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.
Pages Competing With One Another
-
Hello,
We are ranking for an acronym, which I understand can lead to fickle rankings. However, we have two pages ranking page one - two for the same keyword, but they do so in spite of each other.
By this I mean, one page will rank, while the other is nowhere to be found. It seems that the one page (a blog post) is more likely to rank on the weekends while the product page is more likely to rank on the weekdays.
I would like the product page to rank all the time, and to target another keyword with the blog post. Would removing the keyword from the blog post allow the product page to rank all the time - or would it lead to no pages ranking during times when the blog post would otherwise be ranking?
I should note the blog post has more external links and is not exactly optimized for the keyword, while the product page has more internal links and is optimized for the keyword.
-
Thanks for the help, Nicholas!
-
Sounds good, Ill give it a shot. Thank you guys!
-
Agree with Nicholas, keep track of what you do and then go for it. You won't know unless you test and if the product page has ranked highly before there is a good chance it will rank highly again if you de-optimize it's competing blog post page.
-
Personally, I would still de-optimize the blog, just keep a notes document of before/after changes that you make during de-optimization, that way if the worst case scenario happens and neither page is ranking for your keyword, you can undo the de-optimization and look for another solution.
Also, after you de-optimize the post it may be worth it to utilize Google Search Console's Fetch & Render tool to request Google to re-index and crawl all of the direct links on the product page and blog page. This can sometimes work like a "refresh" to get Google to properly index both pages quicker. I would still wait like a week or so after you de-optimize the post page to see what happens.
-
Thanks for the input, Nicholas. This is what I was thinking, however, it seems that the blog post is now ranking for the last four days, and my solutions page isn't ranking at all for the keyword. Usually, the blog post would rank 1-2 days a week while the product page would rank the rest.
Would you still suggest de-optimizing the blog? Ranking for the keyword has been a months-long initiative, and I don't want to ruin my efforts.
Or should I wait and see if the product page begins ranking instead of the post again before de-optimizing the post?
-
Impossible to say for sure Tom, I would give it a go personally, especially if there is another keyword you want to target with the blog post. If Google is currently only allowing one page of your website to rank at one time for your keyword, de-optimizing one of the competing pages for that keyword should lead to more consistent ranking for the other page with all else being equal.
-
Thanks for the response, I do have the keyword as the anchor text linking from my blog post to my product page. I don't know why it is when one ranks, the other does not, rather than alongside each other.
Would de-optimizing my blog post allow for my product page to rank all the time - or will it cause a lack of coverage when the blog post would otherwise rank?
-
In theory, it should result in your product page ranking more consistently. One way to help solidify your product pages rankings for your target keyword would be to add an anchor text link with your target keyword pointing to the product page within the blog post (which has more external links). This would help "transfer some authority" that the blog post has to the product page.
To be safe when making these changes to de-optimize the blog post, keep track of every change you make just in case you need to revert back to the way it was, and also keep track of the rankings for both the product page and blog post separately.
Hope this helps and best of success!
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
-
On-page SEO
This is a question for the organic SEO experts, once you added the main keyword that you want to rank for in the homepage title, meta title plus meta description, perhaps once or twice in the text on the homepage. How often do you then write it in the content marketing, say blog posts, we want to rank higher on Google for "SEO agencies Cardiff" however if you mention this in the blog posts too much say once a week, this could lead to over optimisation issues?
On-Page Optimization | | sarahwalsh1 -
Listing all services on one page vs separate pages per service
My company offers several generalized categories with more specific services underneath each category. Currently the way it's structured is if you click "Voice" you get a full description of each voice service we offer. I have a feeling this is shooting us in the foot. Would it be better to have a general overview of the services we offer on the "Voice" page that then links to the specified service? The blurb about the service on the overview page would be unique, not taken from the actual specific service's page.
On-Page Optimization | | AMATechTel0 -
What to do with removed pages and 404 error
I recently removed about 600 'thin' pages from my site which are now showing as 404 errors in WMT as expected. As I understand it I should just let these pages 404 and eventually they'll be dropped from the index. There are no inbound links pointing at them so I don't need to 301 them. They keep appearing in WMT as 404's though so should I just 'mark as fixed' until they stop appearing? Is there any other action I need to take?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Page rank check
Hello everyone, How long should I wait to see if page rank for optimized pages have improved? cheers
On-Page Optimization | | PremioOscar0 -
How do I get other pages to show in SERPs
Why is it that when you google a domain like yahoo.com you sometimes get a main SERP and 6 sub SERPs below it. This concerns the 1st position.
On-Page Optimization | | ribandhull0 -
Creating New Pages Versus Improving Existing Pages
What are some things to consider or things to evaluate when deciding whether you should focus resources on creating new pages (to cover more related topics) versus improving existing pages (adding more useful information, etc.)?
On-Page Optimization | | SparkplugDigital0 -
E-Commerce product pages that have multiple skus with unique pages.
Hey Guys, With the recent farm/panda update from google i'm at a cross roads as to how I should optimize product pages for a project i'm working on for a client. My client sells tires and one particular tire brand can have up to 15 models and each model can have up to 30 sizes. IE: 'Michelin Pilot Sport Cup' comes in 15 different sizes. Each size will have it's unique product page and description bringing me to my question. Should I use the same description on every size? I do plan on writting unique content for each tire model however i'm not sure if I should do it for every size. After all the tire model description is the same for every size, each size doesn't carry any unique characteristics that I can describe. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | MikeDelaCruz770 -
Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?
We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
On-Page Optimization | | smaavie
Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards5