Prioritise a page in Google/why is a well-optimised page not ranking

[LauraSorrelle]

Hello

I'm new to Moz Forums and was wondering if anyone out there could help with a query.

My client has an ecommerce site selling a range of pet products, most of which have multiple items in the range for difference size animals i.e.

[Product name] for small dog
[Product name] for medium dog
[Product name] for large dog
[Product name] for extra large dog

I've got some really great rankings (top 3) for many keyword searches such as
'[product name] for dogs'
'[product name]'

But these rankings are for individual product pages, meaning the user is taken to a small dog product page when they might have a large dog or visa versa.

I felt it would be better for the users (and for conversions and bounce rates), if there was a group page which showed all products in the range which I could target keywords '[product name]', '[product name] for dogs'.  The page would link through the the individual product pages.

I created some group pages in autumn last year to trial this and, although they are well-optimised (score of 98 on Moz's optimisation tool), they are not ranking well.  They are indexed, but way down the SERPs.

The same group page format has been used for the PPC campaign and the difference to the retention/conversion of visitors is significant.

Why are my group pages not ranking?

Is it because my client's site already has good rankings for the target term and Google does not want to show another page of the site and muddy results?
Is there a way to prioritise the group page in Google's eyes?  Or bring it to Google's attention?

Any suggestions/advice welcome.

Thanks in advance

Laura

[ChrisAshton]

Hi Laura,

Welcome to the Moz community!

Without a domain to do some further investigation, these types of questions can be some of the toughest to answer because there are so many variables that could be causing the problem.

I can't comment on your current site but what I can say is that from experience, if this is happening it's typically going to be one of three things (maybe a combination?):

• More links pointing to the individual product pages than to the category pages
• Either no or low quality content on the subcategory pages; basically just showing a big chunk of products and nothing else
• Poor internal linking with more internal links pointing to those products, the category pages in a separate section of the nav, no category breadcrumbs etc. URL structure ties in here in much the same way.

If we think about typical user behaviour, it makes perfect sense that your product pages would be getting more backlinks than the categories. If we're talking about real users in a forum and they want to reference a product you sell, they're going to link straight to that product and the same can be said in most other contexts too.

This isn't a problem at all - real backlinks being earned in a natural way is always good. It just means you may need to put some effort into driving strength to the category pages too.

Content is a topic that gets so much attention in this industry that I don't think I really need to elaborate here - just make sure there is a decent amount of high-quality content on the pages, styled in a way that doesn't bury the products. UX first!

Finally, the internal linking. It's very hard to give advice on this part without seeing the site but basically, search engines tend to look at your nav to get an indication of which pages are likely the most important on the page from left to right, top to bottom. If you have an unusual structure where the category pages are buried down in the drop-downs (or - gasp - not even in the nav because there are buttons on the home page or something!) then you're missing an easy win there.

Don't forget that breadcrumbs and URL structure should ultimately match this same layout. Something like website.com/category/product.

This is all quite vague but hopefully it makes sense to the site you're working with now. Always happy to take a closer look if you'd like to share the URL here or in PM but I completely understand if you're not comfortable with that too.