8 New Location Pages Have Been Indexed But Only 1 Is Showing in SERPS
-
Hi All
Thank you in advance for any help.
Previously we were sending all keyword traffic to our homepage, targeting the main keyword garden rooms plus the seed keywords eg garden studios, garden offices etc.
We created 8 new pages, 4 for each main seed keyword and location and these went live on May 12th. The pages are indexed by google.
The issue is that all searches, except for garden annex brighton, are still pointing to the homepage and not the new location/service pages and now we're on July 27th it seems enough time has gone by.
We've setup this post to ask the question, what can we do to reinforce to google that we want the services pages listed in SERPS and not the homepage?
Here is the list of new pages : -
-
garden offices brighton
-
garden offices sussex
-
garden gyms brighton
-
garden gyms sussex
-
garden annexes brighton
-
garden annexes sussex
-
garden studios brighton
-
garden studios sussex
Many Thanks
-
-
Hello!
I am going to try to help you understand what may be happening and, the most important thing, how you can fix it.
Crawling, indexing and positioning are three fundamental concepts related to the operation of search engines and the visibility of a website in search results. While they may seem closely related to us, they actually represent very different stages of the process a search engine goes through to display relevant results to users.
That is to say, it is not the same that a url is indexed than the fact that a url is positioned in the SERPS. Understanding this is crucial. Below I will tell you how to get those urls to rank well.
If there is no obstacle to indexing, Google will go through the url and index it, that is, it will place it in its index. But to get to show it in the SERPS, you not only have to index it, but you have to position it, that is, consider it relevant for certain keywords or search terms. So your urls may be perfectly well indexed... and perfectly poorly positioned, or simply not even appear in the SERPS.
Once the crawlers have collected the information from the urls, they send it to the search engine's index. The index is a giant database that stores copies of all crawled web pages and the information associated with them. During this indexing process, search engines organize and classify the information collected to facilitate rapid retrieval of relevant results when users search. Well, now you have your urls indexed and ready for the next step.
Ranking, and therefore appearance in the SERPS, has more to do with relevance and quality to a specific search query. When a user performs a search on a search engine, the engine uses sophisticated algorithms to determine which pages should be displayed and in what order in the search results. The objective is to present the user with the most relevant and useful results based on their query... and if your website is very recent or your SEO optimization is not correct or the authority of your domain is not good, you simply will not be able to appear in the results of search or you will appear so far away that you will not be visible to any user.
This strategy of creating urls with specific locations is very good, in fact, we use it a lot for our clients and always with very good results, but you have to take into account some things to make it work perfectly:
-
Index the new urls manually in Google (I understand that you have already done it, so one less thing!)
-
Think that Google POSITIONS urls, not websites, that is, you have to work each url of the different locations separately, each one has to have its SEO optimization, its incoming and outgoing links and its correct internal link, its rich text , all as if you were working on a complete website.
-
Take great care of the content of each url, when we use this type of strategy, one of the biggest mistakes is to copy the text from one to another and modify it slightly. This is a mistake and we will never be able to position them well. Each one has to have its own text, even if the service is the same, make an effort to tell it in a totally different way so that Google does not start considering them duplicate content.
4.Make sure the keyword that url works for is searchable! It seems silly but you have to check it.
-
Make them have enough content to not be considered thin content. If it can be 3,000 words, better than 2,000.
-
Build incoming links for each of them separately, add and expand text with some frequency, take care of your internal linking.
With this, little by little each url will be positioned for its specific location and you will have a great SEO strategy working, but be patient, it takes time and effort, but, yes, afterwards it is wonderful to see them work.
Good luck, if we can help you with anything else, we are here for whatever you need.
-
-
Here are some things you can do to reinforce to Google that you want the services pages listed in SERPs and not the homepage:
-
Use canonical tags: Canonical tags tell Google which page is the main version of a page. You can use canonical tags on your homepage to point to the relevant service page for each keyword.
-
Use hreflang tags: hreflang tags tell Google the language and region of each page. You can use hreflang tags on your service pages to tell Google that they are localized for specific locations.
