Google is ranking the wrong page for the targeted keyword
-
I have two examples below where we want it to rank for the targeted page but google picked another page to rank instead. This is happening a lot on this site I just recently started to work on.
Example 1
Googles Choice for key word Motorcycle Tires: http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/cl/50/Tires-and-Wheels
What we want Google to choice for Motorcycle Tires: http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/49/-/181/Motorcycle-Tires
Other pages about Motorcycle tires: http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/d/12/Motorcycle-Tires
We even used the rel="canonical" for this url to point to our target page. http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/50/-/181/Motorcycle-Tires
Example 2
ATV Tires We want this page to rank http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/81/165/ATV-Tires however google has decided to rank http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/43/81/165/723/ATV-Tires-All that is acutally one folder under where we want it.
-
Thanks that was good detailed info. We are starting to do most of those things over the next 1-2 months and hope to see the outcome we want!
-
This is a common problem for site owners. Some guidelines to avoid this problem:
1. Pick a single keyword for each webpage. If you choose a second keyword, have it be a close variation of the main keyword such as Motorcycle Tire and Motorcycle Tires.
2. Offer your website content in as flat of a structure as possible. Think Wikipedia. Ideally all your main content will be a maximum of 3 clicks from the home page.
3. Enforce your keyword choice in every manner possible:
a. the url /motorcycle-tires
b. The page title "Motorcycle Tires"
c. The first words of the first sentence (again, think Wikipedia): Motorcycle tires are a critical piece of your bike's performance. Speed, traction, gas mileage, safety and more are impacted by your tire selection.....
d. Throughout your site use anchor text to direct "motorcycle tire" traffic to your chosen page
e. Earn links to the page. Even if the links do not use anchor text, your URL will serve as natural anchor text for your chosen term. ** Please note I mentioned earn links. That does not mean build directory links, paying for links or using link exchanges.
4. If your site has 100+ pages, you need to have some form of content map. New pages should not be whimsically added but rather carefully planned. Be careful not to cannibalize your chosen key term on other pages.
-
Thanks for your help, we are aware of the text and when I was hired they hired a copy writer as well to start writing quality content for the site that will be useful to humans. If you look at the second example it is the one we want to rank for is actually higher up in the site but the page google chose to rank is one folder lower.
Also what do you think about this. They also built a page targeting motorcycle parts you can see here http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/s/49/61/Motorcycle-Parts; however google still just pulls up their home page.
My best guess so far has been site structure and that they do not really have any good anchor text/ internal links showing google what pages are important. What are your thoughts?
-
The primary cause of this issue is related to a lack of proper optimization along with site structure challenges.
If you look at the Tires and Wheels page, the first block of text at the bottom has a headline "Motorcycle Tires, ATV Tires, Dirt Bike Tires...." Elsewhere on the page you have a headline "Top Selling Motorcycle Tires". Under the Dual Sport Tires image you have a listing for Motorcycle Tires. There are other references as well. It is clear this page is highly relevant to Motorcycle Tires.
I have not examined your site structure but I notice the Tires and Wheels URL has fewer layers then the Motorcycle Tires page. /cl/50 versus /c/49/-/181. If that structure means the Motorcycle Tires page is buried deeper on the site, that is another concern as well.
In summary, you are cannibalizing your own keywords and the site lacks focus. It seems low quality SEO was performed as the text at the bottom of the page is what I refer to as "SEO text". In other words, it was not added for users but rather to throw some content on the page for search engines.
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
-
Google Displaying Wrong Homepage URL
Hi Everyone, Google is displaying www.domain.com instead of domain.com. We have our preferred URL set up as domain.com, and even redirect www.domain.com to domain.com, but in the search results it is showing www.domain.com. Problem is we are seeing referral data from www.domain.com and in Google it says "No information is available for this page." Anyone seen a way to resolve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vetofunk0 -
Keyword ranking verse all other data
Hi there I have just joined Moz so I am not sure if i am doing a good job of analysing all the data, but from what i can see i have a few questions: 1. I seem to have a fairly high visibility compared to a few other competitors 2. All the other competitors i am looking at have a much lower domain authority 3. I win the link metrics in all categories compared to my competitors 4. I have a page optimisation score of 94 5. I dont have any crawl issues (except that i just changed to https and i believe there is a synching issue with Moz and cloud flare..) YET I barely rank for any of the main keyword in my industry.... Kitchen, New Kitchen, Kitchen Renovation etc. I also have a page optimisation score of 94 for related keywords. I feel like i am really missing a big point and was hoping I could get your expert thoughts on this 🙂 Thanks so much! PS my domain is www.bluetea.com.au
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bluetea0 -
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 -
How long takes to a page show up in Google results after removing noindex from a page?
Hi folks, A client of mine created a new page and used meta robots noindex to not show the page while they are not ready to launch it. The problem is that somehow Google "crawled" the page and now, after removing the meta robots noindex, the page does not show up in the results. We've tried to crawl it using Fetch as Googlebot, and then submit it using the button that appears. We've included the page in sitemap.xml and also used the old Google submit new page URL https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url Does anyone know how long will it take for Google to show the page AFTER removing meta robots noindex from the page? Any reliable references of the statement? I did not find any Google video/post about this. I know that in some days it will appear but I'd like to have a good reference for the future. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabioricotta-840380 -
Does Google make continued attempts to crawl an old page one it has followed a 301 to the new page?
I am curious about this for a couple of reasons. We have all dealt with a site who switched platforms and didn't plan properly and now have 1,000's of crawl errors. Many of the developers I have talked to have stated very clearly that the HTacccess file should not be used for 1,000's of singe redirects. I figured If I only needed them in their temporarily it wouldn't be an issue. I am curious if once Google follows a 301 from an old page to a new page, will they stop crawling the old page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RossFruin0 -
Getting a Home Page to Rank
Hi Mozzers, My question specifically has to do with optimizing a home page for specific keywords, but still keeping the design clean and not cluttered.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
How do you guys prefer to go about it? Currently our home page only really gets traffic for branded keywords (though we do have some rankings for real keywords showing in GWT which I can't really explain). I know how to write content for specific long-tail keywords, but we want to keep our homepage very clean, not filled with gobs of text. Right now my main plan is to display content under a "Read More.." button.
What do you pros suggest? Thanks!0 -
Why will google not index my pages?
About 6 weeks ago we moved a subcategory out to becomne a main category using all the same content. We also removed 100's of old products and replaced these with new variation listings to remove duplicate content issues. The problem is google will not index 12 critcal pages and our ranking have slumped for the keywords in the categories. What can i do to entice google to index these pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
Is there any delay between crawling a page by google and displaying of the ratings in rich snippet of the results in google?
Is there any delay between crawling a page by google and displaying of the ratings in rich snippet of the results in google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NEWCRAFT0