Which page will rank higher, my main article or the sub article linking from it?
-
Hi all,
Can you help me figure this one out?
I'm currently creating content for my website and I very badly want to know which page will rank higher in Google, my main article that has some keywords that are and links to my sub-article, or my sub-article which is optimized for those keywords?
I will demonstrate with an example since I'm not sure my question is clear: If I have an article that talks about different kinds of candy and it links to a sub-article that will elaborate on specific candies like a mint candy ,which page will rank for mint candies.
Until today I believed that if my sub-article which is linked from my main-article will rank for mint candies since it gets the support from my main article.Lately when experimenting this I found my thoughts to be wrong.
Can anyone help me with this one?Any insights?
Thanks,
Leebi
-
Hey Ed,
thanks for clarifying this.
-
It's right what you say but i've seen some evidence that google is going even further now. It's about establishing what are the doorways into your site from the serps. Some people might be looking for just 'candy' and they may see your site in the serps. But probably not since that's supremely competitive.
So the most efficient way I've found is to divide all the content up into 'categories' or topics. So these could be toffees, mints, chews etc. Then you must take a view on what the user wants. Do you think there are people out there who want to see pages about only hard mints with soft mints on another page. Or have both of them on the same page. If you get too granular then you might fall foul of the new maccabees update that penalises for having loads of articles targeting keyword variations.
To give you an example from my business, I have veneers, dental implants, whitening and routine dentistry. Then on each of those pages I have before and afters, prices, procedure, and pretty much everything on there using H2's and schema to pick up specific queries in blue as hyperlinks in the serps.
Comprehensiveness is very important. If I want my pages to rank they must include EVERYTHING users want to know about that thing. So for 'mint candy' i'll want to see hard, soft, sugar free etc etc.
Always be testing. I've had success incorporating reports and videos into the pages too. So you could have a report about how your candy is made or a commercial from a mint candy company or whatever.
But most important is to model the topics of the high performing competitors and be comprehensive and helpful and answer the query. Don't worry too much about internal linking so long as the links are natural, use anchor text and obey your structure and hierarchy of topics.
My home page doesn't rank for anything. But we make millions of pounds a year from our Veneers, Implants and Whitening pages. So maybe you need to focus less on the homepage.
-
Thanks for your time Egol!
-
Google uses a lot of factors to determine which page or pages of a website will rank for a specific keyword. To make a very simple example, which is probably realistic in most situations, we can attribute the ranking of a webpage for Keyword X mainly to two factors: the strength of the page, and the optimization of the page for the specific keyword.
Let's assume that Google uses (strength * optimization).
By that, a weak page with perfect optimization, could be outranked by a strong page with weak optimization. This is probably what you are seeing on your site right now.
Most sites have homepages that are stronger than interior pages, so seeing the homepage outrank an interior page is not uncommon. It is expected to happen a lot. When it happens for you, it means that your interior page doesn't have the strength to compete, and in that situation you should give thanks that your homepage is ranking because otherwise your interior page would be buried.
You should give thanks for another reason. When your interior page gets strong enough to rank on the first page, you will probably have a double listing (two pages on the first page of the SERPs for that query).
If you want to change this outcome, the best work to do is to get more internal and external links into your interior page to improve its strength.
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
-
Does anyone know of a tool where you can get all of the keyword that any given landing page is ranking for?
I'd like to find out what landing pages are ranking for which keywords, but I haven't been able to find a tool that does it. I was hoping there would be something where I could submit the url and get a list of every keyword it is ranking for. Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Powerblanket0 -
Microsite and main website alternate in rankings
Hi all, I just noticed a potential issue with our websites. We have two ecommerce websites, one is a very large one selling all sorts of products, while the microsite focuses on a small segment of products. All products sold on the microsite are also sold on the main website. In the beginning of September, we upgraded the microsite to the same script that the main website uses to make it mobile friendly and update the design. They now look very similar. Before, both websites used to rank on page 1 for a specific keyword. I have noticed that since we upgraded the microsite, the two websites have been taking turns ranking for the keyword. For a few weeks the microsite ranks and the main website doesn't rank for the keyword. Then for a few weeks only the main website ranks and the microsite doesn't. I think the reason this is happening is that Google understands that the content is the same and the websites are both owned by the same company. Fair enough. I remember reading an article about this phenomenon before but can't remember where. Does anyone know which article I'm talking about (it would have been on an SEO blog/website, e.g. Moz, SEJ, SE Roundtable etc)? I'm not even sure what this phenomenon is called. If we can only have one of the pages rank, we would prefer it to be the microsite at all times. Would a canonical tag on the main website referring to the URL on the microsite fix this? I think at the moment the product descriptions are either very similar or identical. Would it help to make them more different to get both to rank again if that is what we wanted to do? In the end it is still the same product being sold by the same company - after Google has already sort of merged the two, would they "un-merge" them if the content was more different? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | ViviCa10 -
Impact of multiple links on the same page to the same url (different anchor text) ?
Hi, On our category pages, for every product we have several links pointing to the product : on the image, on the product name, on the short description, on "read more", and a javascript onclick on the entire div. Could this have a negative impact for link juice distribution, or is it counted as only 1 link with the first anchor text found on the page ? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Strelok0 -
Links to Paywall from Content Pages
Hi, My site is funded by subscriptions. We offer lengthy excerpts, and then direct people to a single paywall page, something like domain.com/subscribe/ This means that most pages on the site links to /subscribe, including all of the high value pages that bring people in from Google. This is a page with an understandably high bounce rate, as most users are not interested in paying for content on the web. My question is are we being penalized in Google for having so many internal links to a page with a very high bounce rate? If anyone has worked with paywall sites before and knows the best practices for this, I'd be really grateful to learn more.
On-Page Optimization | | enotes0 -
Internal Followed Links and Total Internal Links as 1
It is showing Internal Followed Links and Total Internal Links as 1 in OpenSiteExplorer Tool http://www.expresscasket.com/ http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.expresscasket.com Not able to understand and identify the problem and fix it. But when i check in google webmasters tool, it is showing lots of internal links. Does it differ those internal links and your trace of internal links
On-Page Optimization | | expresscasket0 -
Do product pages need unique content or does having duplcate content hurt on those pages?
We are adding product rapidly to our website but this requires allowing duplicate to exist on our product pages of furniture-online.com. From an SEO standpoint do we need to make this content unique for each product. Since we aren't link building to specific product pages and we don't anticipate product pages being found in a search result, are we ok leaving the duplicate content in place and spending our dollars elsewhere?
On-Page Optimization | | gallreddy0 -
More than 100 internal links from a page
Hi, we have been developing our new site and improving the internal linking for 2 reasons, 1 to improve spidering and 2 to up sell more to customers. The error reports from SEOMoz are showing our biggest problem is too many internal links from 2000+ pages. How much of an impact does it have by having say 180 internal links compared to say 99 on a page? Our website has been moving up the SERPs so should i worry about it or should I ignore the warnings and continue with the menu system and internal linking we have in place already? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | PottyScotty0 -
Are duplicate titles an issue for pages I don't need ranking for?
A client has a load of duplicate page titles on their site. However, to cut a long story short, most of these pages are pointless and therefore we don't need ranking for them. As such, I'm not concerned whether any of the pages with duplicate content on them are ranked or not..... unless having duplicate page titles / content on these pages could mean that other pages on the site, like the homepage, don't rank as high because of this. Do I need to worry about duplicate titles on these pages, or can I ignore duplicate content on pages that I don't want to be ranked? Hope that makes sense!
On-Page Optimization | | RiceMedia0