Two points of view on optimizing our search pages. What should we go with?
-
So we're in the process of going back and forth with our designer about optimizing our search results, which also doubles as a landing page for visitors searching with keywords like "Meeting Rooms Seattle" and "Seattle Meeting Spaces" We're on the front page in the SERPs, but still have a way to go.
This is our current page: http://www.evenues.com/Meeting-Spaces/Seattle/Washington
And this is something we've proposed for our designer to work with: http://imgur.com/JU1zg
There search page text and links in the top left corner were to be placed for onsite SEO purposes ie we have no real text/content on the page for relevancy.
We're currently in the process of writing the copy for each city on the search pages.
Our designer made this argument:
After giving it some thought I came to the conclusion that we may want to take a step back, and focus on the overall goal of this exercise.
From what I have gathered, you would like to generate more click-throus and improve SEO, right?
In my opinion, adding all of the provided copy and the link farm to the search results page would not necessarily help that. In fact, I think it would actually push the actual results way down. The content you provided me is more suited for a landing page, not a search results page (that is taking into consideration that you want similar content for other locations).
Redfin has done a ton of great SEO work on their site. Using them as an example, if you go to Redfin.com, you will find tiny links in the footer that say "home for sale in seattle" etc.
If you click on those, it puts you on a page like this: http://www.redfin.com/cities/1/seattle?src=homepage and then from there you can click to a neighborhood page like this: http://www.redfin.com/city/1387/WA/Bellevue.
I would recommend that we create a set of location pages with the content the client is asking for, that are specifically optimized for SEO, and provide links in the footer of the site to get to those pages. Then the links on the new landing pages would land the user on the search results page.
By keeping two different pages for two different purposes separate would help keep content more organized and help user find specific info they are looking for.
As a quick fix we could put one line of text under the H1 text on search results as well, maybe with a strong tag.
By doing that we will be able to keep the page looking clean and easy to navigate through.
Anyways, that's just my two cents.
Any ideas/input on this?
-
I like that idea! Thanks!
-
If users have to click from the landing page to the search results page to see the listings, that's an extra click = fewer people seeing the search results.
You could have two very similar pages - one with the extra text and images, and one without. Add a canonical tag to the one without so all the link juice goes to the one with the extra text and images.
-
Hi Adam,
Thanks a lot for your detailed reply!
We certainly only want to optimize only one page for similar terms. To be more clear, perhaps we should have a landing page with larger pictures/more text optimized for those terms that link to a search page that we don't care about getting indexed? I'm not sure if we have the resources to do this at this time however.
Very helpful, thanks! I'll pass this on to our CEO
Kenji
-
Here are my thoughts:
- I would not use http://www.redfin.com/cities/1/seattle?src=homepage as a template for a good page to emulate - it's just a page with a bunch of links. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future Google decides that page is not providing value to the user.
- You probably want to optimize a single page for "Meeting Rooms Seattle" and "Seattle Meeting Spaces"
- You should probably send users who search for "Meeting Rooms Seattle" and "Seattle Meeting Spaces" to the same page, too. I see no reason to have them see two different pages for those queries.
- Be wary of creating separate pages for SEO purposes. If you have an existing page for Seattle that most users see, there is no reason to create a second page for SEO. In fact, it could hurt you - having two pages for the same basic purpose (for users to see seattle meeting rooms) will divide your social likes/shares and organic backlinks among two pages. (On the flip side, you could work on getting both pages ranked, but I don't think that is what you were asking about...)
- If you don't want your text content pushing the listings down the page, put your textual content on the right side of the page or even at the bottom, like Zappos does.
Hope these are helpful.
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
-
Many of my pages are showing up as 4xx errors because they require a login/subscription to view. How can I fix this?
Should these pages be redirecting to a login page? Or does there need to be something other than an Access Denied message? I feel like these are bringing the overall site score down.
