Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why does Google pick a low priority page on my site?
-
Hi Guys.
One of my pages ranks quite well for "mid year diaries 14-15" on Google. The problem is it's a really specific product page (A4, Hardback, day-to-a-page diary I think).
It would be much better for the user to land on our mid-year diaries category, not really deep into the site. Why is Google prioritizing this product page over our general 'mid year diaries' category?
Especially when the category would relate to the search more accurately?
I work for TOAD diaries and I think our page rank is 10 for this search.
Eagerly awaiting some insight

Thanks in advance everyone!
Isaac.
-
Hi Issac,
Keyword cannibalisation is pretty much exactly that. This is why it is important for pages to be as unique as possible.
The two below are sort of a similar thing, except the first one refers to linking to your key pages from a product page by way of a short sentence that has a link with some nice on-topic anchor text leading off.
- On your product pages, have a text link back to the key page that isn't the crumb-trail. You can also do this from other pages closer to the homepage
- Internal Links to your key pages
-Andy
-
Hi Andy! Thankyou sooooooo much! I'm kinda new to this. I worked for them for while as a product guy. I realised the SEO was lacking and so I've sorta stepped into that role.
Makes a lot of sense, I will defiantly be implementing some changes.
Not sure what you meant by links that aren't the 'crumb trail'. And also what did you mean by keyword cannibalisation? Is that just having more than one page that you try to optimise for the same keywords?
Again thankyou so much.
Isaac.
-
Hi Issac,
In these circumstances, there are a few things to look at.
- Internal Links to your key pages
- External links to key pages
- Add some unique content to these pages. There is no content currently on them http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/shop/custom-diaries/mid-year-diaries-14-15
- On your product pages, have a text link back to the key page that isn't the crumb-trail. You can also do this from other pages closer to the homepage
- Make sure there is no keyword cannibalisation going on that could cause Google to choose one page over another
- There is no rel=canonical on any of the pages. Add these so that they self canonicalise
- Check to see if your key pages are indexed by Google. This often goes unnoticed and can have you chasing your tail
See how you get on with those. There are other lesser possibilities, but these should give you some good starting points.
-Andy
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
-
What is the best meta description for Category Pages, Tag Pages and Main Article?
Hi, I want to index all my categories and tags. But I fear about duplicating the meta description. for example: I have a tag name "Learn Stock Market", a category name "Learning", and a main article "What is Stock Market". What is your suggestion for meta description of these three pages that looks great for seo google?
On-Page Optimization | | mbmozmb0 -
Hi, Does having orphan pages on my site negatively affect my seo? Thank you.
Hi, I have quite a few orphan pages on my site and we see that our rankings have fell significantly over the past 6 months. Can this have be negatively affecting our rankings? Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | whiteonlySEO0 -
Include Site Name in Page Titles or not
i would like to ask if it is a good practice or not to Include Site Name in Page Titles. My page is not selling products it is about plagiarism checker tool. i will give one example in one page we are writing about the plagiarism types so the page title is plagiarism types and then is the site name. what is the better practice? Keep it or not? thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | anavasis3 -
Why is my contact us page ranking higher than my home page?
Hello, It doesn't matter what keyword I put into Google (when I'm not signed in and have cleaned down my browsing history) the contact us page ranks higher than the home page. I'm not sure why this is, the home page has a higher page authority, more links and more social media shares, the website is an established one. When I have checked Google Analytics my home page gets more people landing on it than the contact us page. It looks like people are ignoring the contact us page and scrolling down until they find the home page. I'd appreciate any help or advice you might have. Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | mblsolutions2 -
Noindex child pages (whose content is included on parent pages)?
I'm sorry if there have been questions close to this before... I've using WordPress less like a blogging platform and more like a CMS for years now... For content management purposes we organize a lot of content around Parent/Child page (and custom-post-type) relationships; the Child pages are included as tabbed content on the Parent page. Should I be noindexing these child pages, since their content is already on the site, in full, on their Parent pages (ie. duplicate content)? Or does it not matter, since the crawlers may not go to all of the tabbed content? None of the pages have shown up in Moz's "High Priority Issues" as duplicate content but it still seems like I'm making the Parent pages suffer needlessly... Anything obvious I'm not taking into consideration? By the by, this is my first post here @ Moz, which I'm loving; this site and the forums are such a great resource! Anyways, thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | rsigg0 -
Does Google look at page design
Hi everybody, At the moment i'm creating several webshops and websites with the same layout, so visitors can recognize the websites are from the same company. But i was wondering: Does google look at the layout of a webpage that it's not a copy of another website? This because loads of website have the same wordpress/joomla templates etc, or doesn't this effect rankingpositions? Thank you,
On-Page Optimization | | iwebdevnl0 -
Missing meta descriptions on indexed pages, portfolio, tags, author and archive pages. I am using SEO all in one, any advice?
I am having a few problems that I can't seem to work out.....I am fairly new to this and can't seem to work out the following: Any help would be greatly appreciated 🙂 1. I am missing alot of meta description tags. I have installed "All in One SEO" but there seems to be no options to add meta descriptions in portfolio posts. I have also written meta descriptions for 'tags' and whilst I can see them in WP they don't seem to be activated. 2. The blog has pages indexed by WP- called Part 2 (/page/2), Part 3 (/page/3) etc. How do I solve this issue of meta descriptions and indexed pages? 3. There is also a page for myself, the author, that has multiple indexes for all the blog posts I have written, and I can't edit these archives to add meta descriptions. This also applies to the month archives for the blog. 4. Also, SEOmoz tells me that I have too many links on my blog page (also indexed) and their consequent tags. This also applies to the author pages (myself ). How do I fix this? Thanks for your help 🙂 Regards Nadia
On-Page Optimization | | PHDAustralia680 -
Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?
Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page? Thanks so much! -Amy
On-Page Optimization | | MeghanPrudencio0