Why is Google ranking irrelevant / not preferred pages for keywords?
-
Over the past few months we have been chipping away at duplicate content issues. We know this is our biggest issue and is working against us. However, it is due to this client also owning the competitor site. Therefore, product merchandise and top level categories are highly similar, including a shared server.
Our rank is suffering major for this, which we understand. However, as we make changes, and I track and perform test searches, the pages that Google ranks for keywords never seems to match or make sense, at all.
For example, I search for "solid scrub tops" and it ranks the "print scrub tops" category.
Or the "Men Clearance" page is ranking for keyword "Women Scrub Pants".
Or, I will search for a specific brand, and it ranks a completely different brand.
Has anyone else seen this behavior with duplicate content issues? Or is it an issue with some other penalty? At this point, our only option is to test something and see what impact it has, but it is difficult to do when keywords do not align with content.
-
OK,
I can't imagine that the duplicate content across the two sites is causing Google to miscategorize the page<>keyword relationship. They deal with that all the time on ecommerce sites that all share product descriptions, and typically have no problem ranking a variety of ecommerce sites for the correct keywords.
Assuming there's no major duplicate content onsite, then my next thought would turn to the actual onpage targeting. EG - is the title tag stuffed or very clearly written, is there more than a few variations of the core keyword on that page in non-duplicated text, are images optimized at a basic level, etc.
Perhaps try adding unique product descriptions to a handful of the pages that Google is having trouble with, and test to see whether that 'resets' how the pages are getting ranked?
The other thing that comes to mind is the custom CMS - that can very easily screw up a bunch of stuff. So - this may or may not be a moot issue by February.
-
Hi Kane,
- What type of e-commerce CMS are they on? - Custom Solution but in middle of migration to magento scheduled for launch in February.
- Are these mis-matched pages always on the same site (and not the competitive site that you mentioned)? - Yes. There is no overlap onto other domain pages, just the domain that appears to have been dinged.
- Are there any canonical tags on the site that are pointing towards the other website? - No.
- Is the content on each page unique for that domain (not including the other domains you mentioned)? - For the most part. We don't duplicate content on same domain, it is really just across domain.
Also, forgot to mention. Bing and Yahoo rank this domain favorably, and is usually on Page 1 for competitive keywords. This appears to be a Google only related issue.
-
Hey Tim,
A few questions for you...
- What type of e-commerce CMS are they on?
- Are these mis-matched pages always on the same site (and not the competitive site that you mentioned)?
- Are there any canonical tags on the site that are pointing towards the other website?
- Is the content on each page unique for that domain (not including the other domains you mentioned)?
-
Update: I tested copying and pasting unique sentences from category pages in Google and everytime it did not return a search result. When I test search using site: example.com, the page is returned.
Could this be a combination of supplemental + panda? We have not received any penalty/message from Google (yet).
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
-
Why is my home page ranking much higher than my collection page?
Hi everyone, Why is my client's home page ranking high for a certain keyword phrase rather than a collection page I have which is well optimised for this keyword? The collection page is on the 10th SERPs page. I did see there were keywords used in the footer of page and the keyword was also used in some intro text on the home page so I removed the keyword from these two places nearly 2 weeks ago and requested google to reindex both the collection page and home page and I've not seen any improvement of the collection page's ranking in SERPs. I also changed the meta description and meta title as the ctr was poor but there wasn''t that many impressions either. It is a competitive keyword organically so maybe the collection page's authority is just not good enough compared to the competitors hence why they are choosing the home page as it has higher page authority however this still is not helpful to searchers who land on home page. Does anyone have any ideas of what else I can do to get google to rank the ocllection page higher for the keyword instead of home page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TZ19820 -
How does google decide who to rank 1 st ?
Let take a medical example. Flu symptoms How does google know who has the best answer ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Our web site lost ranking on google a couple of years ago. We have done lots of work on it but still can not improve our search ranking. Can anyone give us some advise
A couple of years ago the ranking on our site dropped over night. I believe someone working here at the time purchased links about that time. We have been doing lots of work on the site since then to improve it. We can not get our rankings back up on google searches. Can anyone give us some advise about what to do or where to go for some help that we can trust.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD0 -
Google no longer highlighting keyword times in titles within rankings?
Anyone else seeing this? Or is it a test rather than full rollout?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Net66SEO0 -
How to combine 2 pages (same domain) that rank for same keyword?
Hi Mozzers, A quick question. In the last few months I have noticed that for a number of keywords I am having 2 different pages on my domain show up in the SERP. Always right next to each other (for example, position #7 and #8 or #3 and #4). So in the SERP it looks something like: www.mycompetition1.com www.mycompetition2.com www.mywebsite.com/page1.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft
4) www.mywebsite.com**/page2.html**
5) www.mycompetition3.com Now, I actually need both pages since the content on both pages is different - but on the same topic. Both pages have links to them, but page1.html always tends to have more. So, what is the best practice to tell Google that I only want 1 page to rank? Of course, the idea is that by combining the SEO Juice of both pages, I can push my way up to position 2 or 1. Does anybody have any experience in this? Any advice is much appreciated.0 -
Google drop down - keyword gone, why?
Hi guys, i received traffic off a yearly based term, this year for '2013' i noticed it is nowhere near what the yearly term was for the year before. I believe that Google has stopped the yearly term appearing in a drop-down menu from a big volume related term, my question is how do they determine what goes in the drop down menu for related/relevant searches?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Google cached pages and search terms
Here's something I noticed. We have a rank A page and it's ranking 10 on Google search results. When I hover my mouse over our search result, Google gives us a preview, but Google also highlights in red where the search keyword is present on the page. Reviewing our page, even though we have it as the h1 header and intro paragraph, Google is highlighting it half way down the page. Any ideas why? I review rank 1 - 5 and Google highlights the keyword on the intro paragraph and h1 header Have you guys experienced anything like this? It makes me think..Google could be crawling my site and thinking I haven't got it in the h1 or intro paragraph etc.. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Why some category posts not rank well on Google?
Hello! I have a wired issue. Some categories blog post rank well on the Google, but some of them not in the Google's first 10 page. For an instance if my windows computer related post rank well, but Linux computer related posts not rank well on the Google. After published all the posts, I bookmark them 5-8 bookmarking sites (80% of them do-follow). All of these bookmarking sites have PR 3-6. What could be the reason? And how do I improve their ranking? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Godad0