On-Page Optimization | | CaraMc0 -
Home page cannibal
I was wondering if others had the same problem I have. It appears Google loves that home page too much and I'm having a difficult time getting it to rank the page I really want. And that happens if a keyword I want to rank for only appears on the home page one time with a keyword density of .1%. Take vanillaqueen.com for example. The home page ranks on the first page for "bulk vanilla beans" and not http://vanillaqueen.com/shop/category/vanilla-beans/ or http://vanillaqueen.com/five-reasons-why-buying-bulk-vanilla-makes-good-sense/ And I'll add another one that I recently took on. This is a personal injury attorney in a large city so there is a ton of competition who have been doing SEO for a very long time. (Fortunately he also does business and civil litigation law to keep the business going). Last month, according to webmaster tools, he got a couple of clicks (hey, it's something!) on "personal injury attorney [his city]" on page 2 in the SERPS, but it was his home page. http://bit.ly/1Gvumlm **In this case I don't mind people landing on the home page, but does the fact that another page that is much better optimized for those keywords indicate a penalty on that page? And is his rank lower because the better page is not ranking and Google has to find the next best thing in the home page? ** Has anyone else experienced that and what have you done to get Google to not go home? P.S. The law site is a huge challenge because of the competition. Any help you pros out there can offer to get this underdog out of hiding will be much appreciated. We're starting a smart, strategic content marketing plan now that I'm very excited about.
On-Page Optimization | | katandmouse1 -
Impact of number of outgoing links on Page Rank of an optimized page?
What is the current best practice on preferred number of outbound links on a page you are trying to rank with: According to online resources form a pure page rank perspective a high number of outbound follow links can have a negative impact not only on child pages but also the page itself
On-Page Optimization | | thomaspro
http://pr.efactory.de/e-outbound-links.shtml Other resources suggest that particularly placing high quality outbound links on a page (nofollow) increases the trust and authority of a page Are there any other elements to keep in mind? Is the best practice to avoid any follow links on a page you want to rank well in Google for? Thanks /T0 -
If Two Internal Pages Rank for a Given Keyword, Are They Competing?
Let's say I'm a house painter working out of offices in Boston and Springfield. When I search for "Boston house painter" or "Massachusetts house painter," both my homepage and my Boston office page come up #8 and #9. That's good, sorta (2 results on first page), but I'd trade that scenario for a single result in the top 3. How likely is it that these two page are competing? If I removed the Boston page, would the homepage rank better? Or should I be happy I have two pages turning up the the first SERP? Any thoughts here appreciated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | wparsons0 -
Optimizing for two keywords
Hi there, my question is: I need to optimze two pages related to almost the same concept but different orientations. One keyword is "emocional intelligence development" and the other word is "emocional intelligence workshops" I can't mix the two pages in one unique page due to web strucutre reasons. Is it possible to optimize each web for each keyword independently although they have the concept emotional intelligence in common? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
Hi, I did a SEOmoz campaign and got results today, One of the results is Too "Many On-Page Links" when i am drilling down, i see that that's include inside links. for example, i sale food, i have my main department window - inside i have 30 products - each product is linked to a detailed page about the product. so automatically i have 30 links - not including all the others in this page, and i easily get over 100 and even sometimes 200 is this a big issue? does it damages my SEO? If yes, is there a way to write the HTML in a way that internal links like that wont be counted? Thank you SEOWiseUs
On-Page Optimization | | iivgi0 -
How many keywords max can I optimize each page for?
I don't want to over optimize by doing 1 keyword per 1 page, but then if I do more, seomoz on-page tool report doesn't give an A grade for each keyword I optimize. I usually optimize for max 3 keywords that are very closely related, meaning they use the same words. Ex. dentist los angeles, los angeles dentist, dentist in los angeles Am I on the right track or what's your recommendation? Should I create different landing pages for each keyword?
On-Page Optimization | | sub90900 -
Better page optimization for specific locations
I have a client that gets great ranking in a certain city mainly because that is their main corporate office and the address and city name is all over the place in their content. I am about to embark on getting them higher ranking in other cities as well and am looking for the best approach to make that possible. My thoughts... 1- create seperate content for the other locations, but the body information would probably end up looking duplicate, but I could be more specific with title, description and content realting to that specific city. 2- add the additional cities to the current content??? Need some expert advice. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | brantwadz0