keyword cannibalization issues

Hi

This is my first post, hopefully someone can help me as I am having a nightmare with my site. I am struggling to rank and I think I have an issue with keyword cannibalization.

When I did a quick check, with "orlando villas" being one of the big keywords I would like to target, Google has 140 results for this ("orlando villas" site:villaagogo.com). I have 141 pages on the site. So this is an absolute fail!

When I tried a less used keyword phrase on the site, "highlands reserve" site:villaagogo.com I got 15 results back, which is a bit better. However, when I went on each page that was indexed and searched for "highlands reserve", 9 of those links did not even have that keyword on the page. When I viewed the page source, the only place the keyword was showing was here: <option value="Highlands-Reserve">Highlands Reserve</option> which is set within the filters.

Below are the pages that are indexed, but do not have the keyword on the page

https://villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/sandy-ridge
https://villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/emerald-island-resort
https://villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/cumbrian-lakes
https://villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/calabay-parc
https://villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/cumbrian-lakes
https://villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/formosa-garden-estates
https://villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/providence
https://villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/davenport-lakes
https://villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas/solterra-resort

If anyone could help me understand why the above are ranking for this, would an <option> value really be enough to rank? If so, any ideas how to prevent google from basically using this keyword and all the others listed in the filters?

Sorry, I know this is a long one. I have spent hours and hours reading blogs and trying to improve this and I have always had an issue with too many pages ranking for keywords I am wanting to attract.

Thanks in advance.

 

You're keyword stuffing your URls.

Let your content, title tag, meta description tag and images do the heavy lifting.

Not the URls

 

Hi

Yeah, we are in the process of changing all the url structure, from urls like this:

https://villaagogo.com/florida-villas/orlando-villas to https://villaagogo.com/orlando

and the actual villa pages from:
https://villaagogo.com/villas/florida-villas/orlando-villas/davenport-lakes/davenport-lakes-1st-class-platinum-grade-apartment-in-bahama-bay-resort-and-spa
to
https:// villaagogo.com/orlando/davenport-lakes/v1001 (example ID at the end or some sort of way to show this)

We have decided to remove the name of the villa in the url, drop the 'villas' in each url too. Hopefully this should help.

Thanks

 

I think you're going backwards with this approach.

Adding an "ID" to your URl is meaningless and wont help you in search.

 

is the name of the villa, which would be different for each too long ? or will it be ok to have it like this:

https:// villaagogo.com/orlando/davenport-lakes/davenport-lakes-1st-class-platinum-grade-apartment-in-bahama-bay-resort-and-spa

If you look at site:villaagogo.com "orlando villas", literally every page is on. If I remove the reference to it on most pages so it is not in the code, will this help with the ranking for the keyword for the main page I want to target?

 

I need to get a good understanding of the parent child relationships between your regions/cities etc. Im Australian so Im going to give you my best guess.

I'm guessing its

/florida/
/florida/orlando/

Then your suburbs might be

windermere
belle isle
maitland

etc etc

So you would end up with something like

/florida/orlando/windermere/
/florida/orlando/belle isle/
/florida/orlando/maitland/

So for a full property listing you might end up with something like this

villaagogo.com/florida/orlando/windermere/apartment-bahama-bay-resort-spa

Of course this is very rough off the top of my head.

Youll need to plan it out. Do it in notepad so you can see it visually, and be able to make changes fast. Don't try to do this within Wordpress until you've got it 100% mapped out.

Try making your page URls shorter. Taking out stop words would definitely help.

 

Yeah, that is bang on really. I am not using Florida in the URL now as it will always be in Florida and not another state.

 

I think John got you pointed in the right direction. As you see now, Florida and even Orlando are always the Geo for your target market and gets redundant using in the URL's. Be sure to do proper 301's on your old url's if you have any links pointing to them. Don't forget internal links pointing to old url's as well if you have any.