Some SEO Help with Wrong Page Ranking

[shaunm]

Hi All,

I have a situation here and need your valuable comments.

What will most of you guys do when you see a slightly relevant page rank high for the keyword that you optimized the main overview page for?

Say this is the keyword I am targeting 'piano' And this is the page I optimized for this keyword example.com/piano.aspx

But I have a resource page in my website that talks about piano and stuffs. And that page is example.com/resources/piano-how-to.aspx (This page has very small content and with a link to the example.com/piano.aspx)

So, what I should be exactly doing here?

#1. Remove any internal links from the piano.aspx and other pages within my site to that particular resource page that talks about piano how to's. Remove the word 'piano' from the title tag and optimize it with less important words for that resource page. End of the day, do whatever needs to be done to pull down the resource page from ranking higher and letting Google know that this piano.aspx is the right page.

#2. Optimize the resouce page title to something better. Put some more content to it. And give some valid links to this resource page from the main overview page which is piano.aspx. End of the day, do whatever needs to be done to go along with what Google considers the best page within my site for that keyword.


Thanks for all your help :-)

[FranticFish]

I had a similar problem last year with Google ranking a blog category page rather than the home page and managed to get round it.

Tedster suggested there that the anchor text on each page might be the issue - that the text was helping the page it was ON more than the page it pointed TO.

This was one of the things I changed, details here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[alex252]

You should not direct bargains with the backlinks with high DA sites, also the proper metas are important, make sure you have the content arranged with the kw for the page you want to optimize.

[ZydoSEO]

Often when I see this, it's because the preferred page (in this case /piano.aspx) has too many internal and/or external links pointed to it with the targeted keyword phrase ("piano") as the link text.

It doesn't look natural for pages to have lots of inbound links with the exact same text ("piano") as the link text. That preferred URL ends up getting filtered for the VERY word you are targeting, so the preferred URL will not rank. Instead Google picks a less relevant page to show in it's place typically with lower rankings.

[shaunm]

@FranticFish
Thanks for your answer. It looks like you would go with the option #1 then :-)

@alex252
Thanks! Seriously, is that an answer to my question?

@ZydoSEO
Thanks!I am curious to know if you had such a situation where because of too many links with exact anchor text pointing to a single page got filtered out? Also, I would keep this in mind and wiill definitely run a background check on the pages. But my question isn't about wrong page ranking but which of the two options an SEO like you would prefer to do?

Thanks again!

[ZydoSEO]

I have dealt with this for several clients who had a particular URL being filtered for a particular keyword phrase for having too many exact match link texts for that particular keyword phrase.

If you determine the /piano.aspx page is being filtered because you have an unnatural number of backlinks pointing to it with "piano" then nothing you can do to the "piano how to" page is going to make the piano.aspx page rank better.

#1 will simply make the "piano how to" page rank worse and possibly make G pick an even less relevant page. If piano.aspx is filtered, nothing you do to demote other pages will make it rank better.

In #2 you suggest changing titles,etc. I wouldn't unless they are not properly set for your targeted keywords. And you also suggest adding more links pointing to piano.aspx. If your page is being filtered then adding more links with "piano" as the link text is only going to make things worse.

Personally, I would just be thankful that you have a page ranking and do nothing to upset that. Work on the problem (high percentage of backlinks for /piano.aspx with exactly "piano" as the link text), not the symptoms (wrong page ranking). Gradually introduce more backlinks to piano.aspx with white noise link text (click here, here, learn more, etc.) as well as longer tail, one of a kind link text that might still contain the word "piano" (such as "see our pianos at <insert brand>"). Over time this will reduce the percentage of back links with exactly the filtered term and eventually the filter will get lifted.

Again ALL of the above assumes you are confident that your URL is being filtered for that keyword phrase because of its inbound links are overoptimized for "piano".

[shaunm]

Thank again for the detailed answering, ZydoSEO :-)

Personally, I would just be thankful that you have a page ranking and do nothing to upset that

This is it!