-
Build backlinks: Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. They are a valuable signal to Google that your website is high-quality and authoritative. You can build backlinks to your service pages by guest blogging, submitting your website to directories, and participating in social media.
-
Optimize your content: Your content should be well-written, informative, and relevant to your target keywords. It should also be well-optimized for SEO. This includes using the right keywords in your title tags, meta descriptions, and throughout your content.
-
Use strong anchor text: When you build backlinks to your service pages, use strong anchor text that includes your target keywords. This will help Google to understand that the backlinks are relevant to your service pages.
-
Promote your service pages: Promote your service pages on social media, in your email marketing, and in your offline marketing materials. The more people who know about your service pages, the more likely they are to link to them.
-
Track your progress: Use a website analytics tool to track the traffic to your service pages. This will help you to see how your SEO efforts are performing and make necessary adjustments.
-
Be patient: It takes time for Google to index and rank new pages. Don't expect to see results overnight. Keep optimizing your content and building backlinks, and you should eventually see your service pages start to rank in SERPs.
.
Warm Regards
Rahul Gupta
Suvidit Academy -
-
One thing is Google indexing the pages and other is to have them be listed as the most relevant for the search result. I believe you still need to let more time go by for those new pages to get their proper relevancy. This is one of those times when it is difficult to decipher the logic behind the Google Algorithm, since your home page has been in the index far earlier than those new pages it is pointing back to home page. I had a similar case with a client of mine, and eventually we got the right one. We did however get some backlinks to the newer pages. Maybe that was the defining tactic.
Glad to chat about how it goes. Drop us a line at https://stedica.com
I hope this helped. Cheers
-
I am having similar issue here. Google search console shows the posts are indexed but they are not on SERP even if i search for the exact same title with my site name on it...
Someone help: URL: https://careerwagmi.com
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
-
How Do You Think My Local SEO Multi-location Geotargeting Strategy Will Work?
I have a question. I just got a full-time job at Zavza Seal, an upstanding insulation contractor targeting neighborhoods of Suffolk and Nassau counties in New York. I was hired as an SEO content specialist. (Thanks Rand! You're one of my mentors~!) So, they handed me a spreadsheet of pages for city-specific terms, and they had a system in place for local rankings. But I was taught to do service-specific city pages a certain way. If the search term is for people looking for a service in that town, that's what you give them. However, I was told to proofread them, and as an SEO specialist, I couldn't keep my hands off of them. The pages were skimpy. (Example: h2, paragraph, bullets, short paragraph summary, short paragraph about the city.) What threw me off is that the content, while it was service specific, it was blog topics localized. Those are great (when long enough and optimized to compete in SERPs) but I've never seen them done on service pages. (Example: Why is Mold Remediation Necessary in Baldwin?. Now, this went in two directions in my mind. (and I wanted to do the best for the company, because I'm a wicked brat for teams, AND I get commissions on leads, so that was motivation, too.) 🐷 Anyway, 1. This could be a new approach and worthy of an SEO study on my startup site, where I take on part time clients after work, because I've never seen it done before and it could, if optimized for the target service and city rank high in SERPs AND build thought leadership and authority as a local expert. (Whereas city service pages in standard format would just promote your service. ..) What do you guys think? I just put the topic up for discussion for my team, asked them about it in detail and asked if they wanted to A'/B test a few to see what get's better traction organically. Mr. Fishkin was one of my mentors. I really wish I just had his number for this one LOL.
Local SEO | | ThisTimeWereOn0 -
Category pages are treated as duplicate content - is that a problem?
Hi there I have analyzing a webshop where we sell products for pets, gardening and the like. I am getting a lot of "Duplicate Content" alerts from Moz when doing a site crawl and I am told that the pages for e.g. cat products and gardening tools show duplicate content. Those two pages contain no identical products, so I am guessing that it is just the "set up" of the page (they look almost identical, except for the products). My question is: Is this really a problem? Does it affect my ranking in a negative way, and if so, how can I counter it? Best regards Frederik
Local SEO | | fhertzp0 -
How to compete with business names and urls that include location?
