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
-
How can a keyword placed on a page with the Moz page optimization score of 100 be ranked #51+?
Hi, Please help me figure out why this is happening and what goes wrong. This is the example of the poor ranked keyword - 'viking cooktop repair' with page optimization score of 100 (http://www.yourappliancerepairla.com/blog/viking-cooktop-repair/) Yet it's ranking is #51+. I've got many like these: Page Optimization Score for 'kitchenaid oven repair' is 100 (http://www.yourappliancerepairla.com/blog/kitchenaid-oven-repair/) yet its ranking is #51+ And so on. According to Google Search Console, I have 266 of links to my site with variety of root domains. While building backlinks, I paid attention to relevancy and DA.What else do I have to do to get those keywords ranked higher? And why don't they rank well if the pages are 100% optimized, not keywords stuffed and I have quality backlinks? What am I missing out on? Please help!
Technical SEO | | kirupa1 -
Ranking
Hi, I am New Here in community.. My site Ranking Well in google But From Last two month its rank and traffic got down, i am worried about my site. and now when i created a new account on moz and check my site I saw there is a Spam Score: 5 /17 For my domain www.getmp3songspk.com I have Total indexed 1,132,913 url in google indexed Give Me Suggestion How can i remove bad links on my site. Seeking Help.
Technical SEO | | Getmp3songspk0 -
Page for page 301 redirects from old server to new server
Hi guys:
Technical SEO | | cindyt-17038
I have a client who is moving their entire ecommerce site from one hosting platform (Yahoo Store) to another (BigCommerce) and from one domain to another. The old domain is registered with the Yahoo as of yesterday and we have redirected the old domain (at the domain level) to the new domain. However, we are having trouble getting the pages to redirect page for page. Currently they are all redirecting to the new domain home page. We did just move the old domain from GoDaddy to Yahoo yesterday thinking this would solve it however as of this morning the old pages are still redirecting to the home page of the new domain. To complete the 301 redirect picture, we uploaded the redirects (all relative links for both from and to) to BigCommerce. And while the domain was hosted at GoDaddy with a redirect to the new domain, they were working. We moved the domain to Yahoo because of email issues thinking it should still work. Is it possibly just a waiting game now as the change populates across the DNS? old url to test:
rock-n-roll-action-figures.com/fender-jazz-bass-miniature-guitar-replica-classic-red-finish.html0 -
Page not cached
Hi there, we uploaded a page but unfortunately didn't realise it had noindex,nofollow in the meta tags. Google had cached it then decached it (i guess thats possible) it seems? now it will not cache even though the correct meta tags have been put in and we have sent links to it internally and externally. Anyone know why this page isn't being cached, the internal link to it is on the homepage and that gets cached almost every day. I even submitted it to webmaster tools to index.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Container Page/Content Page Duplicate Content
My client has a container page on their website, they are using SiteFinity, so it is called a "group page", in which individual pages appear and can be scrolled through. When link are followed, they first lead to the group page URL, in which the first content page is shown. However, when navigating through the content pages, the URL changes. When navigating BACK to the first content page, the URL is that for the content page, but it appears to indexers as a duplicate of the group page, that is, the URL that appeared when first linking to the group page. The client updates this on the regular, so I need to find a solution that will allow them to add more pages, the new one always becoming the top page, without requiring extra coding. For instance, I had considered integrating REL=NEXT and REL=PREV, but they aren't going to keep that up to date.
Technical SEO | | SpokeHQ1 -
Rankings Issues
website: trophycentral.com Back in February of this year, we took a huge rankings hit on Google. We thought it might be Panda related, but realized it was before the big change. We also thought it could be related to our Mobile rollout and a wholesale system we put in place, but were not sure. Most pages were fine, but our home page was hit hard and taken off line, included for branded terms (although the branded terms came back in a couple of weeks). There were no manual actions against us. We made a ton of changes with the mobile site, crawl issues, reducing links, reviewing and removing potentially bad outside links, etc. After a few months (long time!) almost all of our keywords came back except one, trophies. We used to rank in the top few positions and now are not in the top 500. We believe we are being penalized, but have no idea why this one keyword is being impacted. It is obviously a huge one for us and we want to get it back. Does anyone have any ideas as to why Trophies is not ranking on our home page. We are grateful that we have many other words and phrases in the top 5 positions (not pages) of google, yahoo and bing, but on Google, we cant seem to get trophies to even show up! Please help!!! Thanks!!!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Descriptions missing from rankings associated with Google Place pages.
Can anyone help me figure out why my rankings that are associated with Google Place pages are missing descriptions? I have a number one result for the top searched keyword in my category but it just doesn't look the same without a description and I'm sure it's affecting CTR too.
Technical SEO | | glideagency0 -
Canonical on ecommerce pages
I have seen some competitors using the nofollow tag as well as canonical on all refinements and sorts on their ecommerce pages. Example being if you went to their hard drive category page and refined by 500gb hard drives then that page would have a canonical element to send it back to hard drives page without the refinement. I see how this could be good for control indexation and the amount pages Google crawls, but do you see problems in using the canonical tag this way? Also I have seen competitors have category page descriptions (describing what that type of product is) on all pagenation and refinements (the exact same block of text on all of the pages). Would this be a duplicate content problem or is it not that big of a deal since the content is only on their site so they are only competiting with themselves. Thanks for your help
Technical SEO | | Gordian0