"Blue Cars" ranking for "Green Cars" search

[Darth]

Say my site is about cars. I have one page dedicated to blue cars and another page dedicated to green cars. Both pages obviously cross over (cars) but they are absolutely targeted towards the blue and green variants respectively.

I've noticed something weird lately - the "Green Cars" page will rank for "green cars" obviously, BUT for the search "blue cars" it will also come up! Sometimes it will be the "green cars" page in #6 then "blue cars" in #7 behind it, or sometimes the "blue cars" page won't even show for "blue cars" searches - just my "green cars" page will be there.

Links (internal and external) to both pages are similar, as are their design etc. I have a feeling this might have something to do with anchor text over-optimisation to the "blue cars" page.

 

[CCarter]

Nah it's Google experimenting at times, but this happens a ton on keywords with low volume. I would simply take the added SERP real estate and call it a day. Don't try to mess with "blue cars" on site optimization to push up "green cars" more.

Google simply deems your 2 pages more relevant than the other trash in the SERPs, it's a great indicator that Google understand your niche perfectly.

If it was over-optimization you wouldn't be ranking.

Concentrate on some off-site SEO to the "green cars" page and call it a day.

 

[Samwise89]

It can also mean that of your two pages, the green cars one has more backlinks and power than the blue cars one, enough to help it rank over the blue one for the blue term. I've seen this happen in low competition serps like CCarter is saying, where your site is better than all the rest and it makes senses to show two pages from your domain for a lack of anything else.

 

[Darth]

Thanks, strangely enough I think the page that should be ranking higher (ie the one the search term is focused on) has more backlinks than the other. I also wish that instead of having #6 and #7 for example, I just had one result in the top 3 where I used to be.