If Two Internal Pages Rank for a Given Keyword, Are They Competing?

[wparsons]

Let's say I'm a house painter working out of offices in Boston and Springfield. When I search for "Boston house painter" or "Massachusetts house painter," both my homepage and my Boston office page come up #8 and #9. That's good, sorta (2 results on first page), but I'd trade that scenario for a single result in the top 3. How likely is it that these two page are competing? If I removed the Boston page, would the homepage rank better? Or should I be happy I have two pages turning up the the first SERP?

Any thoughts here appreciated. Thanks!

[crackingmedia]

Hi Bill

Yes, those two pages are competing with each other, but then so are all the other results on that page. The fact that those two pages are yours makes no difference. By removing one of them won't push the other up. Instead it would allow another result to come in its place.

So, yes, be glad you have two results turning up on the first page. Now see what you can do to push them both up a peg or two higher.

I hope that helps,
Peter

[David_Veldt]

You should be very happy that you're taking up more real estate in the SERP for a given keyword. They are of course "competing" - in the sense that every page in Google's index is being weighed to determine which is the best result for that query - but they aren't directly hindering each other.

The last thing you should do is remove a well-ranking page. If you would much prefer one page to rank higher than the other, then I would find ways to pass a little relevance from page B to page A, such is with an internal link or additional optimization. Otherwise, remember that total clicks to 2 pages ranking lower on the page may very well be equal to or even exceed clicks to a single page that ranks higher.