Best way to give away rank?
-
We have a set of branded and unbranded keywords that we want our product site to rank very high for. Right now, our support site owns the first page of rankings for most of the keywords we care about. What is the most efficient way to give the rank currently enjoyed by our support site to our product site? Both have very high domain authority and tons of backlinks. Here are some factors that might apply:
- Support site has lots of copy including these keywords, while product site doesn't (yet)
- Support site doesn't currently include a lot of links to the product site (and vice versa)
- They're on the same domain -- support is at support.domain.com, product is on www.domain.com
- Support site has many more pages and their URLs are more semantically related to keywords
I know there are lots of structural improvements implied by the above -- on the product site, increase the amount of copy (and landing pages) focused on keywords and significantly improve internal links, etc. But I'm wondering if the fact we control both sites gives us any options we wouldn't have in a competitive situation?
-
Hello
I am fairly new to the community but I thought I could offer some useful information. I have had similar issues and success with a number of techniques (though probably on a smaller scale). I was about to list them when I remembered there was a great whiteboard Friday on this topic.
https://moz.com/blog/wrong-page-ranks-for-keywords-whiteboard-friday
Degrading a page might not be worth it if your competitors are hot on your heels. Especially if you have yet to do everything you can to improve the rank for www.domain.com. I have never tried such things across domains so I would be interested to know how you get on.
I appreciate you want to give power to your product domain and not simply shine a light on one over the other. You might consider a redirect. I believe 301s now pass all of the link juice. If there is another way to transfer power other than internal link sculpting I would love to know also.
Alex
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
-
Google ranking content for phrases that don't exist on-page
I am experiencing an issue with negative keywords, but the “negative” keyword in question isn’t truly negative and is required within the content – the problem is that Google is ranking pages for inaccurate phrases that don’t exist on the page. To explain, this product page (as one of many examples) - https://www.scamblermusic.com/albums/royalty-free-rock-music/ - is optimised for “Royalty free rock music” and it gets a Moz grade of 100. “Royalty free” is the most accurate description of the music (I optimised for “royalty free” instead of “royalty-free” (including a hyphen) because of improved search volume), and there is just one reference to the term “copyrighted” towards the foot of the page – this term is relevant because I need to make the point that the music is licensed, not sold, and the licensee pays for the right to use the music but does not own it (as it remains copyrighted). It turns out however that I appear to need to treat “copyrighted” almost as a negative term because Google isn’t accurately ranking the content. Despite excellent optimisation for “Royalty free rock music” and only one single reference of “copyrighted” within the copy, I am seeing this page (and other album genres) wrongly rank for the following search terms: “free rock music”
On-Page Optimization | | JCN-SBWD
“Copyright free rock music"
“Uncopyrighted rock music”
“Non copyrighted rock music” I understand that pages might rank for “free rock music” because it is part of the “Royalty free rock music” optimisation, what I can’t get my head around is why the page (and similar product pages) are ranking for “Copyright free”, “Uncopyrighted music” and “Non copyrighted music”. “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted” don’t exist anywhere within the copy or source code – why would Google consider it helpful to rank a page for a search term that doesn’t exist as a complete phrase within the content? By the same logic the page should also wrongly rank for “Skylark rock music” or “Pretzel rock music” as the words “Skylark” and “Pretzel” also feature just once within the content and therefore should generate completely inaccurate results too. To me this demonstrates just how poor Google is when it comes to understanding relevant content and optimization - it's taking part of an optimized term and combining it with just one other single-use word and then inappropriately ranking the page for that completely made up phrase. It’s one thing to misinterpret one reference of the term “copyrighted” and something else entirely to rank a page for completely made up terms such as “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted”. It almost makes me think that I’ve got a better chance of accurately ranking content if I buy a goat, shove a cigar up its backside, and sacrifice it in the name of the great god Google! Any advice (about wrongly attributed negative keywords, not goat sacrifice ) would be most welcome.0 -
Best site Template, Structure, etc. for SEO
If I were to spin up a new site what do people recommend as the best template, services, etc. Do you have an example of the perfect structure, I want to point my team to an example page and say - This is perfect, do this but for our product (structure, content amount, etc) Thank you,
On-Page Optimization | | Jamesmcd030 -
Page 2 is ranking
Hey All, I'm working on a wordpress site project and in analytics the sites ranking url is page 2. is this a problem?
On-Page Optimization | | CobraJones950 -
Proper way to change keywords without losing ranking
Hello Everyone, The website I am working with offers service in two locations, lets say Service in City A and Service in City B. Those two cities, which are close by, are the main source of clients, so the owner asked me to concentrate on these terms. I did a decent job for a newbie and now we are on the first page of google closer to the top for these 2 terms. The problem that I am facing right now is that a) it hard to get that extra bit from onsite optimization when you optimizing for 2 different cities b) Customers may get confused which cities we focus on A or B? We have locations in both. c) Owner wants to expand services to additional cities. So I looked at how our competitor handling these time of problem and most of them have a page with titles like "Cities we serve" with links to the individual locations that are optimized for the specific city. That page usually includes paragraph or two about local history and then re-span description of their services. Is it a good practice to structure one's website like that if you are trying to target multiple locations? Should I re-target my home page to something less geographically specific and create separate pages for Cities A , B and the new locations? Would I lose ranking for terms service in city A & service in city B because of that Or should I leave my home page optimized for Cities A & B and just add new locations as separate pages? Thanks in advance for you insights.
On-Page Optimization | | SirMax0 -
Does microformats improve my ranking?
Hi, does Mircofromats like schema.org improve my ranking? If so, just because my products are listed in google/products? Regard
On-Page Optimization | | censeo0 -
Ranking for specific pages
HI, Lets say my website is abc.com and my targeted keyword is abc for index page. Internal pages, like abc.com/apple.htm, abc.com/banana.htm. The targeted keyword for apple.htm is fresh apples, buy apples, and for banana.htm, fresh banana, buy banana. How to define these keywords in the campaign. Please suggest. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | younus0 -
What is the best way to format an xml sitemap?
I am wondering if the urls should be in alphabetical order or if they should be set out in a way that reflects the sites hierarchy? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Webat0