Google is ranking the wrong page and I don't know why?

[soralsokal]

I have an E-Commerce store and to make things easy, let's say I am selling shoes. There is:

• Category named 'Shoes'
• and 3 products 'Sport shoes', 'Hiking shoes' and 'Dancing shoes'

My problem: For the keyword 'Shoes' Google is showing the product result 'Sport shoes'. This makes no sense from user perspective. (It's like searching for 'iPhone' and getting a result for 'iPhone 4s' instead of a general overview.)

Now what are the specifics of my category page (Which I want Google to rank):

• It has more external links with higher quality
• It has more internal links
• It has much higher page authority
• It has useful text to guide the user for the keyword
• It is a category instead of a product

All this given, I just don't know how I can signal Google that this page makes sense to show in SERPs? Hope you can help with this!

[DJ123]

Do you use canonical URLs?

It is possible that Google is choosing for you which page they think is relevant because there are what they see as duplicated content.

[soralsokal]

Thank you for your reply.

In this case I'm not using canonicals, because I want this page to rank individually for it's specific keyword 'Sport shoes'.

In my point of view the content is quite different. But of course I don't know how Google is understanding it.

What I did a few weeks back: From the product 'Sport shoes' I set an internal link with the anchor text 'Shoes' back to the category page. Unfortunately, this didn't work either.

[DJ123]

It is because Google sees that you have tons of duplicated content and is choosing what they think is relevant and pushing back what the duplicated content which they see as not as important.

Use canonical urls to show what the most important pages are otherwise you will constantly be battling this.

[JaneCopland]

This is a pretty old, annoying phenomenon called keyword cannibalisation. As DJ123 has said, Google can't work out which page it should rank for the generic term. It's incredibly frustrating when the signals are otherwise perfect to point out the right page.

I would add the "shoes" link--pointing to the main page--to all pages, not just the Sports Shoes page, e.g. from Hiking, Dancing, etc. as well, as is the case in this graphic. This graphic is from a very old blog post on keyword cannibalisation, which will read as pretty basic now but might be worth a glance.

This could be a risky idea, but if the metrics for the main shoes page are significantly stronger than the Sports page, you could consider canonicalising the Sports page to the main page for as long as it takes for Google to pick up the main sports page and "drop" the Sports page. Once that happens, remove the canonical tag and fetch as Googlebot from Webmaster Tools, waiting for the Sports page to be re-indexed. I doubt that the Sports page would take precedence over the main page again after this, but this is risky because it will force the Sports page out, and that page is currently ranking. You're taking a fairly confident gamble that the main page will take its place, but it's a gamble nonetheless.

[soralsokal]

Thank you for taking a look and your suggestions.

As you suggested, I will go ahead and increase the signals to the category page. Will try more internal links pointing back from the products and also more meaningful text on the category page.

How long shall I wait to know if Google got the point? Probably hard to say, but a rough timeframe from your experience would help me a lot.

If doesn't work out, I will consider canonicalization.

Thank you again!

[JaneCopland]

Hi there, glad to have been of help!

As far as how long to wait goes, it really is hard to say but if you see nothing at all in a month, I'd consider other options like canonicalisation (or coming back here, showing what you've done and seeing what people say - as I am only one opinion! ).

Cheers,

Jane