Prioritise a page in Google/why is a well-optimised page not ranking
-
Hello
I'm new to Moz Forums and was wondering if anyone out there could help with a query.
My client has an ecommerce site selling a range of pet products, most of which have multiple items in the range for difference size animals i.e.
[Product name] for small dog
[Product name] for medium dog
[Product name] for large dog
[Product name] for extra large dogI've got some really great rankings (top 3) for many keyword searches such as
'[product name] for dogs'
'[product name]'But these rankings are for individual product pages, meaning the user is taken to a small dog product page when they might have a large dog or visa versa.
I felt it would be better for the users (and for conversions and bounce rates), if there was a group page which showed all products in the range which I could target keywords '[product name]', '[product name] for dogs'. The page would link through the the individual product pages.
I created some group pages in autumn last year to trial this and, although they are well-optimised (score of 98 on Moz's optimisation tool), they are not ranking well. They are indexed, but way down the SERPs.
The same group page format has been used for the PPC campaign and the difference to the retention/conversion of visitors is significant.
Why are my group pages not ranking?
Is it because my client's site already has good rankings for the target term and Google does not want to show another page of the site and muddy results?
Is there a way to prioritise the group page in Google's eyes? Or bring it to Google's attention?Any suggestions/advice welcome.
Thanks in advance
Laura
-
Hi Laura,
Welcome to the Moz community!
Without a domain to do some further investigation, these types of questions can be some of the toughest to answer because there are so many variables that could be causing the problem.
I can't comment on your current site but what I can say is that from experience, if this is happening it's typically going to be one of three things (maybe a combination?):
- More links pointing to the individual product pages than to the category pages
- Either no or low quality content on the subcategory pages; basically just showing a big chunk of products and nothing else
- Poor internal linking with more internal links pointing to those products, the category pages in a separate section of the nav, no category breadcrumbs etc. URL structure ties in here in much the same way.
If we think about typical user behaviour, it makes perfect sense that your product pages would be getting more backlinks than the categories. If we're talking about real users in a forum and they want to reference a product you sell, they're going to link straight to that product and the same can be said in most other contexts too.
This isn't a problem at all - real backlinks being earned in a natural way is always good. It just means you may need to put some effort into driving strength to the category pages too.
Content is a topic that gets so much attention in this industry that I don't think I really need to elaborate here - just make sure there is a decent amount of high-quality content on the pages, styled in a way that doesn't bury the products. UX first!
Finally, the internal linking. It's very hard to give advice on this part without seeing the site but basically, search engines tend to look at your nav to get an indication of which pages are likely the most important on the page from left to right, top to bottom. If you have an unusual structure where the category pages are buried down in the drop-downs (or - gasp - not even in the nav because there are buttons on the home page or something!) then you're missing an easy win there.
Don't forget that breadcrumbs and URL structure should ultimately match this same layout. Something like website.com/category/product.
This is all quite vague but hopefully it makes sense to the site you're working with now. Always happy to take a closer look if you'd like to share the URL here or in PM but I completely understand if you're not comfortable with that too.
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
-
Newly designed page ranks in Google but then disappears - at a loss as to why.
