I've been monitoring my rankings on key phrases for the past year or so. Since Penguin 4, more specifically - since the announcement that P3 demotions would be removed, I've noticed drastic improvements on > 70% of my phrases. Most interesting is that one page on my site has not only improved in ranking over the past few days, but it also ranked very well (page 2) since Penguin 1. Coincidentally, this page is the only page on my site that discusses a particular topic, and it's the only page on the site with the critical key word in the title.
By comparison, three other pages that have drastically improved in ranking (from ranking above position 150 to ranking #30 to #70). When I sorted the key phrases that improved, I noticed that the key phrases are very similar across three different pages of my site (all of which contain at least one identical key word in their titles).
That may sound confusing, so to rephrase:
Page 1 title: how to get green examples fast
page 2 title: green examples are easier to get than red examples
page 3 title: get green examples here
Keyphrases that improved drastically, but seemed to reach their highest possible ranking:
green examples fast --> Page 1 --> jumped from 150 to 47
get green examples --> Page 3 --> jumped from 180 to 70
fast green examples cost --> Page 2 --> jumped from 160 to 55
Page 4 (not listed above) is about "red examples" and has ranked around #12 for the past 2 years and now on page 1
Could there be too much similarity, and therefore thematic confusion for the algorithms, to rank those phrases higher? Should they be consolidated into one page? I have read in the past that similar pages may impact Googlebot's identification of themes and topics within a theme, and may have difficulty "knowing" which page to rank. I doubted that notion until today.
I really hope this makes sense. I know it's convoluted, but hopefully you guys will have some tips based on your expertise and experience :)
Thanks!
