11 replies to this topic

[Skampy]

Hi,

This is my first post so please bear with me. I have done a fair amount of web optimisation with the help of a friend so know the basics, but there are some problems I am having which I would appreciate your help on.

So firstly here is the background story. My company is a distributor and because of this we sell lots of different products. For some of our products, we ideally need to be showing up high in the search engines so that we can compete with our competitors. The problem I have is that for our main competitors, these products are their main source of business and so they are able to heavily optimise those key words on their home pages. For us though, this isn't possible because of the range of products we supply. If I heavily optimised our home page for these products, it would either look stupidly overweighted compared to our other products (and would possibly steer other customers away from our site) or I would have to do it for all our products in which case the home page would be enormous!

So to try and get around this, I have optimised the individual product page instead which is one directory off the root.

I know I have optimised it correctly, but it's ranking in search engines is really bad (no where to be seen). It has been indexed (if I search for the path in google, it comes up).

So my question is, will it be possible to get that product page showing high up the search rankings, even though it is not on the root? If the answer is yes, then what could it be that I am doing wrong?

To give you an idea of the page location:

www.mysite/directory1/productpage.php

Help will be appreciated.

Thanks

[SelfMade]

So my question is, will it be possible to get that product page showing high up the search rankings, even though it is not on the root? If the answer is yes, then what could it be that I am doing wrong?



Help will be appreciated.

Thanks

Can you not just point at the product page from a page within your site that is ranking well in SERPs?

[chrishirst]

I know I have optimised it correctly, but it's ranking in search engines is really bad (no where to be seen).

Then obviously you haven't PROMOTED it

Instead of relying on the vagiaries of SEs and ranking, why not simply promote and advertise the pages you WANT people to find

[rolf]

AFAIK the only advantage the home page gets is that it's the most likely one to get linked directly and the search engines don't give more weight to the home page just because it's the home page. In theory you should be able to promote a specific page (there's loads of help on this forum for that) and have the promoted page beat the home page on a like for like basis every time. (I say in theory because my evidence is all incidental/anecdotal and I haven't done any specific cause/effect tests to prove it; none the less, this is what my stats suggest)

What you can't account for within this, is that your competitors are going to make it harder work to promote and compete on those keyphrases, homepage or otherwise - but I guess that's just the nature of the beast.

[SelfMade]

In theory you should be able to promote a specific page (there's loads of help on this forum for that) and have the promoted page beat the home page on a like for like basis every time. What you can't account for within this, is that your competitors are going to make it harder work to promote and compete on those keyphrases, homepage or otherwise - but I guess that's just the nature of the beast.

Am I missing the point here...why not just point to that page from a page that ALREADY ranks well.

Expression: "kill two birds with one stone" spring to mind.

Yes it's always good to have a page stand up in it's own right...but if the products in question here are not completely different (as in have a can of pedigree chum on a page promoting tomato ketchup) then why not just point at it??

[rolf]

Am I missing the point here...why not just point to that page from a page that ALREADY ranks well.

No, you're not missing the point, what I was saying was in addition to your point.

[SelfMade]

No, you're not missing the point, what I was saying was in addition to your point.

Ahh, gotcha rolf! I just read your post and it made me think "hang on, have I missed the point here??"

[Jill]

So my question is, will it be possible to get that product page showing high up the search rankings, even though it is not on the root? If the answer is yes, then what could it be that I am doing wrong?

Yes. Where it is on your server (or where it looks like it is) is irrelevant to where it will rank.

Are you linking to the page in question from many other pages within your site? You have to provide those pages with some internal link popularity in order for it to have rankings in the search engines.

In addition, getting it links from other sites can also help.

Am I missing the point here...why not just point to that page from a page that ALREADY ranks well.

Huh? That doesn't make any sense. If he had a page that already ranked well, he wouldn't be asking the question. The problem (as I see it) is that he's NOT ranking for the keyword phrase and wants to be able to.

[SelfMade]

Huh? That doesn't make any sense. If he had a page that already ranked well, he wouldn't be asking the question. The problem (as I see it) is that he's NOT ranking for the keyword phrase and wants to be able to.

I just knew I'd completely missed it somewhere!

I thought to myself "that answer is just too obvious! Then Rolf came in and said what he said and I thought "yep, I've missed it"!

It's a good job you and chrishirst are 'pendantic' (??) about detail!

[Jill]

Kaz, perhaps rather than posting a comment to every thread, you may want to be more discriminating. [#justsayin]

[Skampy]

Wow,

Thank you for all of your replies.

Yes, Kaz007 as pointed out by Gill, the problem I have is that my site is not ranking at all for some of my chosen key words. So there are no other pages to point to it from, and I cannot optimise my home page for these key words because that needs to hold a summary of our entire product range.

So from the responses I can determine that the location of the page within the site does not effect how easily it will show in the search engines?

I have a large number of directorys linking to my home page because I was told that the directory administrators did not like it if you provided links to pages that are deeper within your site than the home page. Was this information incorrect? If it was, then the solution will probably lie in linking to the product page from online directories.

I will also increase the number of internal links, and create a site map.

Thanks again.

[Jill]

So from the responses I can determine that the location of the page within the site does not effect how easily it will show in the search engines?

No it DOES effect it. Not where it is on the server, but how it's linked to within your site.

I have a large number of directorys linking to my home page because I was told that the directory administrators did not like it if you provided links to pages that are deeper within your site than the home page. Was this information incorrect?

No that's correct. Directories will typically only link to your home page as it should be.

It's fine to have a lot of your links going to your home page. That's where your information architecture comes in and the whole how you link to the other pages of your site. You will pass the link popularity from the home page to the other pages through how you link to them.