Can we talk a bit more about cannibalisation? Will Google pick one page and disregard others.

[isaac663]

Hi all.

I work for an e-commerce site called TOAD Diaries and we've been building some landing pages recently.  Our most generic page was for '2017 Diaries'.  Take a look here.

Initial results are encouraging as this page is ranking top page for a lot of 'long tail' search queries, e.g) '2017 diaries a4', '2017 diaries a5', '2017 diaries week to view' etc.

Interesting it doesn't even rank top 50 for the 'head term'... '2017 diaries'.  **And our home page outranks it for this search term.  **Yet it seems clear that this page is considered relevant and quality by Google it ranks just fine for the long tails.

Question:  Does this mean Google 'chosen' our home page over the 2017-page landing page?  And that's why the 2017-page effectively doesn't rank for it's 'head term'?  (I can't see this as many times a website will rank multiple times such as amazon)

But any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Also, what would you do in this scenario?  Work on home-page to try to push it up for that term and not worry about the landing page?

Any suggestions or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Hope that makes sense.  Do shout if not.

Thanks in advance.

Isaac.

[EGOL]

I think that "2017 Diaries" has a bit of competition and this site is still getting started.  It probably has slowly rising traffic but needs some high-quality linkable, shareable, noteworthy content that people want to read.  The blog is focused on product promotion rather than something to inspire the customer to write, plan, schedule, etc.

[isaac663]

Thank you so much... Moz should have a 'great answer' button!  Yes, I've been thinking this for a while now and I think this is a really good approach.

Do you have thoughts on why the 2017 page ranks SO poorly though (for that specific term)?  The only rational I can think of is that Google has effectively 'chosen' our homepage over the LP.  Have you come across anything similar in the past?

Thanks again, better get cracking!

Isaac.

[EGOL]

I think that your homepage ranks well for "2017 Diaries" because your site is all about diaries.  Your homepage is probably more powerful than your 2017 Diaries page and that is probably why the homepage ranks higher.

So, if this is the top query for bring you business, I would optimize the homepage for it, get relevant products on the homepage and go for it.  Right now your homepage could be greatly improved for "2017 Diaries" because "2017 only appears twice in plain text at the bottom of the page and is not in the title tag.  I wonder what your homepage could do if properly optimized for this term?

If I owned your site I would change the homepage optimization and content a few times per year to take advantage of a new year starting, back to school, summer fitness, etc.  This would move my most powerful page from battle to battle at various times of the year.  Perhaps you do this?

Also, if I owned the site I would have lots of articles about how various types of people use the products that you sell, historical information about famous people and their appointment, journaling, and diary habits.   I'd be doing a little more cross-selling of writing implements on the diaries page.  Just tossing these in based upon my experience in a similar niche.