Google Is Ranking the Wrong Page
-
Howdy Folks-
I have a case where Google is ranking the wrong page for a couple of different keywords.
The home page is: http://healthtn.com
Most notably, we're trying to optimize the home page for "Tennessee Health Insurance" but the below page is what continually ranks for it, and does so very poorly. We used to be page two with the home page, now we are page four and it ranks the following page.
http://healthtn.com/tennessee/health-insurance/student
I have started directing our Internal Linking to reflect the correct anchor text but succeeded in losing ranking for the term, but am still ranking the wrong page.
Any thoughts or help would be much appreciated!
-
Thanks for the help sir, I just dropped a link into the misranked page back to the home page. I haven't been able to do any of the other suggestions yet, but it's a start. Thank you!
-
Thanks for the actionable advice, really helpful!
I went back in and made some of the changes you suggested. It was helpful to revisit some of those points. We've also been attempting too (and succeeded in) ranking for "Health Insurance Alternatives in Tennessee" so some of the meta real estate had been dedicated to that. But I tweaked some things to try to do both.
I've struggled with the amount of content on the home page. The student page that is ranking for "Tennessee Health Insurance", only has it in the keyword in the content twice, but it does have over 1800 words and lots of Heath Insurance and Tennessee references. The home page is designed to have little content on it, as many of them are... If I drop Tennessee Health Insurance a few more times in the 200 ish words on the home page, it may start to get stuffy?
Know anyway around low word counts on the home page?
As for the title, The page is called home for menu purposes, I don't have full control over the design and that is the way the site designer designed it. Not sure if I can do much there...but I agree it is a vital piece of on page ranking options.
-
Looking through your home page's source code, I see that the keyword has been incorporate into the copy once or twice, the meta description and an image alt tag. That's a good start.
I would also incorporate "Tennessee health insurance" into the home page's meta title and h1 header. These are two fairly important hotspots with onsite optimization.
I would also try to naturally incorporate the keyword 1 or 2 more times within the home page's content. Lastly, I recommend brushing up on Chapter 4 of Moz's SEO Guide: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development
-
My advice is to redevelop the content of the ideal page and make it more keyword specific. Give internal link from the page which is ranking to the page which you ideally want it to rank.
Give another link to your site structure and see if you need any improvement on that level.
Also build some good links with anchor text that target your keyword and instead of the home page link should go back to that particular page.
Hope this helps!
-
Hey, thanks for the help!
After spidering the site again I noticed the primary anchor text being directed to http://healthtn.com is "Home" as it's the home page menu Bar. Is there any way to getting around having 100+ links with "home" in the anchor text? I am fairly certain I want to have a link back to the homepage from every internal page for a Quality User Experience?
-
Hi there,
Here are some of the most common reasons for search engines to rank a less relevant page above a more relevant one.
Internal Anchor Text .
External Link Bias
Link Authority & Importance Metrics
On-Page Optimization
Improper Redirects
Topic Modeling / Content Relevance IssuesYou can find out more details right here moz.com/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions
Hope it helps you.
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 Indexing Wrong Title
Hey guys ! I have a wordpress website and also yoast seo plugin . I've set up a meta title which is : TV Online | Assistir Filmes| Notícias | Futebol |GogsTV . (I checked on some free tools to see , and they also show up this) but .... google is showing this : GogsTV: TV Online | Assistir Filmes| Notícias | Futebol . Seems they are trying to show my brand name first instead of my main keyword . I'm not sure why it doesnt indexes as i want ... Does anybody know how can i fix this . Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | tiagosimk0 -
Will pushing a visitor to a conversion page hosted on a 3rd-party domain hurt the landing page ranking
Had an interesting question from a client. The client has a page that is optimized for a specific term. The goal of the page is to push users to sign-up for a trial. The trial registration (conversion) page is hosted by a third-party. Will pushing users to the conversion page cannibalize the SEO authority of the landing page. My reflexive answer is to say no, but now am not so sure.
On-Page Optimization | | infoblue0 -
Why am I ranking on both Bing and Yahoo and yet the rankings are declining on Google
I'm seeing ranking go up on both Bing and Yahoo and yet they are going down on Google. I did see a bunch of spammy links show up about a month ago but have managed to get all those taken down although did not get any warnings from Google in Webmaster tools about them was more of a preemptive measure. The site in question. http://www.gocitrusnow.com
On-Page Optimization | | mwaters19790 -
Search Pages outranking Product Pages
A lot of the results seen in the search engines for our site are pages from our search results on our site, i.e. Widgets | Search Results This has happened over time and wasn't intentional, but in many cases we see our search results pages appearing over our actual product pages in search, which isn't ideal. Simply blocking indexing of these pages via robots wouldn't be ideal, at least all at once as we would have that period of time where those Search Results pages would be offline and our product pages would still be at the back of ranking. Any ideas on a strategy to replace these Search Results with the actual products in a way that won't hurt us too bad during the transition? Or a way to make the actual product pages rank above the search results? Currently, it is often the opposite. Thanks! Craig
On-Page Optimization | | TheCraig0 -
Why don't all my pages have On Page Optimization Reports
Apologies if this question has been asked a million times, but I can't find it. I have 35 pages, yet only 5 of them have generated On Page Optimization Reports. I know I can create them manually, but wondered if I've done something incorrectly? Iain.
On-Page Optimization | | iainmoran0 -
"City page" links in footer of home page: Spammy?
Is listing a bunch of links to city pages in the footer of a home page considered "spammy" to Google? (ie- Chicago Alarms, Illinois Alarms, Naperville Alarms, etc.) What are the negative affects this might have on ranking, if any?
On-Page Optimization | | MChi0 -
Pages not cached
Sorry for all the questions. I have dozens of article pages that are not cached by google. How can I get them cached?
On-Page Optimization | | azguy0 -
Has anyone noticed a big delta between Google and Bing rankings? For example, we rank favorably in Google, but not so favorably in Bing. Are there different tactics I should use to rank better in Bing?
An example is in Google, we currently rank #1 & #2 for "yoga pants" for Athleta and Old Navy. In Bing, I'm on page 2. Any thoughts here?
On-Page Optimization | | kpr0