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
-
Unsolved Should I combine pages?
Hi, Im not sure of the correct route to take here... We are a training provider and I manage the website. The main course offered is the transport manager CPC. Currently, I have a "catch all" landing page which links to each different course option: Landing page > Classroom Online Self study Distance learning The main keyword revolves around "transport manager cpc" I want searchers to land on the online page is they search "online transport manager CPC" for example but I think its confusing Google. I'm wondering if I should de-index the store pages (although some perform very well) and increase the content on the main landing page to rank for every related keyword on that page. Initially, I wanted to devalue the landing page in favor of the store pages but I'm unsure if that's the right way to go. I've stripped out the bulk of the keywords and content and shifted it to each individual page. but as above, Im now unsure if that's the right route to take. Any help would be greatly appreciated 👍 Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | dunbavand
Rich0 -
Too many links per page? Double navigation on every page...
I have a client with navigation across the top of each page plus the same nav links in a sidebar on every page. Can that duplication (or the sheer number of links) on each page have a negative ranking factor?
On-Page Optimization | | brm20170 -
How to rank in Google during domain name search?
We have received one requirement for this website. http://www.coldcasebeer.com/ We would like to rank in Google during domain name search. If we are going to search following search terms in Google then We are not able to see this domain on first page of Google search result. cold case beer coldcasebeer We have done quick research on this issue. And, We have decided to implement following tasks to make it happen.But, We are quite excited to read certain inputs on this question from experts! 1. Upload default Robots.txt file 2. Verify website on Google webmaster tools 3. Set up USA region on Google webmaster tools 4. Submit Google crawl request on Google webmaster tools 5. Title tag and Meta description optimization for all pages (There are 5 pages only on website) 6. Audit Google local listing 7. Develop quality links with domain name
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit0 -
Home page and category page target same keyword
Hi there, Several of our websites have a common problem - our main target keyword for the homepage is also the name of a product category we have within the website. There are seemingly two solutions to this problem, both of which not ideal: Do not target the keyword with the homepage. However, the homepage has the most authority and is our best shot at getting ranked for the main keyword. Reword and "de-optimise" the category page, so it doesn't target the keyword. This doesn't work well from UX point of view as the category needs to describe what it is and enable visitors to navigate to it. Anybody else gone through a similar conundrum? How did you end up going about it? Thanks Julian
On-Page Optimization | | tprg0 -
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 -
Why is the seomoz showing it crawled 3 pages when i only have 2 pages?
I had seomoz crawl my site. I only have 2 pages. The site url is www.autoinsurancefremontca.com.
On-Page Optimization | | Greenpeak0 -
How to design a site map page for users (not for Google)
I would like to design a site map for my visitors so they can have a quick view on the whole content of the website. 2 questions : 1 - is this kind of site map can help in terms of SEO ? 2 - if so, what are the best practices to design it ? Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | betadvisor0 -
Authority of a page
What factors contribute towards the authority of a page ? No. of links to a page ?
On-Page Optimization | | seoug_20050