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
-
Single Folder vs Root
I'm working on a multi-state attorney website and I'm going back and forth on URL's. I thought I'd see what the community thinks. lawsite.com/los-angeles/car-accident-lawyer vs. lawsite.com/los-angeles-car-accident-lawyer I should note this site will have over a dozen city locations, with different practices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EdShull0 -
Non-optimised pages ranking higher than optimised homepage
I'm a developer working with a dating site and we're having what appear to be unusual ranking behaviour for the keyword "Ukraine Brides". When searching for "Ukraine Brides" we typically have the top 3 results in Google, however the homepage is almost never ranked #1. Other non-optimised pages appear ahead of it. I believe this is having a negative affect on our conversion rate, so wish to see this resolved. For instance, if you search here in NZ, the results are typically: Login page (/account/login) Search page (/search) Home page (/) Similar situation when searching in the US, but typically the top result is the search page. Is this unusual? We've spent quite a bit of time optimising the homepage, it has more external links, more internal links, better content that targets the keyword, more traffic, etc. Even so, the login and search pages appear higher. A side note, the average CTR for "Ukraine Brides" is significantly lower than "Ukraine Brides Agency" (20% vs 80% respectively), so I don't think that it's purely a 'brand keyword'. A few thoughts were: The search page is not accessible from the homepage unless you are logged in. Maybe this is causing some sort of linking/seo/ranking issue? Re: the login page being higher, perhaps many existing users visit the login page directly from this keyword in order to login straight away so Google pushes this to the top. I think this is less likely because most existing users will be logged in automatically (via cookies "remember me") and the homepage has a login form in anycase The site supports multiple languages. Maybe this is causing some canonical issues? There was an additional suggestion that we should noindex the login and search pages in order to resolve this ranking issue, but were nervous that we'd lose a large amount of organic clicks if we did this. Google must be doing this for a reason, so we wanted to resolve that underlying reason before dropping the noindex hammer. The fear is of course that we've done something wrong with our homepage which is causing it to perform poorly and thus these other pages rank higher. The hope would be that if we fixed that, that our rank for other keywords would improve also. It would be great if we could get some more eyes on this to hopefully confirm we're not doing anything silly, and are just generally after a second opinion.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrew_uba0 -
Interested ranking results
Hello, I have different pages that are written on the same model. I updated their content 2 weeks ago. Some of those climbed to 1 st page or beginning or 2 nd some didn't move or stayed where they originally were, 3 rd of 4 th page ? My question is whether there is a longer delay for some of them to rank (due to the term being more competitive for example) or if I should look somewhere else in maybe something that I wrote in the content of the pages that ranked versus those than didn't move. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
How ot optimise a website for competitive keywords?
Hi guys, I hope to find some good answers to my questions, because here are some of the best SEO's in the world. I'm doing SEO as a hobby for a few years and had some very good results before the latest Google updates. Now I'm not able to rank any website for competitive keywords. The last project I started is this website (man and van hire company targeting London market).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nasi_bg
The problem is that I can't rank even in Top 100 in Google UK for the main keywords like: "man and van london" , "man and van service london" ,"london man & van"...
The site has over 1k good backlinks (according to Ahrefs), unique content, titles and descriptions but still can't rank well. Am i missing something? Few years back that was more than enough to rank well in Google.
I will be very grateful to hear your suggestions and opinions.0 -
Is un-searched content worth writing?
Hi, Is every post you write on your site is SERPs worthy? I'll give an example -
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
We often cover industry related news items. It is written very well with personal opinions, comments and detailed explanations. Our readers find it interesting, "like" and "plus" it. However, these items will never appear in the SERPs simply because they won't be searched. Needless to say that these are not ever green pieces. If by chance it lands a subject that may be searched in the future, usually it won't appear because it means that the item was also covered by major sites like CNN, Forbes, Bloomberg etc. Is it worth out time to keep "investing" in these types of articles? Thanks0 -
On Page vs Off Page - Which Has a Greater Effect on Rankings?
Hi Mozzers, My site will be migrating to a new domain soon, and I am not sure how to spend my time. Should I be optimizing our content for keywords, improving internal linking, and writing new content - or should I be doing link building for our current domain (or the new one)? Is there a certain ratio that determines rankings which can help me prioritize these to-dos?, such as 70:30 in favor of link-building? Thanks for any help you can offer!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Links in Behind a Tab in Body vs Footer
Though I would ask the community this as it relates to positioning of external links on page vs. code and body vs footer. Working with a strategic partner for some data sharing arrangements and the question exists whether followed links in the template footer to our partners website provide better value vs. Body Links with context behind a CSS Tab (All code for Tabbed content is resolved on the same page)? Yes there are links coming back from the partner site as well.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AU-SEO0 -
Site Search Tracking Of Non Existing Products
I am working towards optimizing the site search box of an ecommerce website and I wish to track the keywords which users are searching but which are yielding no results. Please see the image for the same. I wish to assimilate data on the same which would then allow me to add products which users are searching but which the site doesn't have. However my problem is that I don't know how you could obtain this data in analytics because these results manifest itself in the form of searchresults.php. I know that analyzing search refinements and percentage of exits in Google Analytics is an option but I want a more compact and simpler solution to the problem where I could see exactly all the data in one place. Does anyone have suggestions on how this can be done? Thanks in advance, Y35Mj.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pulseseo0