My homepage no longer ranks for a keyword, instead a page from the blog now appears in the results
-
Hello,
Our site used to rank for a specific keyword - "eco products", with a link going to the homepage. However, in the last few weeks, we've noticed that the home page no longer ranks for this keyword, and instead the second result on the page is a link to a catagory page on our blog.
I'd be very grateful if anyone had any information about why this might have happened, and what possible steps I could take to remedy the situation.
Many thanks,
Sophy
-
Ha, no worries buddy. Great minds and all that.
-
Sorry Marcus, We must have been typing at the same time.
-
Hi Sophy, It's actually in line with what Marcus was saying. Your two pages are competing with each other. If you look at the Title Tag for the home page, there is nothing that says "eco products." But if you look at your category page, you'll see not only does the Title Tag say "Eco Products," but it's also in the URL. So you'll have to make a decision as to whether or not you'll want Eco Products to have it's own page or to have it show up on the home page. If you want it to show on the home page, you'll want that in the Title Tag, and you will need to rename that category page as well as renaming the Title Tag.
-
Hey Sophie
In this instance, I am guessing you don't want to lose that page from ranking but the page itself is called 'eco-products' and the term you are targeting on the homepage is eco-products so you seem to have a conflict of interest between those two pages.
Lets look at the homepage:
**Title: **Nigel's Eco Store - Environmentally friendly products and eco friendly gifts for sustainable living
Keyword Usage: 2 - once in a page title, once in an image title (0 times on the page itself)Lets look at the /eco-products/ page
Title: Eco Products
Keyword Usage: 13 times on page & 27 times in total taking all HTML elements into accountAnchor Text
Additionally, lets look at the anchor text to the pages. The homepage has the standard logo and image links from the main nav but the eco-products page has tons of links with the term 'eco products' from the 'posted in tags'.
Summary
In brief, without looking at the external issues, the ranking is kind of right. Everything on your blog page is saying hey, I am about eco products but your homepage hardly uses this term at all.
Your homepage ranks first (uk at least) for a bunch of other terms:
environmentally friendly products store
eco storeSo, is this such a bad thing? I imagine, if you really want to rank the homepage for this term you could rename that page / tag to something else and work that phrase into the homepage a little more. You seem so strong for eco + x that it would likely be doable (and you have the historical ranking for the term).
Maybe it may be a good chance to look at your landing pages and add a new page to catch this traffic?
There are plenty of options but the approach depends on what you are looking for here but there is certainly no mystery why that page ranks for that term over your homepage. I think the simplest solution is just a case of changing the name of that page/tag to something more suitable and building some relevance for eco products on the homepage OR looking at a new optimised landing page for that term.
Hope it helps!
Marcus -
Hi,
Well, it's good to hear I'm not alone! The link to the homepage which used to appear for this term is http://www.nigelsecostore.com/, and the link to the page which now appears in second place for this term is http://www.nigelsecostore.com/blog/category/eco-products/
Thank you for your suggestions,
Sophy
-
Hi Marcus,
Thanks for getting back to me so promptly, and thanks for the suggestions - very useful.
Here is a link to the page that comes up for this keyword - http://www.nigelsecostore.com/blog/category/eco-products/
Looking in Google Webmaster Tools, I can't see a single link to this page.
Our homepage http://www.nigelsecostore.com/ always used to rank for this term "eco products", and I can understand that its normal for your ranking to go up and down over time for a term, but for the homepage to completely disappear from the search results for this term, and to be replaced by this category page on our blog seems very weird!
Thanks,
Sophy
-
Hi Sophy, I had a similar problem. I combated this by adding url conical. I also removed most of the backlinks to that particular category and redirected it to my index page. It took a couple of weeks to get back to how it was. It will be hard to find out the reason without posting a link though! Thanks
-
Hey Sophy
Could be a lot of things, could you supply a link?
- maybe the blog page is more relevant for that term or you have two competing pages
- maybe the blog page picked up some external links with that anchor so became more relevant than the homepage
- maybe the sites structure or linking gives more relevance to that page for that term
The solutions are kind of similar to the suggestions above
- make sure the homepage is more relevant for that term
- make sure the two pages are not competing for that term
- do some link building for that term to the homepage
- ensure the internal linking and anchors are not promoting that page for that term
Hard to go further than these general hints without a URL but happy to take a look if you want to post a link.
