Triple listing in rankings
-
We have a triple listing for the keyword vca cursus (Dutch keyword). But the page we optimized for that keyword ranks lower than our vca examen page. First we had the number one spot but now we rank 2 to 5. In opensite explorer i compared the competiton and we scored on almost all factors better.
Do you know the causes why the vca examen page ranks higher then the vca cursus page. Is it possible to change that or reverse the triple listing somehow. And why does our competitor ranks higher?
-
I checked a few sites myself and see your point. Good argument, Ryan! This is something I can improve.
-
You are correct about the translation. It appears the page did not load properly for me the first time.
What page of the competitor are you talking about in point 3?
Point #3 referred to your site, not your competitor. "The cache of your VCA examen page is from Oct 29th..." You recently changed the link in the anchor text on that page, and it has not been updated yet.
what kind of anchor text would you suggest?
When users choose anchor text, there is a natural variation. On both your "vca examen" and "vca cursus" page almost every link is 100% identical. That simply does not happen naturally. This type of linking is a very strong indicator you created all those links.
Think about Google for example. There is nothing more basic then the Google.com page. If real people were going to link to it, you would see anchor text such as:
google
search engine
best search engine
and so forth. If you looked at the top 50 links and they are all "search engine" then those links are most likely manipulated. In fact, this topic made me curious so I went ahead and looked up Google's links. Take a look for yourself: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.google.com
That is how a natural link profile appears.
-
Thanks 4 the helpfull answer!
I checked the website in google translation and everything was translated. I don't see any problems in the cufon font.
What page of the competitor are you talking about in point 3? And what kind of anchor text would you suggest?
-
I mostly agree with Zsolt and will add a bit more detail.
I checked Google.nl and see your /vca-examen ranked #2 and the vca-cursus page ranked #3. I do see how you are using internal anchor text to link to the proper page. I would suggest two changes to help clarify the internal issue on your site:
1. On your home page the content begins with "Met een **VCA **cursus bij VCAdirect...". Make the first use in content of VCA cursus anchor text to the proper page. I see the phrase is used in part 10 times on the home page and you do use anchor text link once, but use it the first time as it may be considered more important by Google.
2. You are using cufon for your header tag text. The way it is implemented on your site is such the cufon text is not recognized as text. When I used Google translate, the cufon text is not translated. The lack of translation indicates to me Google is not seeing it as text. Also when I do a "find" the cufon text matches are not highlighted. I would recommend replacing the cufon text with normal text.
3. You recently changed the anchor text on your pages. The new anchor text is correct, but Google has not crawled your pages since you have made the change. The cache of your VCA examen page is from Oct 29th and the anchor text is different. It is possible the page order issue will resolve on it's own during the next crawl.
With respect to your competitor's ranking, your stats are almost identical across the board with respect to PA, DA, mR, mT. Your backlink profile is very unnatural. Your top 40 links all use identical anchor text. That is a strong indicator the links are under your control and not independently offered. Your competitor has a similar issue but not as bad as yours.
Part of the problem is your competitor seems to have 1 strong page which is relevant, where your strength is divided among multiple pages. Because the page is in another language it is difficult for me to fully troubleshoot but that is a concern.
-
Hello.
First: your competitor's better ranking maybe has good reasions as google algorythm is pretty musch complicated and works with numerous data. However if all of your factors are better I think your competitor'd domain must be older, when all factors are better ususally this is the case, but without examining the page this is just a guess.
I don't think you really want to get rid of triple ranking this is a pretty good thing. To change order for vca cursus simply apply internal links that point to the page you want to be first for vca cursus. The anchor and the title of the links has to be vca cursus of course. Use that term in the heading tags of the disered page. To reinforce this and to beat your competitor obtain extarnal links to the page you want to be first with for that term. Again: link anchor alt and title has to be vca cursus.
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
-
Ranking issue for new website
Hi all, I have got a specific SEO challenge. 6 months ago, we started to build an eCommerce site (located in the UK). In order to speed up the site launch, we copied the entire site over from an existing site based in Ireland. Now, the new UK site has been running for 5 months. Google has indexed many pages, which is good, but we can't rank high (position: between 20-30 for most pages). We thought it was because of content duplication in spite of different regions. So we tried to optimize the pages for the UK site to make them more UK-related and avoid content duplication. I've also used schema to tell google it's a UK-based site and set up Google my business and got more local citations. Besides, If you could give me any suggestions, it'd be perfect.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Insightful_Media
Thank you so much for your time and advice.1 -
How to rank a transactional query
I have a webpage about bike tours in France with a list of bike tours in France. I imagaine people don't want a big paragraph about what a bike tour in France is because this is a transactional query and not an informational query. How do I go about ranking this page ? Would a good title tag and good description be enough to rank that page ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Ranking dropped after changing title tag
I recently changed my company's site homepage title tag to make it start with our target keyword. The page was originally at page #7 or #8 and dropped to page #17 directly after I changed the page title. Is this normal? Is it's a temporary drop or should I change it back to the previous title.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ForumOne0 -
How to rank same page for multiple related keywords
We need some of our pages to rank for multiple related keywords. But we cannot optimise one page for multiple keywords which might end up ranking for none of them; at the same time we cannot optimise it for one keyword as we ignore other keywords. I think creating multiple landing pages for very related keywords will confuse users and search engines as well. How to handle this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Keyword Rankings: One keyword dropped, dragging other rankings down. Possible or not?
Hey moz fans, So these week I noticed significant drop in rankings... But what caught my attention is that one specific keyword dropped 18 positions, and all the other just 1-3. Print screen: http://prntscr.com/7fb4g4 Do you think it's possible that the drop of that page, that went 18 positions down, brought the whole domain down? Or is it another cause?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kokolo0 -
How long before your rankings improved after Penguin?
Those of you that have algorithmic penalties, how long after making changes did you actually see an improvement, or have you ever? I have several sites that tanked after Penguin 2.1 and after doing Link Removal, Diasvaow files and building newer more quality links and adding content, I am STILL not seeing any change in rankings after several months. I have heard from some people it can take up to 6-months for google to even crawl a disavow file. I have also heard no matter what you do it won't matter until Google does another update. I feel like we have made a lot of changes in the right direction, but I don't want to go overboard if nothing is going to matter until another Google Update is done. What are your experiences?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper0 -
Why does this site rank above us?
We own www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk and over the last 8 months have built some decent guest post, charity and customer links but still we seem to be beaten on good words such as banners, banner, vinyl banner, pvc banner etc by this website www-signfirm.com we just cannot figure out how this is happening and would be very grateful if someone with great wisdom could give us an in-site into why this is happening and we would be very grateful..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Suggestions for good ranking
Hello, My blog http://www.pakearning.com/ was having page rank 1 and now its doped to 0 and less ranking, please review my site and help me how can I improve ranking and traffic ? Suggest me what to do for best ranking ? Directory submission ? articles submission ? also for home page, how much keywords are good ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | softcorner0