How many serp results for a domain.

[max.favilli]

I thought this one was carved into stone, max number of results from the same domain in SERP is... two. Or... three?!

I was searching for some familiar keywords and found three results from the same domain, isn't that... unusual?

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hey Massimiliano

No, this is not unusual at all. If the SERPs feel one site has 2 or 3 pages that best represent a search query, they will present those.

This is nothing unusual when it happens, especially if a site caters to a broad topic and has multiple pages that touch on a certain aspect of that topic.

Hope this helps!

[EGOL]

This often happens in those industries where staff at the major players feel that their industry is "boring" and use that as an excuse to get out of writing content and the best SEOs that they can find are unable to produce or find anyone who can do the job.

These topics are not boring.   There is a lot of content to write.  All you have to do is ask the person who takes incoming telephone calls at  the office and she can give you a very very long list of the questions that people are calling to ask.  Every day people call in with questions about selecting the product, how to fix the product, accessories for the product, how to maintain the product, how the company brand compares with competitors, which parts should be purchased, information about no-longer manufactured items.

This person might not know the answers to all of these questions, but she is extremely underutilized by this company.

Instead of answering these calls and transferring them to Joe in parts, Sam in repairs, Willie in sales, etc., she should be promoted to the much higher paying position of "director of content marketing" and supervisor of all of the people who receive these transferred calls.  She should be able to identify the articles that need to be written and assign them to a person on the staff who has the content area expertise to write them.  If Willie is a horrible writer she can team him with a person who can interview him and maybe a photographer/graphics person and get that part of the the job done.

Let's use "hydraulic jacks" as an example.  Go look at the top ten in google and you will find almost nothing but skimpy product pages and category pages and maybe a doorway page or two.  Nobody has written anything worthy beyond the folks at wikipedia.

A few people are searching for "hydraulic jacks" but the people who spend the money are looking for deeper information about parts, maintenance, safety, how to use, repairs, new models, etc.  Right?  The people who ask about this stuff are consumers and buyers and folks who get grease on their hands.  The lady who has been answering their phone calls probably knows them by the sound of their voice.  They spend a lot of money at this company.  A really lot of money.

Now, after our director of content marketing makes assignments and gets all of the needed articles back she should have dozens of articles  on how to maintain, dozens on repairs, dozens about how to use, etc. etc.  She then takes these to the web development team and the SEO team, who she is also the boss of, and tells them to get these articles on the site and optimized for the words that people say when they call her on the phone.  She knows the keywords of the industry better than an SEO in NYC who never got grease on his hands.   He doesn't know jack about hydraulics.

She gives them a logical structure of this library of content... a folder about parts, one about repairs, all segregated by makes and models.  When this stuff is launched, that hydraulic jack company has totally carpet bombed the SERPs and after these articles start ranking a search for "hydraulic jack repair" will yield several results from this company on the first page of the SERPs.  That search will display their repair service page, the index to their library of repair content and a couple of their most important repair articles will be on Page 1 of Google.  They might get four positions out of the top ten.

Here's a secret to making this happen.  When somebody starts talking about content cannibalization put your fingers in your ears.  Making lots of articles associated with the more highly searched queries in your industries is how you make this happen.  You can't get four positions on the first page of google if you listen to the guys who tell you that content cannibalization is a sin.  Its where you find the meat.

Other companies could have done this.  They just listened to guys complaining about nothing to write about in their boring industry.

Just get the right person directing this important marketing effort.  The person who understands the queries that people use to get information from your company.  She has been taking your calls for the past ten years.  Now she has enough knowledge that she is underutilized.

[PatrickDelehanty]

I stood and applauded.

[AlanMosley]

Google likes to share the results between domains, but that is only one consideration, all other things being equal you would expect to get a mix of domains, but if the pages win out in other ways then there is nothing to stop them ranking

[Mustansar]

Have a look at the following article it may help you with the answer :

http://moz.com/blog/secrets-of-the-7-result-serp

[max.favilli]

Thanks for the long answer EGOL.

What I intentionally didn't mention in my question (because I was curious to learn if the fact by itself was revealing of anything special going on) is that those results are from one of my sites, the one with the lowest PR/DA/mT, where I write freely, without a schedule and not caring much about keywords, density, and all the usual suspects.

It is about a niche subject, and I think you are totally right.

[EGOL]

Massimiliano,  you have earned the position of "niche authority" and multiple positions on the first page of Google can sometimes go with that.

Nice work.

I have a site in a retail niche where the only content that exists (other than my own) is product pages.   With all of that content being so visible my site is now the "go to place" when people want information in this niche.   I have an index page for my content library and most of the visitors to that page are "returning visitors".

The problem with this position is that amazon, walmart and other large retailer customers can not get answers to their questions from where they purchased their items.  So a lot of those questions come to me.  We have become customer service by default for people who purchased where help is not available.  This is a bit of a curse but if you sell  products  that require consumable supplies, you can attract a steady flow of customers because of your published expertise.  And your replies to the email questions that you receive can be improved into your next page of content.

[EGOL]

lol

Thank you, Patrick.

[PatrickDelehanty]

No problem! Great as always!