Influencing which page google chooses as the authority for a certain keyword
-
I have spent the last year optimizing my site for a specific keyword that I believed would do well with respect to conversions.
The good news is that my efforts have somewhat succeed. I am now ranking second for a pretty popular keyword, and this effort has definitely increased my traffic.
The bad news is that the target page that shows up for the optimized keywords isn't really the authoritative page on my site for the given keywords. As a result, it is my belief that my bounce rate is increasing and my conversions are decreasing.
To be more specific, let's say I have optimized my site for the keywords "cool widgets". On my site, I am referencing "cool widgets" in key areas such as title, meta keywords etc. I am referencing the above both on my homepage as well as the cool-widgets page.
So, http://www.mysite.com and http://www.mysite.com both contain pretty heavy optimization for "cool widgets". When a user searches "cool widgets", google is displaying mysite.com - however, i'd like it to display mysite.com/cool-widgets like all my competitors.
Is there any advice or light the community can shed on how I might go about correcting this issue? I don't think I want to de-optimize my home page, as I am afraid I might lose that position and not have it replaced with the more relevant target page.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Roy
-
Thanks Reload! Makes sense - I will get to work on some of your suggestions.
-
WHat Roy said and you may have tried too hard with your "cool widgets" page. Be sure you haven't over optimized the desired page. Good luck
-
Hi Royboy,
It's a common issue with SEO, as we don't have the precise control the PPC guys do over our desired landing pages.
First step would be to optimise your internal links, make sure /cool-widgets is very well interlinked from within your own site.
Next build external links into that page. After awhile you may get both pages listed in one SERP, #win. Then you can re-target your home page to a more relevant competitive keyword.
Depending on your external link building, it can take several months though, but is worth doing.
In the mean time, put something very obvious on the home page pointing visitors towards /cool-widgets
Let us know how you get on.
Iain - Reload Media
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
-
Should i target more low moz keyword difficulty informational keywords?
I have created a blog of finding the best outdoor basketball and have targeted low keyword difficulty keywords and they are getting some traffic also. But the problem is the homepage is not ranking position still I want to ask that should I target more keywords of low Moz keyword difficulty for gaining more traffic or not?
Keyword Research | | gabrelapaula220 -
Keyword reserch 'blends' to much. How to decide on focused landing pages?
Hi guys. I work for stationery company. We make personalised diary products, but recently we've expanded into binding services/ printing services. I've been doing some keyword research around these new services we offer, but i'm struggling to 'separate them out' into focused areas that we can then apply to our landing pages. In the images i've attached you can see how the keywords naturally fall into groups (and were generally in different groups in Ad words) but they also overlap somewhat. E.g) There's a 'Book binding service' group as well as 'print and binding' group...they're different but overlap. Another example would be 'Book binding' groups and 'leather book binding' group....so on and so forth. So... do you think there should there be a landing page for each group (and therefore having some keyword cannibalisation), or should I try be more broad trying to capture the searches within 1 or 2 landing pages? Make sense? Sorry I know it's kinda open ended question... but i'm struggling with this one 😞 Hope you can help. Isaac. wO974JK wO974JK.png 9oZjZbz.png JJ1MlRT.png 4Zx5iko.png
Keyword Research | | isaac6630 -
Keyword Planner - search volume for keywords seems to be off. Anyone else experiencing this problem?
Using Keyword planner, I am seeing search volume results which to me look somewhat odd. Anyone else experiencing this? How is this different to the keyword tool used before?
Keyword Research | | seo12120 -
Best Tools for Keyword Research?
Hi guys, Please share your best and recommended tools for keyword research. Thanks in advance.
Keyword Research | | KLLC0 -
Where do I go from here with my keyword research?
Hi all. I'm wondering if I can get some assistance on keyword research. I've set out a step-by-step process for myself about how to go about finding a list of keywords we want to optimise our site for. I've used a guide over at http://www.seonick.net/keyword-research to break it down step-by-step. After using Keyword Tool and Ubersuggest to get a list of keyword suggestions with their local monthly search volumes, I now have an Excel file with 1663 suggestions (yikes!). It is at this point where I am not 100% sure of what to do with this data & how to figure out which of these terms we should optimise for. I know not to go purely based on the local monthly search volume because that is not based on organic searches. So how would I go about condensing this into a list of keyword suggestions to target for optimising? Thanks in advance for assistance on this.
Keyword Research | | janc0 -
E-Commerce keyword question
We sell ItemA. One of the phrases that brings people to our site is "ItemA for sale". Should I just try to target "ItemA" or should I try to get "for sale" in there? I have seen a few other variations such as "on clearance" or "to purchase" as well. Can I just focus on "ItemA" or do I need all of those variants as well?
Keyword Research | | EcommerceSite0 -
Question about keyword analysis
I am working on a keyword analysis for a range of keywords. I want to target these keywords in the Denver market. I know if you search google for something like "IT Support" and you are located in Denver it knows where you are and caters the results to be more Denver IT Support oriented. I did notice that those results are different than if you search for "Denver IT Support" My pages are optimized for the Denver market and the keyword like "IT Support" but I am a bit confused on how I should be doing my research into keywords. Should I be putting Denver into all my keyword analysis research even though I still want to rank for just the keyword when they are searching from the Denver area. I hope this all makes sense. I guess I just need some guidance on how to deal with the location specifics of my keywords. Thanks in advance for any help.
Keyword Research | | ZiaTG0 -
Keywords abuse?
WE are using the best keywords all over our eStore: Furnace Filter and Furnace Filters. Is it abusing when we list items like: 10x20x1 furnace filter 10x20x2furnace filter 10x20x4 furnace filter and so on... we have almost 100 different filters on sale. see example: http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/categories/Furnace-Filter-See-All/ Thank you for your help BigBlaze
Keyword Research | | BigBlaze2050