What would cause the wrong category page to come up?

[EcommerceSite]

I am trying to figure out why the wrong thing is coming up in the serps. For example, we are trying to rank for used widgets. But when you type in used widgets in google the primary widget page doesn't come up, one of the secondary categories under used widgets comes up. What would cause this? What are things I should check?

[Tom-Anthony]

Is it possible for you to give a clearer description of the categories? You say they are different products but that one is a second category of the other

Does the page you want to rank show up for any other searches? In your analytics are you getting any traffic from Google to that page?

[EcommerceSite]

I did the site search that you suggest- site:www.site.com widgets and it was in the correct order.

When I added the word used to the search it came up in the wrong order. They both have the word used, used the same amount of time. It makes no sense to me.

[EcommerceSite]

They actually are two separate types of items so I don't think I can canonical because I still want people to find the other category if that is what they are looking for. The names are so similar it is a problem.

I have an x category, y category, and xy category. Even though the names are the same, they are very different products.

[Alick300]

Hi,

The best way I find to see what the search engines thinks is the best page from your site for a term is to do a site search with the term you are checking.

E.g.

site:yousite.com + Term

In your case : yousite.com + used widgets

This shows you the pages in order that Googles ranks them. Also its a good way to identify duplicated title tags.

Now there is an article published by Rand Fishkin on this issue to know what could be the possible reason to showing wrong category pages and how you can correct them  .Please check once below article

http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions

I hope it helps

Thanks

[MonicaOConnor]

You could use a canonical tag to tell google which page is the desired page. Unless the other page also had targeted key terms on it. Then I would avoid the canonical tag and try to find a better way to optimize the other page for key terms not so closely related.

[EcommerceSite]

It is unfortunate, but they have almost the exact same name. I don't know how to differentiate them.

[EGOL]

These titles are so close that google is probably flipping a coin.

[EcommerceSite]

For the term "used widget" ,the title for the page I want to rank is "used widget for sale". For the page I do not want it to rank for this term it is "used widget - type for sale".

[EcommerceSite]

It It has breadcrumbs and it shows the category in the level up mechanism for the category sort.

[EGOL]

What are things I should check?

Proofread the title tags.   Be sure that the one that you want to rank is the best optimized.

[ofw12387]

it can be that both pages are semantically similar and the robot is not sure which one from both should it rank

You could try to create an internal link in secondary category "url" to the url you want to rank, using the keyword as anchor. It may helps