Understanding why our new page doesn't rank. Internal link structure to blame? + understand canonical pages more.
-
Hi guys. Sorry it's an essay...BUT, i think a lot of you will find this an interesting question.
This question is in 2 (related) parts, and I imagine it would be an 'advanced' SEO question. Hoping you guys can help bring some real insight
Always amazed at the quality for this forum/ community.
**Context... **
We had a duplicate content issue caused by this page and it's product permutations, so we placed canonical tags on all the product permutations to solve it. Worked a treat.
However, we now have more **product ranges. **We now sell Diaries, Notebooks & Music books, which are clearly different from one another. So...we've placed canonical tags on all the product permutations leading back to the 'parent' theme.
In other words, all the diary permutations 'lead back' to the diary page. All the notebooks permutations 'lead back' to the main notebook page. So on and so forth.
Make sense so far?
Context end.....
Issue.
Amazingly our Diary page outranks our notebook pagefor the search term 'Design your own Notebook'. The notebook page is well optimised for this search term, and the diary page avoids the word 'notebook' altogether (so no keyword cannibalisation going on).
Possible reason?
Our Diary page has a vast amount of internal links to it throughout our site. The notebook page has only a few. Could this be the issue? If so, what reading/ blogs/ content/ tools would you recommend to help understand and solve this problem? i.e) Better understanding internal link structure for SEO.
2nd part of the question (in the context of internal linking for SEO).
When there are internal links to a page with a conical tag does that 'count' towards the 'parent page', or simply towards that specific page?
I really hope that makes sense. If it's clear as mud just shout.
Isaac.
EDIT: All pages in question have been indexed since we added these changes to the site.
-
Ok yes. Thank you! All makes sense.
Long term we'd love to have people landing on the notebook page for the appropriate search term. It would make a nicer customer journey, and the user would feel like they were 'in the right place'.
But short term as you say, we'll focus on what's ranking and go with that momentum.
Thanks again!
Isaac.
-
Google definitely sees "design your own notebook" and "design your own diary" as two different searches, but Google looks at the "intent" behind a search, not just the keywords behind the search. The "intent" for the "design your own notebook" and "design your own diary" are very similar, both are related to getting a type of custom designed book that you can write in (the Knowledge Graph video discusses this).
Though your diary page may not have any external links pointing to it that's not the only thing google's Algorithm looks for. Maybe your diary page has more user data showing a positive experience behind it? Maybe your link structure has identified it as more important than your notebook page? There really could be a lot of reasons why it's identifying the diary page as better than your notebook page.
I used Moz's Open Site Explorer tool and took a quick look at your different pages and I found that your diary page has a page authority of 21 and your notebook page has a page authority of 1 (which is automatically given no matter what). So there's quite a bit of difference as far as Moz is concerned (and you can pretty confidently say "as far as Google is concerned") between which should be shown.
From a pure marketing perspective (I'm going to take off the SEO hat and just talk about driving results now), you want to look at the end goal. If I was in your shoes, I wouldn't forget about your notebook page (I'd definitely keep working on helping it rank better) but I would focus most of my efforts on maximizing the potential of your page that's ranking. Focus on conversion optimization, get yourself some gold stars using schema/reviews, work on getting more links to that page. It's about using the current momentum you instead of stopping and trying to start from scratch.
Hopefully that helps!
-Jacob
-
Canonical answer makes perfect sense.... thank you so much!
Can I just clarify something?
What do you mean by the diary page has more authority than the notebook page? From back links? Or from internal link structure? (I didn't think we had any back links to these pages you see).
I'm personally convinced that Google sees 'design your own notebook' and 'design your own diary' as significantly different searches. 2 reasons. The huge difference in the SERP results for those two searches, and, that they belong to different groups in Ad words.
One problem I've identified is that we do technically have a keyword cannibalisation issues. We have the word notebook in the 'Diary - Notebook' drop down.
Out side of removing these words, is there anything else we should look at on site to help the notebook page rank for appropriate search terms? Or would you suggest optimising the diary page for both notebook and diaries terms? Perhaps as a more short term solution?
Again, thank you for your response. This is such an empowering place
Isaac.
-
Answer to why diary page is showing up instead of notebook:
I would say that the reason your diary page is showing up in the SERPS (even when people are searching for "notebooks") is because the keywords "notebook" and "diary" are part of the same Knowledge Graph and can sometimes be synonyms.
Beyond this your http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/design-your-own/diaries page seems to have more authority then your notebook page, so it really is "cannibalizing" the "notebook" keyword. It's not a horrible thing to happen, we have the same thing occurring with our website (our "lawn mowing" page cannibalizes our "lawn care" page). Because the "intent" can be very similar for the two keywords our conversion rate doesn't suffer, I'd assume the same (or something similar) for yours.
