Optimising multiple pages for the same search term
-
We were having a discussion on title tags and optimising multiple pages for the same term. We rank well for the phrase 'chanel glasses' which points to our Chanel brand page. The Chanel brand page is optimised for this term, and has the phrase 'Chanel glasses' at the front of its title tag.
Previously, the title tag on our home page had the words 'Chanel glasses' at the start in an attempt to rank twice for the term (as one of our competitors has managed). This never worked (though at the time, our DA/PA was lower than it is now). For this reason I switched the title tag on the homepage to try and rank for 'designer glasses'.
My belief is, given we already rank highly for the term on a more relevant landing page, trying to rank for it again on the home page is not the best use of a title tag on our highest PA page. We may as well use it for something more generic like 'designer glasses' (though this term does not convert nearly as well, nor does it currently rank as well for us as we've not been attempting to get 'designer glasses' as anchor text. Plus it's more competitive. Another generic term maybe be preferable).
My colleague's view is we should attempt to do what our competitor has done and try and rank twice on page one for this term. I like the idea of dominating the top results, but I feel that since attempting to get double-listed hasn't worked for us so far, we should use the homepage for optimising for a different term ( ideally something that we don't already rank for elsewhere on the site).
I see his point of view - if we were ranking nowhere for the search term then, yes we should concentrate on getting one page to rank, not two. But since we already rank well for the term, perhaps his strategy is preferable?
Just for clarity, the title tags are not duplicate, but the idea was to share many of the same keywords between the two title tags.
What are your thoughts SEOmoz?
-
Alex is right... cannibalization is one the worst thing a site can commit.
Personally, the KWs I focus on in the homepage are (or is) the query that most define the subject of the site itself. In your case, designer glasses is surely a good choice, as you are not focusing on any brand in particular. Eventually, but I am sure you know it, I would use a semantically related second query in the title to reinforce the main KW.
-
Did the other page rank anywhere?
My view is to not do it - you're just confusing the search engines over which is the most important of your pages for that term. And instead of competing against your competitors, you're competing against yourself.
Take a look at this post from a while ago: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization
Rather than something generic, you could think about the longer-tail for your homepage - something like 'cheap designer glasses' might not be as competitive but could still send a lot of relevant traffic.
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
-
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect?
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect? If this scenario requires a 301 redirect no matter what, I might as well update the URL to be a little more keyword rich for the page while I'm at it. However, since these pages are ranking well I'd rather not lose any authority in the process and keep the URL just stripped of the ".html" (if that's possible). Thanks for you help! [edited for formatting]
Technical SEO | | Booj0 -
My website pages are not crawled, what to do?
Hi all. I have made some changes on the website so i like to crawled them by the search engines Google especially. I have made these changes around 2 weeks ago. I have submitted my website on good bookmarking websites. Also i used a tool available in Google webmasters "Fetch as Google", Resubmitted a sitemap.xml. Still my pages are not crawled your opinion please. Thanks
Technical SEO | | lucidsoftech0 -
Is it bad to have your pages as .php pages?
Hello everyone, Is it bad to have your website pages indexed as .php? For example, the contact page is site.com/contact.php and not /contact. Does this affect your SEO rankings in any way? Is it better to have your pages without the extension? Also, if I'm working with a news site and the urls are dynamic for every article (ie site.com/articleid=2323.) Should I change all of those dynamic urls to static? Thank You.
Technical SEO | | BruLee0 -
Google Search Parameters
Couple quick questions. Is using the parameter pws=0 still useful for turning off personalization? Is there a way to set my location as a URL parameter as well? For instance, I want to set my location to United States, can this be done with a URL param the same way as pws=0?
Technical SEO | | nbyloff0 -
Duplicate Page Content
I've got several pages of similar products that google has listed as duplicate content. I have them all set up with rel="prev" and rel="next tags telling google that they are part of a group but they've still got them listed as duplicates. Is there something else I should do for these pages or is that just a short falling of googles webmaster tools? One of the pages: http://www.jaaronwoodcountertops.com/wood-countertop-gallery/walnut-countertop-9.html
Technical SEO | | JAARON0 -
Getting on to page 1 again
I have recently set up a website, and as soon as it got indexed by google, I ranked on the first page at number 10... However, Ever since I have started trying to backlink.. the more I seem to do, the more I seem to drop down the rankings! The same for both Bing and Yahoo... I am really not sure what the problem is. My site is www.arilinegamesatc.com, and the ranking words are airline games and airline game. Any help woudl be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | rolls1230 -
My urls changed with new CMS now search engines see pages as 302s what do I do?
We recently changed our CMS from php to .NET. The old CMS did not allow for folder structure in urls so every url was www.mydomain/name-of-page. In the new CMS we either have to have .aspx at the end of the url or a /. We opted for the /, but now my page rank is dead and Google webmaster tools says my existing links are now going through an intermediary page. Everything resolves to the right place, but looks like spiders see our new pages as being 302 redirected. Example of what's happening. Old page: www.mydomain/name-of-page New page: www.mydomain/name-of-page/ What should I do? Should I go in and 301 redirect the old pages? Will this get cleared up by itself in time?
Technical SEO | | rasiadmin10 -
On Page 301 redirect for html pages
For php pages youve got Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Technical SEO | | shupester
Header( "Location: http://www.example.com" );
?> Is there anything for html pages? Other then Or is placing this code redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/new.php in the .htaccess the only way to properly 301 redirect html pages? Thanks!0