Hi all, I wondered if you could help me at all please? We run a site called getinspired365.com (which is not optimised) and in the last 2 weeks have tried to optimise some new pages that we have added. For example, we have optimised this page - http://getinspired365.com/lifes-a-bit-like-mountaineering-never-look-down This page was added to Google's index via webmaster tools. When I then did a search for the full quote it came back 2nd in Google's search. If I did a search for half the quote (Life is a bit like mountaineering) it also ranked 2nd. We had another quote page that we'd optimised that displayed similar behaviour (it ranked 4th). But then for some reason when I now do the search it doesn't rank in the top 100 results. This, despite, an unoptimised "normal" page ranking 4th for a search such as: Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered. So our domain doesn't seem to be penalised as our "normal" pages are ranking. These pages aren't particularly well designed from an SEO standpoint. But our new pages - which are optimised - keep disappearing from Google, despite the fact they still show as indexed. I've rendered the pages and everything appears fine within Google Webmaster Tools. At a bit of a loss as to why they'd drop so significantly? A few pages I could understand but they've all but been removed. Any one seen this before, and any ideas what could be causing the issue? We have a different URL structure for our new pages in that we have the quote appear in the URL. All the content (bar the quote) that you see in the new pages are unique content that we've written ourselves. Could it be that we've over optimised and Google view these pages as spam? Many thanks in advance for all your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichaelWhyley0 -
Does anyone know how to appear with snippet that says something like: Jobs 1-10 of 80 in the beginning of the description on Google? e.g. like on: https://www.google.co.za/#q=pickers+and+packers
Does anyone know how to appear with snippet that says something like: Jobs 1-10 of 80 in the beginning of the description on Google? e.g. like on: https://www.google.co.za/#q=pickers+and+packers Any markup that could be used to be listed like this. Why is some sites listed like this and some not. Why is the adzuna.co.za page listed with Results 1-10 while some other with Jobs 1-10 ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | classifiedtech0 -
How can we improve rankings for category pages
Hi Everyone, I have a dog breeder site I'm working on and I was wondering if I could get some tips and ideas on things to do to help the "category" pages rank better in search engines. Let's say I have "xyz" breed category page which has listings of all dog breeders who offer that particular breed, in this case "xyz". I have certain breeder profile listings which rank higher for those terms that the category page should be ranking for. So I'm guessing Google thinks those breeder profile pages are more relevant for those terms. Especially if well optimized. I know thin content may be my problem here, but one of our competitors dominates the rankings for relevant keywords with no content on their category pages. What do you all suggest?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rsanchez0 -
Google + Local Pages
Hi, If I have a company with multipul addresses, Do I create separate Google + page for each area?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
Google+ Local pages under review. How long does this take?
I have a couple Google+ local pages that have been placed under review. Does anyone have experience regarding the time frame of this reveiw process. Google says to give it a few weeks, but one page has been under review for four weeks now. How long should I wait for Google to review them before I delete the page and start over?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VentaMarketing0 -
Google Page Rank Dead?
Does PR still work? I have sites that have PR3 and get almost no traffic and sites that are PR1 and get thousands of uniques per month. My PR on my main sites haven't moved for about 7 years, even though we've grown significantly. I know lots of you are going to jump in with get the MOZ toolbar, which I already have done, and I agree, it's great ... But can anyone tell me about what's going on with Google PR? Is it still active? Or has Google abandoned? I noticed that the Google toolbar is not even available for Google Chrome. That should say something ... If you like this question, do me a favor, and give me a THUMBS UP!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | applesofgold2 -
Lost Google rankings for the main keywords
Hello everybody, I love seomoz and was enjoying all the benefits it has, was reading Q&A and implementing new marketing strategies for my website. I would really appreciate if anyone could explain my situation. The website, to which I devoted last 12 months of my time, was suddenly dropped from it's main keywords to nowhere 2 days ago, it does not look like a "dance" because some of my competitors lost their rankings too. I think its a penalty. The site http://goo.gl/3VTMq is almost 2 years old, of the highest quality content. I've been adding content slowly over 24 months, building backlinks slowly, the rankings also were going up slowly. Here are some of the keywords I've been ranking for: car insurance companies - 12, best auto insurance companies - 1, top car insurance companies 1, cheap auto insurance - 16, low cost auto insurance 4,lowest auto insurance - 2, and many more... According to seomoz, I have no major problems with on-site seo, I have low bounce rate, high pages/visit and high time on site. There is only one left - incoming backlinks. Google says that it just can't hurt you, but I think this is the only explanation of my problem. My backlinks consist of everything - from high quality contextual backlinks, to lower quality comment backlinks. I used Press Release services too.. This problem is like a nail in my head, I look forward to hearing your response. Thanks in advance, Vaz
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VazMamnya0 -
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