Customer Experience vs Search Result Optimisation
-
Yes, I know customer experience is king, however, I have a dilema, my site has been live since June 2013 & we get good feedback on site design & easy to follow navigation, however, our rankings arent as good as they could be?
For example, the following 2 pages share v similar URLs, but the pages do 2 different jobs & when you get to the site that is easy to see, but my largest Keyword "Over 50 Life Insurance" becomes difficult to target as google sees both pages and splits the results, so I think i must be losing ranking positions?
http://www.over50choices.co.uk/Funeral-Planning/Over-50-Life-Insurance.aspx
The first page explains the product(s) and the 2nd is the Quote & Compare page, which generates the income.
I am currently playing with meta tags, but as yet havent found the right combination!
Originally the 2nd page meta tags were focussing on "compare over 50s life insurance" but google still sees "over 50 life insurance" in this phrase, so the results get split. I also had internal anchor text supporting this.
What do you think is the best strategy for optimising both pages?
Thanks
Ash
-
Also if I do combine the 2 pages should i 301 the compare page to the other?
Thanks
Ash -
Tommy thanks for your advice.
Will having specific internal & external anchor text help google know which pages I am targeting for each keyword eg "Over 50 life Insurance" & "Compare Over 50s Life Insurance" or will i always have the same issue because the first phrase is contained within the second?
Ash
-
Hi Ash,
I agree with Aaron in combining both pages since both pages' targeting is very similar and that's the reason why Google is seeing the same keywords for both pages. You have the same keywords in the URL, Title tag and within the content. If you can combine these 2 pages, i think it will have a better effect since visitors can learn about your service and see examples on one page. Furthermore, it is easier to build back links for 50 Life Insurance to 1 page.
If you really want to have 2 separate pages, i would rename the 2nd page and target a different keyword. Life Insurance Quote? Life Insurance Comparison?
-
Again, my bigger concern is how thin the comparison page is.
This really has nothing to do with how similar the URLs are, although it might confuse users a bit. Its the lack of actionable and usable content on the comparison page that I think will make a difference here.
If you were really adamant about keeping the two pages intact and NOT merging them, which could be ok as well, then I would consider building up the comparison page so it was a bit richer in content, and provided some useful comparisons on the page rather than forcing the users to go somewhere else. Currently, there is just one big image in the center with a few lines above it.
Adding in a bit more content / context behind those comparisons could make all the difference.
-
Hi Aaron we could merge them, but when we designed the site we set out to be different from the other comparison type sites, in that rather than push the "Buy/Compare" option on the product landing page we wanted to take them on a journey depending on their level of knowledge.
Laying out their Nav options in the left hand side they could choose where to go depending on which page they arrived at, which is great once you are onsite, but not for optimising for search, hence my question.
Merging the page is an option but are their any options we could explore first?
Thanks
Ash
-
Hey Ash,
Is it an option to merge the pages? The reason I ask that is because when I go to the second page (the revenue generating one), the experience I get with it is actually pretty poor. It doesn't necessarily provide me a lot of information and then on top of that, it immediately redirects me to another page. So in many ways its like a gateway to the place you really want them to go.
Why not remove the second one all together, merge the content together so you can really provide a solid user experience, and then once the customers feel comfortable with the information they have gotten, they can click on receive a quote and get what they are looking for instead of jumping around, which runs the risk of them dropping off.
Is that possible?
Aaron
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 did my dev site end up in the search results?
We use a subdomain for our dev site. I never thought anything of it because the only way you can reach the dev site is through a vpn. Google has somehow indexed it. Any ideas on how that happened? I am adding the noindex tag, should I used canonical? Or is there anything else you can think of?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
How do we better optimize a site to show the correct domain in organic search results for the location the user is searching in?
For example, chicago-company.com has the same content as springfield-company.com and I am searching for a general non-brand term (i.e. utility bill pay) and am located in Chicago. How can we optimize the chicago-company.com to ensure that chicago's site results are in top positions over springfields site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aelite1 -
Adding some unique text to search
I do not know how to easily explain that but I will try 🙂 We are running the yellow pages in our country, where most (all) of the companies are listed. Each company has their keywords that are used in our search. All of those search keywords are indexed by Google and it goes something like that domain.com/search/keyword So far this page only lists the companies that match the search query. So that's not much content. I'm thinking about adding a sentence that would go something like this:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FCRMediaLietuva
The search query lists the companies of our country that do KEYWORD. So far COUNT was found. That seems pretty short and I am not sure if that does a lot of help for Google. But I cannot think of more text. Any ideas? Or should I give up on the idea of adding anything at all?0 -
Why is Google Displaying this image in the search results?
Hi i'm looking at advice on how to remove or change a particular image Google is displaying in the search results. I have attached a screenshot. From the first look of it, i assumed the image would be related and be on the dealers Google+ Local Page: https://plus.google.com/118099386834104087122/about?hl=en But there are no photos. The image seems to be coming from the website. Is there a way to stop Google from displaying this image or making them display a totally different image. Thanks, Chris XzfsnUy.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mattcarter080 -
Front end content optimisation query
One of my sites is installing Strange Loop, a front end content optimisation platform. Does anyone have any advice when dealing with this type of implementation or pitfalls that I need to look out for. Even just a headsup on some reading material would be good. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BenFox0 -
Zip Code Blocks the Search Engines!
I have a site where when you visit the product pages, it asks for your zip code. This is obviously blocking the bots from crawling the site. I know you can basically tell the bots how to ignore the zip code feature but I am not exactly sure how to do this. Any help would be appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lhawk0 -
Why is google automatically showing my competitor's result even when customer types in our brand name on the query?
This is little weird. We run a website specific to mobile phones called as 91mobiles.com. The site has gained lot of user interest and trust in the last 2 years [pre-dominantly indian users]. Lot of our users type mobile phone model and 91mobiles as the query. Example "Sony Xperia P 91mobiles". Google is showing gsmarena.com results on top and then shows our own results below! What's annoying is the fact that google also bolds the term gsmarena [denoting that it's a synonym]. Any idea why this is happening? We are very sure that we are not doing anything wrong..We have worked really hard for the last 2 years to reach where we are..and it's kind of hard to see gsmarena siphoning away our traffic for no reason at all [even when customer types in 91mobiles a part of the query to quality it]...Can some experts here demystify this? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gaadi0 -
Temporarily Delist Search Results
We have a client that we run campaign sites for. They have asked us to turn off our PPC and SEO in the short term so they can run some tests. PPC no problem straight forward action, but not as straight forward to just turn off SEO. Our campaign site is on Page 1, Position 4, 3 places below our clients site. They have asked us to effectively disappear from the landscape for a period of 1-2 months. Has anyone encountered this before, the ability to delist good SERP for a period of time? Details: Very small site with only 17 pages indexed within google, but home page has good SERP result. My issues are, How to approach this in the most effective manor? Once the delisting process is activated and the site/page disappears, then we reverse the process will we get back to where we were? Anyone encountered this before? I realise this is a ridiculous question and goes against SEO logic, get to page 1 results only to remove it, but hey, clients are always presenting new challenges for us to address..... Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jellyfish-Agency0