This is a problem that plagues SEO professionals and website owners. How can you tell if your site is ranking correctly for the keywords you want? You need to use Google’s Keyword Planner tool, but sometimes it doesn’t work. This article will teach you how to get around this issue so your rankings stay correct.
“Google Search Brings Up Wrong Page” is a problem that has been present for a while. Google has released 3 fixes to fix the issue. Read more in detail here: google search brings up wrong page.
You’ve performed all the procedures you think are required to rank a page for a certain keyword, only for another page on your site to appear for that term.
This is an irritating but all-too-common issue. For some reason, Google doesn’t recognize your chosen website as the optimal traffic destination when the “wrong” page appears.
Logic doesn’t apply here; only algorithms decide the ranking, and many SEO strategies may try to remedy it.
Your user experience may be harmed as a result of the “wrong” page appearing, and you may see less conversions, or your bounce rate, CTR, or engagement metrics may be lower than they should be.
Fortunately, there are various options for resolving the issue. Let’s have a look at what we’ve got.
How Can A Page’s Ranking Signals For A Specific Keyword Be Improved?
Step 1: Assess Your Focus Keyword’s User Intent
When a person types a search word into Google, they are effectively expressing their purpose.
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Over the last year or so, it’s become more important to ensure that the page you want to rank for a query fits the user intent.
- Is it your intention to purchase something? (Transactional)
- Is the purpose to locate a certain website or page? (Navigational)
- Is your objective to obtain useful information to assist you answer a question? (Informational)
It’s critical to tailor your material to the intended audience.
For example, if your target phrase was “best cheap laptops 2021,” and you wanted your product page or category page to rank for it, you’d have a slim chance.
November 2021, author’s screenshot.
All of the top-ranking websites in the example above are from third-party aggregators and review sites that provide a comparison of the finest laptops.
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In reality, no manufacturer or retail site ranks on Page 1 for this phrase, so you either need to move your emphasis away from it entirely or better grasp what you’re up against in order to better align.
Step 2: Examine the page’s content.
After you’ve verified that your content matches the purpose, you can focus on optimizing the content on the appropriate page.
To enhance your analysis, consider the following questions:
- Is my major emphasis keyword in the title of my page?
- Do I include a mention of my main emphasis keyword in my description?
- How does my content compare to the top 10 or top 20 ranked sites in terms of length?
- Do my competitors’ websites employ shared semantic keywords that I should include on my page?
- Is my website able to answer any inquiries a person would have in order to learn more about this subject?
SEMrush Writing Assistant and Clearscope are two tools that do an outstanding job of assisting you in analyzing and answering the questions above.
Step 3: Take a look at your internal links.
Because Google uses link signals to determine how significant a page is, make sure you have a sufficient number of pages on your website referring back to the page you want to optimize.
Add 3-5 internal links from high-authority sites that are thematically related.
Go to Ahrefs, input your domain, and then choose “Top Pages” from the drop-down menu.
November 2021, author’s screenshot.
This will inform you which pages on your site are the most authoritative, and all you have to do now is locate the most relevant pages and link to your target URL.
Bonus Tip: Internal anchor text may be aggressive, therefore utilize your target term as the anchor text of your internal link.
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Step 4: Take a look at your external hyperlinks.
External links are subject to the same rules as internal links.
Links indicate to Google that a site or a page is important, therefore having a large number of external links referring to the erroneous page for a given keyword can hurt your ability to rank the proper page.
If this is the case, contact the sites in question and request that they link to the right page.
Similarly, if you don’t have any external links leading to the proper page, Google will interpret this as a signal that the page isn’t important and shouldn’t be ranked highly. It might be as easy as doing a link audit to resolve your issue.
Step 5: Examine Your User Information
Is the relevant page generating a lot of bounces?
Do you have a low click-through rate?
Is your conversion rate low?
It may have an impact on your overall rankings if users arrive on the appropriate page and leave fast, or if they are unable/unwilling to traverse the page and convert.
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Get a sense of your user statistics in relation to this page using Google Analytics or technologies like Hotjar, and then revamp the page to address any issue your visitors are having.
How Can I Reduce Or Downgrade A Page’s Current Ranking Signals?
You’ll need to downgrade the page that’s presently ranking for your search term after you’ve improved the rankings of the page you’re aiming to enhance.
I understand that this goes against almost every SEO instruction, but it’s what has to happen in order for the relevant website to rank.
Remove any traces of the keyword and its associated words from the non-relevant page to accomplish this.
Then reorganize your internal links to direct away from this page and toward the appropriate page.
External links are the same way: contact certain webmasters and request that their links be redirected to the right page.
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If all else fails, use a 301 redirect.
If all of the above procedures fail, use a 301 redirect. Simply remove the incorrect page and apply a 301 redirect to the correct page you want to be indexed. This will inform Google that you have permanently relocated the old page to the new page, and any equity held by the old page will be transferred to the new page, giving it an additional boost.
It is possible to correct “wrong” page rankings.
It’s an all-too-common occurrence when the incorrect website appears for your target term, and it may have a bad impact on your user experience.
However, by following the easy procedures outlined above, you should be able to address the problem and redirect visitors to the desired website.
As your traffic starts to reach its intended destination, the ultimate result will be a better user experience, as well as higher engagement metrics.
Additional Information:
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Shutterstock/Zouls/Featured Image
The “keyword cannibalization example” is a situation where Google has ranked the wrong page for your keywords. It can be caused by competition, or irrelevant content.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Google ranking the wrong page?
A: The wrong page is ranked because one of the URLs on your website was 301 redirected to another URL.
How do I change my Google ranking?
A: Google is an extremely complicated question, and I unfortunately dont have the answer.
How do you solve keyword cannibalization?
A: To answer this question we need to understand some key terms. Keyword cannibalization is when a keyword you use for one of your articles causes the articles ranking in search engines like Google and Yahoo! News to drop due to it being used by other websites more often on their pages than on yours, effectively stealing away traffic from your website.
Related Tags
- ranking for the wrong keywords
- google search console
- keyword cannibalization
- ahrefs
- yoast keyword cannibalization