Hope it helps!
Marcus
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 change our main category pages to product listing pages?
With the thought of improving user experience, as well as rankings in Google, I'm considering changing our main category pages to product listing pages (with sub-categories remaining, still). These main category pages are very standard and don't link to any informational content, such as buyers guides, etc. What's driven this is the latest Google core update. I've noticed our main competitor (who we were out-ranking before... but not now) now uses this approach. I can see the benefit from a user perspective, i.e. less clicks to reach products. What's the pros/cons from an SEO point of view, please? Could the potential duplication of content be an issue? For context, we have about 2,000 products and website is on Magento 2.
On-Page Optimization | | alifeofjoy1 -
How happy should we be about a Page 1 “See results about” SERP?
A site fell off Page 1 organic listings but now regularly appears in the right-side “See results about“ SERP. How valuable are such results, especially compared to the 1-10 organic result listing? And, are “see results about” SERPs national?
On-Page Optimization | | PKI_Niles0 -
Page Layout Updates and Mobile Pages with Ads
I have been trying to do some research on the Page Layout Algorithm and Top Heavy Ads and much of what I read does not mention about mobile pages as apposed to desktop. I am curious if the Page Layout updates can be effected by mobile pages as well and if there is any good articles on this subject. Also is this Algorithm been incorporated into its regular algorithm or do we still have to wait for refreshes to see the impact? Cesar
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich0 -
Worth redirecting old blog posts into pages?
I'm working on a site that has some blog posts from 2011 - 2013 ranking on the first page for relevant terms. I'm going through and updating some of the content, internal links, etc., and wanted to know if it's worth redirecting some of these blog posts into new pages (in WordPress). Right now, the blog post URLs are long - exampleURL.com/2011/3/9/blog-post-title/ and the dates show up in the SERPs. I'd like to have the date removed so that the content doesn't look outdated, and I'd also like to have cleaner URLs. In your opinion, is it worth creating new pages and redirecting the old blog posts, or is the benefit of doing this not worth the effort? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | dchristensen30 -
Wrong Page is Ranking
My client is an Ecommerce reseller of a few major scooter brands. We currently rank fifth for a particular brand name but our main brand page isn't the one that ranks. Instead, it's a product page. The main brand page has an A rating from Moz for the desired keyword phrases. Neither page has any backlinks. Any ideas on why our main brand page would be outranked by a product page? What could we do to change this?
On-Page Optimization | | TrinShin0 -
Are blog pages hurting rankings?
Let me begin by saying that I have a Wordpress site with a customized theme. When I view my webpage's crawl diagnostics, it keeps showing a lot of Warnings. There are 89 pages with Too Many On-Page Links and 90 Pages with a missing meta-description tag. The problem is that the pages are listed as follows for both errors: Blog Page 10 Blog Page 11 Blog Page 12 Etc. There are no other pages, just the blog pages (which include about 7 posts/page). How do I eliminate the too many links without deleting them from individual blog posts, and how do I add meta-description tags to blog pages without duplicating the tag for /blog? Thanks! | | | | |
On-Page Optimization | | DuBois
| | |
|
|
| | | |
|
| | | | |
| |0 -
Which redirect to use when redirecting to https page from http page
I have one form under https which is redirected from the regular http page. this site was not made by me and I am trying to understand if the way it was redirected using 302 redirect is a problem Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | ciznerguy0 -
I am optimizing my webpages according to suggestions from the On Page Report Card. Should I have more than one keyword for a page?
I am optimizing my webpages according to suggestions from the On Page Report Card. Should I have more than one keyword for a page or should I make separate pages for each keyword even when they are similar? Will Google penalize me for making similar pages? Imagine selling, bargain milk chocolate peanut clusters. Keywords examples could be: Bargain chocolate Bargain milk chocolate Bargain milk chocolate peanut clusters Bargain chocolate peanut clusters Chocolate peanut cluster bargains Milk chocolate peanut cluster bargains Etc. Will one page called http://mycompany/bargainmilkchocolatepeanutclusters.com be OK or should I have one called http://mycompany/bargainmilkchocolate.com and one called http://mycompany/bargainmilkchocolatepeanutclusters.com and one called http://mycompany/chocolatepeanutclusterbargains.com , etc.? Thanks for your advice.
On-Page Optimization | | KSHAYY0