Your page is ranking high in SERPs for
a high-conversion target keyword. What can be better?
Wait a minute.
It’s the wrong page!
Yes, it is your page, but it isn’t even
close to the ideal query match.
Even if you think that it is still
great that your page ranks high, no matter what the content is, you can face
the following consequences:
CTR goes down:
The snippet may lack relevancy, and it does not call for many clicks.
Bounce rate goes up:
Once users do not get a sufficient answer to their query, they bounce without a
second thought.
Conversions go down:
Another page with less relevant content may have no call-to-action.
I think that such a situation is not
what you need for your site and conversion pages. But it is not a catastrophe,
you can totally deal with it.
I’ve made a checklist on emergency
actions that will put everything in place. Compare the page that is ranking and
the page that should rank, and optimize the latter for things it lacks.
Keyword Optimization
The page that is ranking instead of the
intended one may have some elements that are better optimized for your target
keywords.
So, you should optimize the page you
need to rank to ensure its success in search listings. Here’s how.
1. Title Tag
Though now search engines are able to
interpret a page’s topic without exact keywords in the HTML title tag, it
is still of great importance, as it is seen in three places of high visibility:
SERPs.
Web browser tabs.
Social networks (when the page is
shared).
What to Do:
Watch out for title length: Keep
it under 60 characters. Use character savers (like “&” and “/”). Don’t use
CAPS LOCK.
Use target keywords smartly: Don’t
overstuff titles with keywords, use one or two.
Place keywords in the first part of a title
tag: When users skim search listings, they will see your
prominent info first.
Use a brand in the title: It
can work if your brand is popular – it will endorse your content.
Avoid duplicate titles: Duplicate
titles may be an indication of duplicate content, which can hurt your Google
rankings.
2. Meta Description
The importance of this tag is
comparable to the title tag. The meta description shows up in:
SERPs.
Social networks (when the page is
shared).
The description gives users more
details on your content and helps them determine whether it is relevant to
their query. This preview influences the CTR.
What to Do:
Watch out for length: Keep
it about 155 characters.
Make an ad out of your description: Write
a description that serves as an advertisement for your page. Plus, search
engines highlight users’ query keywords in bold in SERP snippets. Such bolded
words draw users’ attention. So, optimizing your meta description for keywords
is quite important.
Avoid duplicate descriptions: Duplicate
descriptions may serve as an indication of duplicate content to search engines.
3. Header Tags
HTML header tags (H1-H6) are used to
structure content and show its hierarchy within the page.
The use of header tags help search
engines understand content much better.
Plus, header tags provide a structure
for a particular piece of content that allows visitors to consume the main
points in a short period of time.
What to Do:
Place headings in a hierarchal order: Use
only one H1 per page and then proceed to level-structuring with H2-H6.
Optimize headings for keywords: Headings
usually equal main points of your page, so it is advisable to include your
target keywords into them.
Make your headings stand out: While
search engines read your meta tags, your visitors read text. Use different font
sizes, formatting, and styles to make your headings catch users’ eye.
4. Content
For search engines to find your
content, they need some cues. Keywords are the best cues you can incorporate
into your page.
What to Do:
Place keywords in the first 100-150 words of
the page: Both users and search engines will find them quicker
this way.
Use all kinds of related words: In
the era of semantic search, Google does not need exact keywords to answer the
query. The only important thing here is the meaning behind the words. So feel
free to use all kinds of synonyms and related terms.
Keep your content at considerate length: Longer
content usually ranks higher, however, the length may vary from niche
to niche. Thus, to understand what length is good enough, look at the pages
that already rank high for your targeted keywords.
5. Internal Search
When your website is over 20 pages, it
can be a good idea to have a search box on your website.
A great thing about a search box is
that you can integrate it with Google Analytics and view the queries that
visitors enter at your site.
This data will let you:
Understand what users search for and
check whether you have it in place. If you follow the lead, you will
reduce bounce rates considerably.
Find new keyword ideas on
the basis of the queries that users type into your search box.
6. Open Graph
Open Graph tags
make snippets out of your links when they are shared via social media. This
way, you can control how your content is represented after sharing in Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. It makes sense then to optimize OG tags to entice
clicks and conversions.
What to Do:
Optimize your OG title and description: As
you have those special chunks of HTML that are used by social media, first of
all, use them, and second, use them wisely. Remember, that these elements won’t
be used in SERPs, so it is not that important to optimize them for your
keywords, but instead let them speak to your potential visitors.
Make the most of OG image: An
image makes a shareable link much more attractive, as it can call for some memorable
associations. Plus, it is possible to place text on the image to recap the
major point of your content.
Visual Optimization
Now we’ll look at the elements that
make your results more attractive to users. It gives search engines a strong
cue that this page is much more fitting for a particular query.
7. Schema Markup
Schema markup is a number of special vocabularies that
you can use to mark your pages. As a result, your snippets will stand out in
SERPs.
For example, your snippets may have
additional elements like:
·
Star ratings.
·
Images.
·
Number of reviews.
What to Do:
Google has two quite handy tools to
help you with adding schema markup to your pages:
Markup Helper for
implementing a markup on a website.
Testing Tool for
previewing your snippets.
8. Multimedia
Images, diagrams, infographics,
and video tutorials make content more engaging thus increasing the time spent
on site.
