Is site page structure hurting its chances to rank?
-
I have a client that sells geotextiles and related products.
None of his keywords gets a lot of traffic google as it is a very B2B niche specific industry.
For instance, and these numbers are off the top of my head
The phrase geotextiles may get 80 searches a month and we have a domain.com/geotextiles.php page
Then there are woven and nonwoven geotextiles which may get 30 searches a month
We too have a domain.com/nonwoven-geotextiles.php and etc
It then goes even further and has things like slit film series non woven /woven and we have subpages from there.
To me, I feel as if we need to merge all of these pages to just a singular geotextile page with headers for woven and nonwoven and product info for the sub branches of those two. I feel as if we are basically competing for the same phrase again and again and again for very small amounts of traffic.
Thoughts?
-
If Google isn't picking the "right page," then either 1) your pages aren't optimized well enough or 2) it's too niche and Google doesn't know what it's looking at. For the latter, you could combine higher categories and then have customer specify what they want when they buy. Example: If you were selling shirts, you wouldn't have separate pages for every size variation in every color, you'd just have one page about that shirt and then let the customer select color and size.
-
That would be correct if we could rank. But almost every single one of these pages is targeting "geotextile" in some form.
Geotextile fabrics
nonwoven geotextile fabrics
woven geotextile fabrics
slit film woven geotextile fabrics
etc
And Google is not picking the right page to rank. It will show a super inner category to rank for the top-most level keyword search. To me it is just us competing against ourselves for almost every keywords. None of these phrases have any variety in them. It makes more sense to target the upper level on one page and to have headers for these smaller things that have no additional searches or keyword variety
-
Since you're so niche, volume of traffic probably is less concerning as not that many people are looking for it. I'd look more into the conversion rates on those pages. Are those customers finding what they need and buying off the page? Why or why not? For example, if you're only getting 80 visits per month, but 70% of that traffic is converting and they're buying thousands of dollars worth of product, you're doing something right.
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
-
404 Pages. Can I change it to do this without getting penalized ? I want to lower our bounce rate from these pages to encourage the user to continue on the site
Hi All, We have been streaming our site and got rid of thousands of pages for redundant locations (Basically these used to be virtual locations where we didn't have a depot although we did deliver there and most of them was duplicate/thin content etc ). Most of them have little if any link value and I didn't want to 301 all of them as we already have quite a few 301's already We currently display a 404 page but I want to improve on this. Current 404 page is - http://goo.gl/rFRNMt I can get my developer to change it, so it will still be a 404 page but the user will see the relevant category page instead ? So it will look like this - http://goo.gl/Rc8YP8 . We could also use Java script to show the location name etc... Would be be okay ? or would google see this as cheating. basically I want to lower our bounce rates from these pages but still be attractive enough for the user to continue in the site and not go away. If this is not a good idea, then any recommendations on improving our current 404 would be greatly appreciated. thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Ranking of Travel Sites in SERPs
Hello, I have noticed that some travel sites rank for almost all the keywords but when I click the page, it has no relevant content and often no content at all. I remember Google once updated its algorithm to do away with such sites but I still found some. The question is - if they don't have relevant content or if they don't have content at all, how do they even rank? Secondly, how come they have pages for all keyword combination? How is this achieved? Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IM_Learner0 -
Webmaster Tools HTML Improvements Page Blank / Site Not Ranking Well
I have an ecommerce site that is not ranking well currently. It has about 1,000 pages indexed in Google but very few appear to be ranking. I normally find issues in Webmaster Tools HTML Improvements but for some reason it does not see a problem with the site. There are problems, trust me. Moz shows many issues. Google nothing! There is a problem somewhere but I am not seeing it. Why are HTML Improvements blank and the site not ranking? Am I in the dreaded sandbox? Any ideas? Sean We didn't detect any content issues with your site. As we crawl your site, we check it to detect any potential issues with content on your pages, including duplicate, missing, or problematic title tags or meta descriptions. These issues won't prevent your site from appearing in Google search results, but paying attention to them can provide Google with more information and even help drive traffic to your site. For example, title and meta description text can appear in search results, and useful, descriptive text is more likely to be clicked on by users.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | optin0 -
Huge drop in rankings for specialist life insurance site
I work with a site who specialise in life insurance for people with pre-existing medical conditions - http://goo.gl/Drwre6. The site has ranked really well historically, but was hit hard on 16th June when we saw an almost 100% drop in rankings overnight. We picked up on quite a few issues straight away and rectified these. A list of steps we've taken so far are below: removed CSS & JS files from robots.txt changed hosting provider back, as it had recently been moved somewhere new updated copy on main landing pages to remove small amounts that were duplicated requested removal of some suspicious looking backlinks and submitted a disavow found and removed a test site that was live and indexable found an external site that had scraped copy from our site - requested removal (this site is no longer live) cleaned up any 404 and ensured all redirects are working correctly updated the diabetes page to include more valuable info - including linking out to authority sites After taking all these steps, we have still seen no improvement. It could be that Google just hasn't yet re-crawled the site to take the changes into account...? We're aware of one other site in our industry that has noticed a drop in rankings in the last couple of months, but a number of our competitors are still ranking well for our target terms. We wonder if the site was caught up in the Payday Loans update, as the timings almost line up. Other sites with spammy medical content seem to have been hit, so we wonder if the "medical" type content on our site could have been penalised? Incredibly frustrating if so, as it's a valid, genuine service being offered! Really at a bit of a loss as to what to do next, so any help would be hugely appreciated! Katie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Digirank0 -
How to combine 2 pages (same domain) that rank for same keyword?
Hi Mozzers, A quick question. In the last few months I have noticed that for a number of keywords I am having 2 different pages on my domain show up in the SERP. Always right next to each other (for example, position #7 and #8 or #3 and #4). So in the SERP it looks something like: www.mycompetition1.com www.mycompetition2.com www.mywebsite.com/page1.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft
4) www.mywebsite.com**/page2.html**
5) www.mycompetition3.com Now, I actually need both pages since the content on both pages is different - but on the same topic. Both pages have links to them, but page1.html always tends to have more. So, what is the best practice to tell Google that I only want 1 page to rank? Of course, the idea is that by combining the SEO Juice of both pages, I can push my way up to position 2 or 1. Does anybody have any experience in this? Any advice is much appreciated.0 -
Site Structure Question
Hi All, Got a question about site structure, I currently have a website where everything is hosted on the root of the domain. See example below: site.com/men site.com/men-shorts site.com/men-shorts-[product name] I want to change the structure to site.com/men/shorts/[product-name] I have asked a couple of SEOs and some agree with me that the structure needs to be changed and some say that as long as I dictate the structure with internal links and breadcrumbs the URL structure doesn't matter... What do you guys think? Many thanks, Carlos
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
Ranking Ranking Factors!
When you look at the keyword analysis, you see the following ranking criteria: - | Page Authority | Page Linking Root Domains | Domain Authority | Root Domain Linking Root Domains | How do you rank the importance of each of these factors from 1-4? For example, PA, PLRD, RDLRD, DA Please explain. How many of these factors do you normally need to get within top 5?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
What is the best choise for seasonal pages that rank after the season is over?
Hello and thank you for your attention. I am optimizing a travel website and I have a few problems. Every time I get a good rank for a particular keyword the owners take down the page because the offer is over. They also take down the category because the season is over. That is why I loose all the rankings. What is the best option in this cases and how should I guide the whole team that putts offers and new categories on the website? Would a Static sitemap be enough - I do not know what to do as moving a category from the main menu to a sitemap - another page on the website would result in loosing authority - and SERP. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A.Popoviciu0