2 pages optimised for same keyword... what should I do?

[webtheoria.com]

I would basically take a different approach.

You could just add a canonical tag to the page that you want to keep ranking in the serps. Then add the same canonical to the other page (the page thats going to be deleted from the serps).

rel="canonical" href="https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/btl/landlord-advice/mortgages/btl-mortgage-80-ltv/"/>

add the above to both pages..

[max.favilli]

What keywords are driving traffic to each page?

If semantically they share the same traffic, and if after merging the content and skimming the fat you don't loose too much, I would merge them and 301 one url into the other.

If each page is having traffic from different keywords you have the option of just do nothing and leave them the way they are.

Imagine being a visitors of those pages. Would they better serve your need for information split or merged?

[MonicaOConnor]

I disagree with these two. I have 3 SERPs currently for one keyword in positions 2,3 and 5. The more repetitively you show in the SERPs the higher your CTR will be. I don't believe having two results is preventing you from being on page one. I wouldn't 301 redirect one of them either, since they are both relative to the key term. Obviously the pages are different, or Google would only show one of them and not both.

I don't believe these pages are in competition with each other. My advice would be to take a look at who is on page one and the differences in your metrics. Is it a link thing? Do you need to add a little bit of content? Compare the metrics for the other sites, not the two pages on your site and see if there are few tweaks you can make to get those results on page one.

[CommT]

Thank you for your input, it's much appreciated.

[CommT]

Thank you, yes one page definitely gets more traffic and converts better than the other. I have a third 80% BTL mortgage page, which targets longtail: https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/btl/landlord-advice/mortgages/80-buy-to-let-mortgages/  - this was written to be an informational article rather than a sales page. It links through to the product page (https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/btl/product-types/80-buy-to-let-mortgages/) and other, similar product pages (other high LTV mortgage pages - e.g. 85% LTV BTL mortgages - this is the highest LTV the market goes on BTL mortgages at the moment).

I appreciate your answer and input and am grateful to you for putting the time in to answer.

[CommT]

Thank you - I question the logic behind this though... The two pages are not identical, so I don't believe that a canonical tag is appropriate here. I am open to being persuaded otherwise though!

I am appreciative of the time you have taken to answer this question.

Best wishes,

Amelia

[RangeMarketing]

We have you at positions 7 & 8 now, which is a little surprising to be honest. It looks like you have done a solid job with on-page SEO, however, the amount of links pointing to either pages is low compared to the competition on page one.

I'm thinking that you may have inadvertently moved yourself up by having us search this term and most likely click on your webpages.

Either way, you're on page 1 now!

[CommT]

(Not Provided) means I don't actually know for sure exactly what keywords are driving traffic to these pages. However, I am tracking 8 related keywords:

<colgroup><col width="333"></colgroup>
|

• 80 buy to let mortgages

• 80 ltv buy to let mortgages

• 80 btl mortgage

• buy to let mortgage rates 80 ltv

• 80 buy to let mortgage

• buy to let mortgage deals 80 ltv

• 80 ltv buy to let mortgage

• 80 btl mortgages

|

The product page (https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/btl/product-types/80-buy-to-let-mortgages/) is on page 2 for all the above keywords. The best position is 11, and the worst is 16. Obviously I want page 1!

The Landlord Advice article (https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/btl/landlord-advice/mortgages/btl-mortgage-80-ltv/) is on page 2 for just three of the tracked keywords:

• 80 btl mortgage
• 80 btl mortgages
• buy to let mortgage deals 80 ltv

My concern was that the product page was being held back from page 1 because Google has difficulty distinguishing between them and deciding which to put first. As it stands, the product page is not 'optimised' for all the keywords it appears for as we took the view that trying to get a page to list for multiple keywords was not going to be easy so my colleague wrote the advice page to cover off some of the keywords. This doesn't seemed to have done the trick though!

Your point about customers is really important. You're absolutely right: we need to determine what visitors are expecting when they search for these keywords - I suspect they want to see rates, which is why we created the macros to place at the top of the pages to display the most up-to-date rates (updated twice daily, which is more often than our competitors do!), but that does homogenise the content somewhat. I did wonder if we should display more than three rates on one page but, the market for these products is small so I think there may ONLY be three products available anyway...

I don't think people particularly read the content on any of our pages (nobody has the time) but I can use SessionCam to spy on visits. I think I will do this to see if the content is actually being read. It may be that all we need to do is display a rates table because that's all people want, but Google wants content....

Thank you so much for taking time to answer my question, I really appreciate it.

Best wishes,

Amelia

[CommT]

LOL that's great!

Hmmmm... maybe this should be in my strategy! (KIDDING)

You're right, we don't have many links. I'm not actively building links as I worry about Penguin these days. I am trying to optimise onsite as well as I can, and have a plan to carry out PR work to get national press coverage to earn links that way instead of building them in the old-fashioned way that I used to do back in 2009...! I think this is a better approach as news coverage for companies that offer financial services like we do is more likely to build trust than pretty much any other method of link bulding would.

The upside of this is it kills two birds with one stone - gets us links from authority sites AND builds trust in our brand with the public - I see this as a 'win win' situation.

Thanks for your input today, it is greatly appreciated!

Best wishes,

Amelia

[CommT]

Thank you Monica. I like your answer best, it's the most positive! I don't want to delete any pages so if I take your experience that the same site can appear for the same keyword more than once on page 1, and that 'all' I need is more links, then that's pretty clear...

You're right, the two pages are NOT identical, I try to be really careful with duplicate content! It's a bugbear of mine.

I will definitely look at the other sites that appear above ours and see if we can do anything to improve ours.

Thank you,

Amelia

[MonicaOConnor]

Thanks Amelia, glad I could help! Good luck!

Monica

[max.favilli]

If I was you I would check keywords using semrush.com but seems you did a nice job already analyzing them.

I actually agree with what Monica said, theoretically is better to have two pages on serp for CTR.

But if I look at serp for those keywords and I open the two pages I feel a bad taste in my mouth, I have the feeling I have been cheated because the meta title before to click and the content after the click seems too similar (I didn't read through all the content I confess), but I may be biased since I know what you are trying to do, a regular visitor my feel different.

Nevertheless I think the theoretical benefit of having two pages in serp could be balanced by the ranking benefit of merging the two pages; iif a big jump was possible (http://moz.com/ugc/click-through-rates-in-google-serps-for-different-types-of-queries). Which seems highly unlikely, but you can test it.

To merge or not to merge?

I changed my mind, I would not merge. I would start to slightly change one of the pages, both meta-title and content, to remove that bad taste in my. And monitor ranking variation after each change.

[RangeMarketing]

Of course!

Good luck with everything Amelia.

[celilcan.com]

This post is deleted!

[CommT]

Thank you. Yes, I use SEMRush - I actually really like their tools for both SEO stuff and Adwords.

I'm going to do as you suggest - make the content more different on each page.

Thanks again for your time to answer this, it's much appreciated.

Best wishes,

Amelia

[CommT]

Thank you for answering this question, it's much appreciated.

[max.favilli]

Have fun.