What’s more, besides clear improvement
of user experience, some of these elements can be optimized for target
keywords.
What to Do:
Optimize alt attributes of images: Pick
useful images (diagrams, infographics, etc.) and add the alt text for them. Let
their description amplify the context of your content by introducing target
keywords. This way, you will make your images more visible both to search
engines and visitors.
Add a video transcript: In
case you have rather thin content, the video transcript will become the
additional content on your page. Plus, it is quite handy when users cannot
watch the video for any reason or when they do not quite understand some parts
of it.
9. Above-the-Fold Content
The term “above the fold” has come from
newspaper editors and become an SEO concept after Google’s page layout
update, when it started penalizing sites for lots of ads above the imaginary
fold.
Official AdWords Campaign Templates
Select your industry. Download your
campaign template. Custom built with exact match keywords and converting ad copy
with high clickthrough rates.
ADVERTISEMENT
What to Do
Even if you get a fair amount of
revenue from displaying ads on your website, you have to remember that too many
ads can have a negative impact on search rankings.
Make sure to have enough content above
the fold:
10. Social Share Buttons
The prominent placement of social share
buttons will make sharing of your content even easier for your visitors.
What to Do:
Place social share buttons strategically: These
buttons may slow down your page’s load time, so use them on pages that are good
candidates for attracting a good amount of referral traffic.
Technical Optimization
In this section check those technical
issues that can prevent your page from ranking.
11. Page Speed
Page speed has a great influence on
user experience, revenue, and SEO.
Moreover, Google seems to have recently
made a strategic decision to focus on speed, having introduced several
breakthrough technologies and tools lately, so it’s high time paying attention
to this aspect.
What to Do:
Measure and improve your optimization Score: Measure
your Optimization Score with PageSpeed Insights and
follow the common performance best
practices, which consist of nine straightforward rules.
Get familiar with Google’s new approach to
measuring page speed
12. Mobile Friendliness
People are almost always on their
smartphones. A huge number of queries are conducted on these devices.
What’s more, Google has already
started migrating sites to mobile-first indexing. It means that
Google will look first on your mobile version when crawling, indexing, and
ranking your websites, not your desktop version.
What to Do:
Use responsive design for
your site.
Go through a checklist of the best practices for mobile-first
indexing.
Cater for user experience: Make
sure your site (in general) and your key landing pages (in particular) load
fast on both mobile and desktop, and all the content is displayed properly.
Linking Optimization
In this section, I’d like to discuss
how your links (backlinks, external links, and internal links) can influence
rankings of your important pages.
13. Backlinks
Sometimes the wrong landing page will
rank instead of your important page because it has higher authority backlinks,
which is a strong relevancy signal to search engines.
What to Do:
Compare the backlinks of
the pages in question and check whether the wrong page has some backlinks of
high authority.
Contact the external sites and
ask them to link to the page you need.
Try to earn high authority backlinks for
the page you need.
14. Outbound Links
Outbound links to related external
pages is a relevancy signal that helps search engines determine your page’s
topic.
The wrong page that ranks may have more
external links to high authority sites. Thus, search engines may think that
this page is a hub of quality info and pull it to search listings.
What to Do:
Make the right page a hub of quality info by
consolidating on it all the external links to authority sites on a particular
topic.
Degrade the wrong page that
ranks by removing the links to authority sites.
15. Internal Links
When several pages target the same
topic (or keyword), your internal links get less valuable, and search
engines cannot always determine the most relevant page for this topic. It is
one of the most obvious reasons for the wrong page to rank.
What to Do
Create a topical cluster: By interlinking your
posts on a particular subject, you are creating a field of expertise on this
topic. In this field of expertise, you can make the most prominent page rank
higher by linking back to it from the less prominent pages. Try to use anchor
text optimized for your keywords when you link to your other theme-relevant
pages.
Use 301 redirects:
You can redirect visitors from less prominent pages to the ones that you’d like
to rank for this topic or keyword.
De-optimization
It is a rare thing in an SEO world to
give advice on how to degrade ranking signals of your own page. But when this
page ranks instead of a more prominent one and does no good whatsoever, this is
the only way to deal with this unpleasant situation.
Here is a short plan for this act of
self-sabotage:
1. Take Away Targeted Keywords
In spite of the fact that search
engines can now determine a topic without exact-match keywords, it still won’t
hurt to remove references to targeted keywords. This also includes anchor text
that are optimized for keywords.
2. Merge Similar Pages
In case you do not want to devalue a
wrongly ranked page, because it still contains valuable information and inbound
links, you can consider merging these pages to create a master page on this
topic.
3. Canonicalize
If you have a couple of pages with
almost identical content, use rel=canonical to inform search engines which
page is more important. It will prevent you from having duplicate content
and save you from keyword cannibalization.
4. Noindex
This measure can be taken for those
pages that are still valuable for your visitors, but you do not need them to
rank in search results.
Just use robots meta tag in your HTML
to noindex such pages.
5. Delete
It sounds quite radical, but you have
to do it if this page has:
Thin content and steals traffic from
similar but a much better page.
No value to your visitors.
Before deleting, make sure that this
page does not have any important backlinks and internal links. Also, add a 301
redirect from this page to a similar one that you would like to be ranking.
I’m sure that by going through this
list, you will find out the reason for the wrong page to rank instead of a more
prominent one.