Answer to the canonical tag/internal linking situation:
When you place a canonical tag on a page you're directing google's crawlers to identify it the same as the page it's pointing to. So if Google's algorithm is identifying your internal linking as a positive it will count towards the page your canonical tag is pointing to. Here's a pretty solid article on it (link).
Hopefully that helps.
-Jacob
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
-
Making Shopify URL's Simpler - Losing the words 'collection', 'product' and 'page' in a Shopify store URL. Any advice?
Hi Mozers! I have a Shopify store (of which there are many advantages) however one big SEO disadvantage, is that my URL structures contravene all Moz advice on dynamic URL structure and whats more I am reminded about this every week when I have a Moz site crawl and I have a batch of URL's that are longe than the 75 characters. A Shopify URL will run www.domain name.com/collections/collection-name/product/product-name. According to advice a it should be www.domain name.com/collection-name/product-name - Don't even get started on sub-collections! I sell portfolio books, album etc and keepsake memory boxes (so long keywords) AND, I have a long(ish) business name. So, For user experience and keyword length, do I just ignore trying to achieve a dynamic URL under 75 characters? When I have asked Shopify, the say their URL's are an integral part of the "Ruby on Rails" system, so nothing can be done Or can it ??? I can't be the only Moz member with this issue can I ??
On-Page Optimization | | nick_HandCo0 -
Should you 301, 302, or rel=canonical private pages?
What should you do with private 'logged in' pages from a seo perspective? They're not visible to crawlers and shouldn't be indexed, so what is best practice? Believe it or not, we have found quite a few back links to private pages and want to get the ranking benefit from them without them being indexed. Eg: http://twiends.com/settings (Only logged in user can see the page) 302 them: We can redirect users/crawlers temporarily, but I believe this is not ideal from a seo perspective? Do we lose the link juice to this page? 301 them: We can do a permanent redirect with a short cache time. We preserve most link juice now, but we probably mess up the users browser. Users trying to reach a private page while logged out may have issues reaching it after logged in. **Serve another page with rel=canonical tag: **We could serve back the home page without changing the URL. We use a canonical tag to tell the crawlers that it's a duplicate of the home page. We keep most of the link juice, and the browser is unaffected. Yes, a user might share that different URL now, but its unlikely. We've been doing 302's up until now, now we're testing the third option. How do others solve this problem? Is there a problem with it? Any advice appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | dsumter0 -
Do a bunch of footer internal links help or hurt?
We are an ecommerce site... In days gone by, having a bunch of footer links with your top products / categories was a good idea - as it created a ton of internal links to these products. Now, I am hearing that those links "dilute" the value of our other links on a page - and essentially, there is more harm than good from these. Does anyone know what I am talking about (the olds days) and should we still be doing this? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Ted_Cullen0 -
On page links
Hi I am really intrigued by Bloomberg strategy. if you look at their article pages they are full with internal links done with what I assume to be an automated process (too many pages to be done manually). it seems to work for them. I would love to hear your opinions.
On-Page Optimization | | ciznerguy
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-26/uber-said-close-to-raising-funding-at-up-to-40b-value.html0 -
Using phrases like 'NO 1' or 'Best' int he title tag
Hi All, Quick question - is it illegal, against any rule etc to use phrases such as 'The No 1 rest of the title tag | Brand Name' on a site?
On-Page Optimization | | Webrevolve0 -
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 -
Is reported duplication on the pages or their canonical pages?
There are several sections getting flagged for duplication on one of our sites: http://mysite.com/section-1/?something=X&confirmed=true
On-Page Optimization | | Safelincs
http://mysite.com/section-2/?something=X&confirmed=true
http://mysite.com/section-3/?something=X&confirmed=true Each of the above are showing as having duplicates of the other sections. Indeed, these pages are exactly the same (it's just an SMS confirmation page you enter your code in), however, they all have canonical links back to the section (without the query string), i.e. section-1, section-2 and section-3 respectively. These three sections have unique content and aren't flagged up for duplications themselves, so my questions are: Are the pages with the query strings the duplicates, and if so why are the canonical links being ignored? or Are the canonical pages without the query strings the duplicates, and if so why don't they appear as URLs in their own right in the duplicate content report? I am guessing it's the former, but I can't figure out why it would ignore the canonical links. Any ideas? Thanks0 -
Does Too Many On-Page Links on a Page Really Matters?
Does Too Many On-Page Links on a Page Really Matters? Especially if they are pointing to internal page?
On-Page Optimization | | AppleCapitalGroup1