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I have a specific SEO problem. I created two landing pages for a clients website, on Shopify.

http://www.example.com/pages/ogham-celtic-jewelry

http://www.example.com/pages/claddagh-ring

After a week neither is really ranking, which probably isint that surprising. I haven't done landing pages before so I am not really sure what to expect.

But MOZ anaylitics suggests that the one of the landing page URLs is ranking for one key term I targeted at position 21 and another keyterm at position 40. However when I check these positions they are held by another page from the same website.

This is a product page and doesn't have as much content etc, this particular product page also has a link to it from the relevant landing page, so I am wondering if there is actually an issue with my landing pages, rather than it just being too early for them to rank properly?

I can only find either landing page on Google when I type in the exact title of the page, but it still ranks fairly low on the first page.

Is this normal?

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  • It takes much more than a week for any page to rank. In fact, it can take months.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Jul 1, 2015 at 16:15
  • Without getting into detail, I did a search for *unique claddagh rings * and found that there is a lot of well performing sites for these search terms making the competition rather stiff. As well, there are important keywords that you should also be using such as wedding. Your pages are fairly decent, however, you should place closer to the top of the page more content specific to the product and how it should be found in search. For example, the artist is important, but not so much for search. You should focus more on the ring (in general) and opt for more search terms to be focused upon.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Jul 1, 2015 at 16:38
  • This question is specific to one website and will be closed as a result. Can you edit the question to make it less specific to the site so that it can be helpful to not only you, but other users as well??
    – closetnoc
    Commented Jul 1, 2015 at 16:39
  • Just to make sure I understand, you are saying that the specific products should have more mention at the top of the landing page, rather than say background information about the products and what has inspired them ? In my case the historic tradition behind the products ?
    – David J Carr
    Commented Jul 6, 2015 at 20:33
  • Also I edited the question, is it less specific enough or should i make further changes?
    – David J Carr
    Commented Jul 6, 2015 at 20:37

3 Answers 3

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By just creating the landing pages on your website, won't help to rank on Google. Google Algo will consider many factors (100+) to show your landing page on Google Search for a targeted keyword.

I would like to recommend start creating content on the landing pages and also start building authority backlinks from reputed websites.

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I have a specific SEO problem. I created two landing pages for a clients website,on shopify.

http://www.example.com/pages/ogham-celtic-jewelry

http://www.example.com/pages/claddagh-ring

After a week neither is really ranking, which probably isn't that surprising. I haven't done landing pages before so I am not really sure what to expect.

You need to define the keywords to rank for and use as many of the keywords from the list you define as you can and use them often in a web page, but not too often.

Based on the URLs you provided, the keywords will likely be claddagh and ring for one URL, and ogham, celtic and jewelry for the other URL.

Because not that many people will search for super specific terms like claddagh and ogham, you may safely eliminate those from your list of keywords.

Then in the page, make sure the important keyword appears once in the header tag (between <h1> and </h1>) and that it appears in the title and meta description tag.

So for a claddagh ring, you might have a page with this HTML code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<title>Ring - the claddagh type</title>
<meta name="description" content="This claddagh ring is precious">
</head>
<body>
<h1>The Claddagh ring</h1>
<p>The claddagh ring is bla bla bla bla</p>
<p>bla bla bla bla</p>
<p>To order this fine claddagh ring, dial bla bla .....</p>
</body>
</html>

Notice how the keywords are close to the beginning of the HTML tags? I did that because according to textalyser.net, the most important words are found at the beginning of a paragraph. Just make sure the keywords in the document appear the most AND that they make up no more than about 5% of the total words. For example, if your document is a little over 200 words, then don't use the keywords more than 10 times.

This is a product page and doesn't have as much content...

Search engines rely on words in a web page in order to determine where the page ranks. If all your page has is only a picture with maybe ten words or so, then you can expect it to not appear on the first page of search results.

...rather than it just being too early for them to rank properly?

Google loves spending time with some things, but before waiting endlessly for ranks to hopefully go up, try to make the users well informed about the product in words because I'm certain at least one user who is mostly blind uses the internet and pictures will likely be meaningless to such users.

I can only find either landing page on google when I type in the exact title of the page, but it still ranks fairly low on the first page.

That's because you're being verbatim in the search. What I suggest is accessing the pages that rank higher than yours and see what they have in their title tags, meta description tags, and headers and how user friendly their pages are. Also, make sure your pages comply with google's webmaster guidelines.

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Welcome to the machine. You just need to keep experimenting with keyword strings and fill in all the SEO stuff. But don't change the page that is currently ranking (or risk being dropped out). Instead try to make the landers catch it. During these experiments, keep track of what changed, how the rank changed, and how related pages change. I suggest fetching as Google after each change, and giving it at least a week to see if anything works.

The unfortunate reality is you can wait for months for successes, but there is a good chance Google won't change it's mind. Google is quite frankly impatient, stubborn, and not very smart...although their employees will never admit that they have created AI with the personality of a 2 year old. Often, it will choose an un-related landing page over a perfectly groomed one for no reason whatsoever, and will drop you from ranks completely if you tweak the un-related to be more focal to its correct query. An example we saw recently is G deciding that a lander page with 1 keyword string all the way at the bottom before footer was a better choice than a well groomed landing page with lots of good content, focused towards that exact keyword string. The phrase it chose didn't make any sense in context, and people were landing into a product that just wouldn't work for their keyword query. Keep in mind, the one it chose does NOT have those keywords in title, metas, schema, etc, and there is no way to suggest the right page to Google. Essentially, they are so concerned with "the quality of the search results" yet they let stuff like this slide for millions of queries. Why? Well, we all know how hard it is to argue with an out of control 2 year old....

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  • It is about semantics anymore. I had investigated many years ago a review and information site about high performance cars that was getting search for dresses and shoes as well as other weird stuff. As it turned out, it was the authors writing style and semantic topic overlap such as materials- leather, vinyl, and colors, etc., and his colorful use of language to describe a car in a sexual way and describing a car like a women that caused the problem. Ooopppsss!! ;-)
    – closetnoc
    Commented Jul 1, 2015 at 16:45
  • What was funny about this is that the writer did not realize that this was a problem- mostly because it was such a tiny part of the content and so subtle when viewed on a page by page level, but significant when taking the site overall.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Jul 1, 2015 at 16:48

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