Homepage ranking before optimized page

[duoweb]

We finally managed to obtain a spot in the first 10 positions of the serps for our main keyword.

Since a week, our homepage started ranking in the top 15 as well, so we we're pretty excited about that. On our way to dominate the top 10!

Since 2 days we started to rank with our homepage before our optimized page, which sucks because the metadescription (made up by Google) isn't helping our CTR.

Is there a way that we can show Google that the other page is more relevant than the homepage?

Or do we have to wait until we have build up enough PA to switch places with the homepage (seems unlikely to me).

[DougRoberts]

I can't say i understand it either. If Dutch is the language you're targeting then I can see it's frustrating that this is the language search that seems to be coming up with the wrong page!

Are you setting the language correctly? A quick look at the source seems to show the language code wrapped in IE conditionals.

Don't know if this helps (it's a bit old):

How Search Engines Detect HTML Human Language

[duoweb]

So weird because the page is fully in dutch, the only english words on there are Copyright and disclaimer if i'm not mistaken.

But might look into the language issue as well.

[DougRoberts]

I've sent you a private message, but as I mentioned in the message I suspect that there are some language factors coming in to play.

You provided me with the keyword, your domain and the specific ranking page and told me that you were using google.be

I noted when using the keyword ranking tool on SEOmoz, the results were different depending on the language selected:

google.be (dutch) - homepage was ranking at #8

google.be (english) - optimised page was ranking at #7

google.be (french) - optimised page was ranking at #10.

My guess here is that the optimised page isn't looking particularly dutch!

I don't know if anyone else has any advice on this as I do not have any multi-lingual SEO experience!

Hope this helps.

[RyanKent]

Without the ability to examine the site, we are practicing blind SEO. I would suggest it is not a secret to your competitors that you are trying to rank well for keywords related to your site. The question becomes, how important is your site's SEO?

Generically speaking, you want to ensure the target page is truly optimized for the term. I enjoy the seomoz tools but a "grade A" does not truly mean your page is optimized for the term. There are often additional steps which can be taken.

One step you can take is to offer an anchor text link in the content of your home page to the target page. Another step is to earn a couple anchor text links to the target page.

Rand wrote an excellent article on this topic: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions

[duoweb]

Can't really disclose any details, since some of my competitors are on seomoz as well

What I can say is that the optimized page for the 3-word-keyword got a grade A and has following stats according to 
opensiteexplorer:

PA: 23
DA: 40
Linking RD: 1
Total Links: 58

The homepage doesn't contain the exact match of our keyword combo in its text, but we've got a footer link. The 3 keywords are used seperatly in the text on the homepage.

PA: 50
DA: 40 
Linking RD: 98 Total Links: 880

and some social media data which the optimized page doesn't have.

Hopefully i've giving enough info this time

[DougRoberts]

What's the website, the optimized page and the keyword you're targeting?