Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Help! The website ranks fine but one of my web pages simply won't rank on Google!!!
-
One of our web pages will not rank on Google. The website as a whole ranks fine except just one section...We have tested and it looks fine...Google can crawl the page no problem. There are no spurious redirects in place. The content is fine. There is no duplicate page content issue. The page has a dozen product images (photos) but the load time of the page is absolutely fine. We have the submitted the page via webmaster and its fine. It gets listed but then a few hours later disappears!!! The site has not been penalised as we get good rankings with other pages. Can anyone help? Know about this problem?
-
Don't forget that every keyword is different - how you rank depends on what you're doing compared to other sites targeting that term, not just what you're doing on your own site. So some keywords just take a larger, higher-authority link profile to rank for than others. A good place to start with getting links for that page would be to look at the backlinks that other pages that rank for that term have - you may be able to get some links from the same or similar sites.
-
Thanks again!!!
We have just implemented a site footer with keyword targeting the relevant pages. I thought this alone - along with the top navigation, copy (which is 265 words...) would give google enough guidance. But its not!! External links we have just started to do - but I admit - really just started. I was trying in desperation to get the pages right first
Do you think more link would help? We will try adding more copy...... The weird thing is - other pages on the site rank fine - including the homepage for the right keywords!!! -
Ah OK, thanks for the clarification!
That problem, to me, sounds like you need some links! In general when Google is ranking your home page for a term, instead of the page that is actually about that term, it's because they recognize that your site has some topical relevance for that term, but the individual page doesn't seem that important based on how many links are pointing to it. Are there ways you can flow some additional internal link juice to that page? Are there sites that are linking to your home page right now that are very closely related to the topic of the page in question, that you could ask to point to that page instead? Are there topically-related sites that don't link to that page right now that you could possibly get a link from? All of these will beef up your page authority, which should help.
In terms of your copy being too far down on the page - if you don't think it will negatively impact your user experience, you could try moving it up, or integrating it into the section with the images, but I don't know how much that will help. You also may need more copy on the page - if your page is 300 lines of code long, and only 5 of those lines are unique copy, it's hard to send a strong enough signal of relevance. Can you expand what you say on the page to make it a better resource on the topic at hand?
-
Thanks for the response! The right pages are not showing for the targeted keywords. The homepage is being ranked instead. Yet the homepage doesn't have the keywords represented on it. Google is taking the Dmoz description of the homepage and is using that to rank (for the targeted keywords)???
The pages do show on Google site: search and they do have images on them. Each page has six images on them. We have ensured the size of the images are ok. The copy on the page is at the bottom after the images - could this be an issue?
I have checked on Screaming Frog - nothing in particular stands out.
i know how we can stop google reading dmoz description which will be implemented....but I don't think this will resolve the issue....?
We have noticed - very strangely - the right page gets ranked - then google changes to the homepage????
Any suggestions... It's baffling me...

-
Is the problem that the page isn't appearing in the index, or that it isn't ranking for its target terms?
If the page has a lot of images but doesn't otherwise have much copy, it may be that Google is determining it to be too similar to other pages on your site and so is not displaying it. If it's not being indexed at all (doesn't show up in a site: search or when you search for a block of copy in quotations), double-check that your robots.txt isn't blocking it and that you don't have a meta robots noindex tag on the page. The suggestion of running Screaming Frog on your site to make sure a crawler can find the page is a good one - Screaming Frog will also tell you if the page is returning a weird HTTP status or is blocked by robots.
-
First think i would do is to check the url with Screaming Frog SEO Spider, anyway a link would be really helpful

-
Are you able to share a link to the page in question?
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
-
If a page ranks in the wrong country and is redirected, does that problem pass to the new page?
Hi guys, I'm having a weird problem: A new multilingual site was launched about 2 months ago. It has correct hreflang tags and Geo targetting in GSC for every language version. We redirected some relevant pages (with good PA) from another website of our client's. It turned out that the pages were not ranking in the correct country markets (for example, the en-gb page ranking in the USA). The pages from our site seem to have the same problem. Do you think they inherited it due to the redirects? Is it possible that Google will sort things out over some time, given the fact that the new pages have correct hreflangs? Is there stuff we could do to help ranking in the correct country markets?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ParisChildress1 -
Why some websites can rank the keywords they don't have in the page?
Hello guys, Yesterday, I used SEMrush to search for the keyword "branding agency" to see the SERP. The Liquidagency ranks 5th on the first page. So I went to their homepage but saw no exact keywords "branding agency", even in the page source. Also, I didn't see "branding agency" as a top anchor text in the external links to the page (from the report of SEMrush). I am an SEO newbie, can someone explain this to me, please? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Raymondlee0 -
Google doesn't index image slideshow
Hi, My articles are indexed and images (full size) via a meta in the body also. But, the images in the slideshow are not indexed, have you any idea? A problem with the JS Example : http://www.parismatch.com/People/Television/Sport-a-la-tele-les-femmes-a-l-abordage-962989 Thank you in advance Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Julien.Ferras0 -
Location Pages On Website vs Landing pages
We have been having a terrible time in the local search results for 20 + locations. I have Places set up and all, but we decided to create location pages on our sites for each location - brief description and content optimized for our main service. The path would be something like .com/location/example. One option that has came up in question is to create landing pages / "mini websites" that would probably be location-example.url.com. I believe that the latter option, mini sites for each location, would be a bad idea as those kinds of tactics were once spammy in the past. What are are your thoughts and and resources so I can convince my team on the best practice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KJ-Rodgers0 -
Google indexed wrong pages of my website.
When I google site:www.ayurjeewan.com, after 8 pages, google shows Slider and shop pages. Which I don't want to be indexed. How can I get rid of these pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
What Happens If a Hreflang Sitemap Doesn't Include Every Language for Missing Translated Pages?
As we are building a hreflang sitemap for a client, we are correctly implementing the tag across 5 different languages including English. However, the News and Events section was never translated into any of the other four languages. There are also a few pages that were translated into some but not all of the 4 languages. Is it good practice to still list out the individual non-translated pages like on a regular sitemap without a hreflang tag? Should the hreflang sitemap include the hreflang tag with pages that are missing a few language translations (when one or two language translations may be missing)? We are uncertain if this inconsistency would create a problem and we would like some feedback before pushing the hreflang sitemap live.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler0 -
My website hasn't been cached for over a month. Can anyone tell me why?
I have been working on an eCommerce site www.fuchia.co.uk. I have asked an earlier question about how to get it working and ranking and I took on board what people said (such as optimising product pages etc...) and I think i'm getting there. The problem I have now is that Google hasn't indexed my site in over a month and the homepage cache is 404'ing when I check it on Google. At the moment there is a problem with the site being live for both WWW and non-WWW versions, i have told google in Webmaster what preferred domain to use and will also be getting developers to do 301 to the preferred domain. Would this be the problem stopping Google properly indexing me? also I'm only having around 30 pages of 137 indexed from the last crawl. Can anyone tell me or suggest why my site hasn't been indexed in such a long time? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOAndy0 -
Website stuck on the second page
Hi there Can you please help me. I did some link building and worked with website last couple of months and rank got better but all keywords are on the second page, some of them are 11th and 12th. Is there anything I did wrong and google dont allow the website on the first page? Or should I just go on. It just looks strange keywords are on the second page for 2 weeks and not going to the first page for any single day. The website is quite old, around 10 years. Anyone knows what it is or where I can read about it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fleetway0