Is the wrong subpage ranking in Google? 6 common causes and 5 solutions | Weboptim
Often, the subpage that we are trying to get to the top of Google search - the one that users find relevant and useful - is not the subpage that the search engine ranks first. When this happens, it can be frustrating to determine the cause.
When the wrong page shows up in search results, it's a double feeling - on the one hand good because you get a good ranking and this brings traffic to the website, but on the other hand bad because you get a sub-optimal experience for those clicking through from search engines, as they may be left unsatisfied. The first step is to identify what is causing the problem.
The most common reasons that can cause the relevant page to be ranked lower:
1. Internal link text
The most common problem is that the optimisation of internal link text has gone wrong. Many websites link the keywords they want to target to one or more other URLs, which can mislead search engines. If you want the domain.hu/kavefozo page to be targeted for the keyword 'coffee machine', make sure that the link text pointing to this sub-page (within the website) is 'coffee machine'. You can of course use keyword combinations.
2. External link distortion
The second most common problem is that Google prefers a different subpage than us based on external links. This often happens when an older subpage is on the same topic, whereas we have recently created a fresher, more useful version of it. Unfortunately, the links usually always point to the old URL. These links are difficult to "migrate" to the new sub-page in order to eliminate the previous ranking.
3. Link authority and important indicators
There are cases where the raw metrics of the subpage - high PageRank, high number of link connections and referring domains - simply outperform the other relevant signals, which makes Google rank the subpage up front despite poor optimisation. In these situations, link source, link text or relevance are less important. This is less common in Google now than it used to be, but there are still some odd cases.
4. On-site optimisation
In some cases, a webmaster may not realize that the on page SEO for a particular URL, for particular words or phrases, is very similar to the settings for another URL. To differentiate and help position the right subpage, it is often wise to de-emphasize the keyword on the undesirable page while using it more effectively on the desired subpage.
5. Incorrect referrals
We've certainly seen a few cases where a redirect pointed to a page that was heavily keyword targeted, but at the wrong URL. These are very difficult to identify, because if the 301 page content no longer exists, it is difficult to know (unless you have the data backdated) why the page achieved a good ranking without any effort.
6. Content relevance problems
This is the most difficult to identify and explain, but we will try. 🙂 Basically, we think that the search engine does a lot of things to determine the degree of relevance for a given URL and a given keyword. It identifies topics, it identifies related words and phrases. It's probably the case that the search engine perceives that the page they are trying to rank is not particularly on-topic for the keywords in question, while another sub-page that is less optimised for SEO is more relevant.
Once we have identified the factors that might be affecting our results, we need to take steps to address the problem. If it's a problem within a site or with content, it's usually pretty easy to fix. However, if it's an external link, then more serious steps may be needed to resolve the situation and get the right page ranking.
Let's see what we can do:
1. 301 redirects (or rel. canonical) & rebuild
In a stubborn situation, or if a new page takes the place of the old one, you simply need to set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new URL (or vice versa) and select the best converting/performing content for the page that remains. A common strategy is to keep the older, ranked URL and redirect to a new one. This is easier because the old page may have been very strong and 301 redirects only cause some link strength loss.
If you plan to use the rel=canonical tag instead of 301, you must first ensure that the content is exactly the same on both pages. You can try to maintain 2 different versions of the same subpage by canonicalizing one to the other, while not explicitly contradicting Google's guidelines, it's not a completely clean technique either.
2. Content rewrite
If you need to maintain an old subpage and suspect that content, topic modelling or on-page SEO may be at fault, a good strategy is to rewrite the content of the page, focusing on relevance and user experience. This is relatively easy to test, while it can be useful, as it makes the page more focused, relevant, useful and conversion efficient.
3. Internal links
If you're not entirely sure whether link indicators like PageRank or link volume are to blame for the problem, you might want to try directing some internal links to the subpage in question.
4. Content swap
If you suspect that the content of the page is more responsible than the link profile, test this strategy. Just swap the on-page and meta data between the two pages and see what effect they have on rankings for that keyword. We should be prepared for potential traffic loss during the test period (this almost always happens, but sometimes it's worth it because it proves the hypothesis). If the ranking of the less well ranked page goes up with the new content while the ranking of the better ranked page goes down, we've probably done it right.
5. Increase external links
If you can develop a link building strategy to increase external links, content licensing, viral campaigns, etc.. to get attention for the site or just find friendly websites to help you, that can be good too.
While this set of recommendations and advice does not always solve the problem, it almost always helps to find the root cause, which can provide a framework for moving on.
Source: moz.com