Different pages first results on same keyword search
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Hi,
Sometimes Google does not show the page you intended for a certain keyword. Logically you would say that the intended page is not relevant/strong enough. But in my case several pages ranked fine for a long period of time and all of a sudden another less important page gets the highest result on a keyword search.
(We are in the camping business)
For instance:
One of our campsites called Tenuta primero used to rank position 9 in google with page below for a long time (search: 'camping tenuta primero') This was the page we intended to rank with.
Now all of a sudden the position for search 'camping tenuta primero' is position 33 with review page below.
What could have caused this?
Pages are in Dutch but main keywords are camping are tenuta primero.
Thank you very much in advance!
Kind regards,
Dennis Overbeek
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Good answer from Ryan here. Also, see Rand's post about what to do if the "wrong" page is ranking in the results at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions
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I would suggest you are making it really hard on the search engines. Specifically, you are cannibalizing the search term within your site.
Both pages contain "camping-tenuta-primero" in the URL. Both pages use that same phrase as the H1 tag. The "beoordelingen" page should use that term in the H1 page, not "camping tenuta primero".
Another thing you can do is use anchor text linking to the most relevant page on your site. If you need to use "camping tenuta primero" on your "beoordelingen" page then use it as anchor text linking to the primary page.
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