 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?utm_source=tapclicks&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=brightpod-article | 1 | 119 | 40 | 4 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?utm_source=tapclicks&utm_medium=marketplace&utm_campaign=homepage | 1 | 119 | 40 | 4 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?utm_source=blog&utm_campaign=first-3-must-watch-videos | 1 | 119 | 40 | 4 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?_ga=1.159789566.2132270851.1418408142 | 1 | 5 | 31 | 2 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php/?utm_source=vocus&utm_medium=PR&utm_campaign=52release | Any suggestions/directions for fixing or should I just disregard this "High Priority" moz issue? Thank you!0 -
Is there a way to index important pages manually or to make sure a certain page will get indexed in a short period of time??
Hi There! The problem I'm having is that certain pages are waiting already three months to be indexed. They even have several backlinks. Is it normal to have to wait more than three months before these pages get an indexation? Is there anything i can do to make sure these page will get an indexation soon? Greetings Bob
Technical SEO | | rijwielcashencarry0400 -
Crawl Test Report only shows home page and no inner site pages?
Hi, My site is [removed] When I first tried to set up a new campaign for the site, I received the error: Roger has detected a problem: We have detected that the root domain [removed] does not respond to web requests. Using this domain, we will be unable to crawl your site or present accurate SERP information. I then ran a Crawl Test per the FAQ. The SEOmoz crawl report only shows my home page URL and does not have any inner site pages. This is a Joomla site. What is the problem? Thanks! Dave
Technical SEO | | crave810 -
Homepage display for seo
hi, Which is the best , seo speaking, about the homepage display with a CMS (joomla here). 1/ To display articles as "blog" and thus articles are always recent but not the same (chronological).. 2/ To display always a same article (just 1) but updated sometimes to times ? 3/ Both of them are good ? Tks a lot in advance..
Technical SEO | | mozllo0