Inner page competing category page

[nodyguy]

Ah, so one of my sites which is like 1 year old already has about 40-50 pages.
around 7 diff categories and like 5-7 inner pages for each.
Everything is built in Siloed, interlinked to pass the maximum juice.
However, I have many inner pages that rank top 10 for example, even top 5 and sometimes it goes out of the top 300 and the category page ranking #50 or something like that.
I have some pages that have backlinks and the same situation happens and pages without backlinks, so it's not about the backlinks I guess.

What I thought about is that it may be the interlinking.
Everything siloed great, Each Category page links to some inner pages through top menu and through contexual links as the category page has content too. Inner pages links to category page and other inner pages through contexual links and top menu. Using usually exact match anchors for contexual and partial match anchor text for top menu links.

Any ideas guys?

 

[ThopHayt]

What kind of content is ON those category pages... if they don't have enough content or relevant enough content they don't have as good of chance of ranking. I'm guessing your inner pages are rich pages, so they rank better & easier. Frankly this is pretty normal, why do you want the category pages ranked so bad?

-ThopHayt

 

[nodyguy]

What kind of content is ON those category pages... if they don't have enough content or relevant enough content they don't have as good of chance of ranking. I'm guessing your inner pages are rich pages, so they rank better & easier. Frankly this is pretty normal, why do you want the category pages ranked so bad?

-ThopHayt

You didn't get me right, ill try to explain again.
Category page is trying to rank for kw's like "Best Toyota Car" and actually ranking for many, it is about 3.5k words article.
Inner pages for this category page are something like "Best Toyota Car Wheels", "Best Hybrid Toyota Car", around 1-2k words articles.
URL is: xxx.com/best-toyota-car/best-hybrid-toyota-car
Not the best permalink I know, but I can't change it now.

So lets say the category page ranking #5 for the kw, then sometimes it goes out of serps and the inner page ranking in the 50's.
Same for the opposite, sometimes inner page ranking top 3 for the desired kw's and suddenly going out of serps and the category page showing up in the 40's.

Got me?

 

[ThopHayt]

Ahh... well that is a bit odd. Do your competitors in the top 10 also see their rank shuffle often like this? And have you been updating your pages a lot recently?

-ThopHayt

 

[Toro]

I have the exact same problem and it is the biggest SEO problem I have for not ranking and making decent money.
Some of my pages that I optimize for a specific keyword rank #10 for the keyword, but suddenly that page disappears and another post ranks instead but at #60.

There is a theory about "topic duplication", which means that when two pages look like they are about the same topic to the eyes of the search engines, then the search engine picks only one of them to list in the search results, and the other page will not rank, even if it is better optimized and would rank higher.

But it could also be that the inner page you have optimized for the keyword has too high keyword density and getting an over-optimization penalty.

 

[Gromit]

Yeah, it does sound like an over-optimisation penalty.

What's the KW density on the page? Are you pointing a lot of exact match anchors at it?

 

[nodyguy]

Well, it happens for pages that rank without getting links at all because the KW is low comp and the domain is pretty strong and siloed right.
But maybe kw destiny and silo over optimazation is the key, I will run few tests I guess.

 

[darulez]

"Any ideas guys?"

yes. start from ground 0. use notepad.
learn silo the right way.

 

[starki]

It's not necessarily about siloing the wrong way, if there is a lot of content and only a slight difference in topic/keyword, Google sometimes gets it wrong. Seen this sporadically, but not on a larger scale..

 

[LuckyCharm007]

"Any ideas guys?"

yes. start from ground 0. use notepad.
learn silo the right way.

You're so annoying and useless.

OP, does the keyword you're trying to rank appears on both pages?

 

[nodyguy]

"Any ideas guys?"

yes. start from ground 0. use notepad.
learn silo the right way.

Smart boy ah?

 

[nodyguy]

You're so annoying and useless.

OP, does the keyword you're trying to rank appears on both pages?

Well its exactly like in the example earlier.
So basically partialy for sure and exact only of it was interlinked contextually.

 

[darulez]

Smart boy ah?

yeah. letme give you some free advice.

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