I have several instances of competitor businesses that rank high in the local pack while I'm struggling to get in there at all. Here's a specific example: Keyword is "name-of-town chiropractor" and the competitor business name is "name-of-town chiropractic". Google doesn't seem to exclude "name-of-town" because these businesses don't rank the same if you search for only "chiropractor" However, search volume for "name-of-town chiropractor" is significantly high! I'd really appreciate some input on this. Thanks so much in advance, Jarod
Local SEO | | marshalllj0 -
To Keep My Company's CO.UK Page Or Redirect It...
Hi Moz'ers - I have a question... Just to set the stage, we're a small recruiting firm, with an even smaller marketing department. I'm essentially a one man wrecking crew and don't have a ton of extra time. That being said, I know that page rank (and local office rank) are critical to our inbound lead generation, so I'm willing to invest some of my time into doing it right. The issue I'm having is ranking high as a local business in Austin, New York, San Francisco, and London, UK (to name a few). So far I've solved this through building dedicated subpages on our .com site and link building key word anchor text towards those pages. The only page that's not really gaining traction is our London page. So I decided to clone (most of) the site, tweak the text (to try and avoid dup text), and try and get that page to rank. I'm also having it hosted on a local server, have it using a local domain address suffix (co.uk), using local hreflang (on our .com site), created dedicated web 2.0 sites, and done my best to do some link building. The problem I'm facing is crapy local ranking, and limited bandwidth to maintain two sites. Should I: A) Scrap the co.uk site and focus on the .com (and subpages)
Local SEO | | bettsrecruiting
B) Keep the co.uk domain, and just redirect the URL to our .com page
C) Keep the co.uk domain, send all links from the home page to the relevant page on our .com page, and set up 301 redirects for all other relevant pages.
D) Hire someone to clean up, rewrite, and upkeep the co.uk site because it has the most SEO value in the long run and is the only way I'm going to be able to rank locally in London. What are your thoughts? Thanks in advance! Tim Our European Site - http://bettsrecruiting.co.uk/
Our US Site - http://bettsrecruiting.com/0 -
Correct setup: One business, one website, two bricks and mortar locations
Hi all, we have a furniture business with two physical stores and one website, which has the ability to sell online but we hardly sell anything but we're just about to start Google PLA on a few products, let's say our website is at: nicefurniture.co.uk We have nicefurniture.co.uk/first-location and nicefurniture.co.uk/second-location set up with all the store info, a Google Map, contact info, etc. This is linked to from the footer on all pages. Issue 1: I have been told conflicting things about how to best set up our Google My Business page. One person says set the URL for both to our homepage, nicefurniture.co.uk and the other says point each GMB listing to the store location pages OR we should buy www.furniture-first-location.co.uk as our URL and point the GMB listing to that. To me, that doesn't make sense as we'd be spreading our domain equity with a new domain, surely? Issue 2: How do I get each GMB location to show up in Maps, etc when people search for 'furniture location' or even 'sofa location' or 'dining table location'? Would I need to optimize the store pages on our site? Issue 3: Years ago we did set up another URL, let's say nicefurniture-cornwall.co.uk and on it there are about 500 pages, all with links pointing to our main website. Google Search Console for our main website lists this other website as one of our top linking domains. Does that mean if we remove nicefurniture-cornwall.co.uk we'll risk a drop in rankings? Many thanks for your input.
Local SEO | | Bee1590 -
Content Rewriting and Page ranking
Lets say that a prior writer did a horrible job with more then a few pages on your site and you wanted to rewrite the content for each landing page. A few of these landing pages are actually ranking pretty decently would it be ok to rewrite them as long as you kept the keywords and the density some what equal?
Local SEO | | Spartan222 -
Google Business Details on the SERP
Good morning, We've recently launched Pea Soup Digital, a new UK-based digital agency. However, when you search 'pea soup digital' in Google, the business info doesn't appear on the right-hand-side of the SERP. But when you search 'peasoup digital' it appears? Our Google+ and business account have the name registered as separate words - Pea Soup Digital - so why is Google doing this? It's not the end of the world, but slightly annoying. Is there anything we can do? There's also an issue of our privacy policy page ranking above the home page. I know it's early days (1 week), so Google might be sorting itself out, but I guess we could add this page to the robots.txt file? Cheers, Lewis
Local SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0