Landing pages "dropping" and being replaced with homepage?
-
Hi Moz People
Happy new year to all, I have an interesting one here.
I have recently been making some landing pages and they have all pretty much hit page 1 for the search terms I've focused on (UK Domain).
Up until this morning the landing page was the 8th organic result on the UK domain. However I have checked this morning and the landing page has dropped below the top 50 and instead our homepage is now showing as the last organic result on page 1.
This is intriguing to me as it has also happened to a couple of other landing pages I have made. Is this due to the relevance being driven higher by the landing pages but overall the homepage is more important to Google? Do you guys think this might start happening to the other pages that I have created? Any input would be appreciated!
( Ill give you links and search terms if you want to take a look for yourselves but I try to refrain from "self advertising" )
Happy Thursday Mozzers !
- Jamie
-
Hi Richard
Good shout, after doing some research it looks as though the page that has now been replaced with the homepage actually got 100% CTR for a search term that isn't really relevant to our service. Only 1 click though.
However the relevant searches did get a good few impressions but didn't get a single click. I guess that is going to have something to do with the sudden change.
Seems a bit harsh to take action with only 1 click ...
-
In cases where there are multiple relevant pages, Google can show different ones. Drill down in Webmaster Tools under search queries and click one of the terms. You will see how often each page is shown as well as how often the results were returned in different positions.
-
Hi Amelia
Interestingly the bounce rate for the page that has dropped is lower than the Homepage. Landing page has a 25% bounce rate while the Homepage is 26.46%.
Average time on page is slightly lower than the Homepage. The only issue here is this was a relatively new landing page and there are older ones that are actually ranking higher with much higher bounce and exit rates. In fact one of the pages that has been ranked #3 for the past month has a bounce rate of over 60%!
The only trend I am noticing is the "time on page" being higher on the landing pages that haven't been effected. I guess this is coming down to a user engagement issue as you suggest. I'll try some more provocative wording to see if that helps although now there will be little to no clicks on the effected landing pages as they have dropped so low!
Thank you for your thoughts
**** UPDATE
After doing a little more comparison it appears that the time on page theory has no weight either as the high ranking pages all have pretty low time on page also... back to the think tank lol.
-
Google 'tests' landing pages quite a lot actually. I'd have a poke around in your analytics programme and see what the bounce rate, time on site, pages per visit for each landing page. If the homepage is performing better in these areas than your landing pages then that may be why this is happening. Also look in your webmaster tools at organic CTR - if the homepage has a higher CTR then Google is assuming it's more relevant for the query.
My hunch is that this is the issue - once you've got the comparison data you can look at ways of making your landing pages better for user engagement.
Good luck,
Amelia
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
-
Using "nofollow" internally can help with crawl budget?
Hello everyone. I was reading this article on semrush.com, published the last year, and I'd like to know your thoughts about it: https://www.semrush.com/blog/does-google-crawl-relnofollow-at-all/ Is that really the case? I thought that Google crawls and "follows" nofollowed tagged links even though doesn't pass any PR to the destination link. If instead Google really doesn't crawl internal links tagged as "nofollow", can that really help with crawl budget?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
DAs dropped for many pages?
I recently noticed that the domain authorities dropped by 5 or 6 points for us and for our competitors. And for many other pages that I check regularly. Was the algorithm changed or is it just me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FCRMediaLietuva0 -
When you add 10.000 pages that have no real intention to rank in the SERP, should you: "follow,noindex" or disallow the whole directory through robots? What is your opinion?
I just want a second opinion 🙂 The customer don't want to loose any internal linkvalue by vaporizing link value though a big amount of internal links. What would you do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zanox0 -
Do I need to use rel="canonical" on pages with no external links?
I know having rel="canonical" for each page on my website is not a bad practice... but how necessary is it for pages that don't have any external links pointing to them? I have my own opinions on this, to be fair - but I'd love to get a consensus before I start trying to customize which URLs have/don't have it included. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netrepid0 -
How use Rel="canonical" for our Website
How is the best way to use Rel="canonical" for our website www.ofertasdeemail.com.br, for we can say goodbye for duplicated pages? I appreciate for every help. I also hope to contribute to the SEOmoz community. Sincerely,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ZZNINTERNETMEDIAGROUP
Amador Goncalves0 -
Rel="external" What affect if any does this have on SEO
When building Anchor text links what affect if any does rel="external" have on inlinks placed to your site. Thanks, Kjay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOKeith0 -
Alexa site title shows as "302 Found" on search result pages
If you search for the site "ixl.com" in Alexa, for some reason, it's showing the site as "302 Found" instead of showing the website name, IXL. If you drill into that, it shows the site as ixl.com, but underneath that, it says "302 Found" again. Every other site I search for seems to show the site's name properly. I have no idea where it's getting this "302 Found" from. Does anyone know how to fix this? Here's a link directly to the search results page: http://www.alexa.com/search?q=ixl.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | john4math0 -
Should "View All Products" be the canonical page?
We currently have "view 12" as the default setting when someone arrives to www.mysite.com/subcategory-page.aspx. We have been advised to change the default to "view all products" and make that the canonical page to ensure all of our products get indexed. My concern is that doing this will increase the page load time and possibly hurt rankings. Does it make sense to change all our our subcategory pages to show all the products when someone visits the page? Most sites seem to have a smaller number of products as the default.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt0