Organic Landing Page Changes Repeatedly

[ozzzge]

Hello,

We are selling bee products online in Germany. Our star product and the most important keyword is propolis. For this keyword, our landing page has changed several times between 2 product pages and a content page about propolis. For a short time, the landing page was homepage. We also have a Propolis category page which consists of propolis products. For this page, most of the internal and external links have the anchor text propolis. But the category page never ranked for this keyword. Product, category and informational pages all have content over 1500 words.

Does anyone have an idea why the landing page change this much? Also, what can we do to stabilize and optimize the landing page?

Thanks!

qksc61

[WebQuest]

What do you mean by Landing Page? Do you mean the page that is ranking the highest for a Google Search? And does this also mean that all the pages you mentioned exist at the same time on your website or are you creating and deleting different pages?

[ozzzge]

Hello Mazen,

Yes I mean the page that ranks for the keyword propolis. All the pages I meantioned exist. There is a product page (propolis tincture), a category page (propolis) and an informational page about propolis(what is propolis). We do not create and delete pages.

[effectdigital]

Usually this happens when Google genuinely can't work out, which page is best to rank. Usually it happens on pages which have similar themes and SEO authority levels. You could use a canonical tag on the pages which you don't want to rank, and point them to the page you want to see in Google's results. Be aware though, that this won't necessarily make the canonical URL rank all the time (in place of the 'bad' URLs)

If Google decides one of your other URLs is better, but you de-index it via canonicalisation, you may just end up with no ranking at all - instead of the correct ranking URL. Google's algorithm wants to be free to decide which page it thinks is best, when you give it directives they often don't work out as intended. It can seem 'messy' to have a ranking URL which jumps around a lot, the best you can do is put prominent CTAs (Call to Action) in the ranking URL, leading people to the 'true' landing page (the one you wanted). It's not perfect but it puts rankings less at risk

[WebQuest]

As Effect Digital mentioned, this happens when Google is trying to figure out which page best satisfies the intent behind the search. I would advise checking the rest of the pages that are ranking for the term and see what kind of content these pages have and what intent are they satisfying. You can then see which of the pages on your website are in line with that intent and adjust your on-page SEO elements accordingly.

I  would also recommend looking into the backlinks pointing to these pages and see which one has the most links in place and take that into consideration when you decide to make any changes.