A tale of two pages - one ranks great and one doesn't - but they are set up the same way

[Delorentis21]

Hi everyone,

First time poster

I will keep it simple - we have two pages on our website that are set up in the same way (or so we think) but achieve vastly different search engine rankings. We have spent weeks trying to figure out why this should be the case, but to no avail. Perhaps you guys can do a little diagnosis and see what we are missing:

for search term:

used machine tools

www.machinetoolsonline.co.za/buy-used-machine-tools

Is working well for us.

for search term:

new machine tools

www.machinetoolsonline.co.za/buy-new-machine-tools

is a disaster In  fact, Google ranks our home page which is optimised for other terms, higher.

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Shalusingh]

I have gone through your webpages and found that it has lack of quality contents in comparison to the pages that are ranking better than yours. The possible reasons for both of two could be high competition. You need to optimize your webpages as per the quality parameters.

[Roman-Delcarmen]

www.machinetoolsonline.co.za/buy-used-machine-tools
has 2 backlinks pointing of 2 differents domain

URL Rating 9
Domian Raiting 35
Links 2
Reffering Domians 2
Keywords 20

www.machinetoolsonline.co.za/buy-new-machine-tools

URL Rating 7
Domian Raiting 35
Links no data
Reffering Domians no data
Keywords no data

So maybe you should try to create some backlinks pointing to that specific page.
Keep in mind to you have to find, I really useful website with the same level of your page, remember the anchor text of those links needs to be related with the topic and keywords of your page

[Roman-Delcarmen]

I think that, a good outreach strategy, can make a big difference in your traffic and your authority, so you can create 10 or 20 post (can hire a freelance copywriters), very well written post, of course make the keyword research and then look for some guest post where you can send your articles with links pointing to your site.

-Buzzstream for me is the best tool for Outreach

[Delorentis21]

Hi Shalu,

Thank you for your answer. However, our competition, that we benchmark against, has far less content on page than we do. To make matters more interesting, this page:

www.machinetoolsonline.co.za/buy-used-machine-tools

ranks second to the competitions page for the search term: used machine tools

but this page:

www.machinetoolsonline.co.za/buy-new-machine-tools

ranks 51+ to the competitions number 1 ranked page for the search term: new machine tools

It's the sheer difference, when the pages are so very similar from a content structure perspective (they each focus on new or used machines of course) that I cannot understand.

[Delorentis21]

Hi Roman,

Yes - this seems more on the right track for me, as there are measurable differences for the pages based on the following metrics:

Links 2

Reffering Domians 2

Keywords 20

I will use the Moz tools to check these out. By way of further explanation as to why we are so stumped by this problem, here are two summaries of our analytics performance for the two pages over the same period - the differences seem unbelievable:

www.machinetoolsonline.co.za/buy-used-machine-tools

284 sessions, 74.91% new sessions, Organic referrals 246

www.machinetoolsonline.co.za/buy-new-machine-tools

5 sessions, 80% new sessions, Organic referrals 4

I will update the thread. Any other suggestions are welcome!

[LureCreative]

I am assuming this is a matter of competitor and also internal/external links pointing to the particular page. I would increase the quality (add more unique content, pictures) of the unranked page, add some internal links to it, and re-index it with Google Search Console's Fetch and Render tool.

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Look at to your Search Console and see your backlinks and internal links

1 - search console > search traffic > links to your site
2 - search console > search traffic > links to your site

Before to start an outreach stratege you have to make sure of accomplish all the technical seo tasks. Add Canonical Tags, internal link structure, header optimization an so on

What I'm traying to say is first improve your page (onsite optimization).
You have to optimize the page "New Machines " but you can not doit without optimize other ones.

For me the best tool for that are semrush, moz, ahrefs and of course Search Console