Not sure why Home page is outranked by less optimized internal pages.
-
We launched our website just three weeks ago, and one of our primary keyword phrases is "e-business consultants".
Here's what I don't get. Our home page is the page most optimized around this search phrase. Using SEOmoz On-Page Optimization tool, the home page scores an "A". And yet it doesn't rank in the top 50 on Google Canada, although two other INTERNAL pages - www.ebusinessconsultants.ca/about/consulting-team/ & /www.ebusinessconsultants.ca/about/consulting-approach/ - rank 5 & 6 on Google Canada, even though they only score a grade "C" for on-page optimization for this keyword phrase.
I've always understood that the home page is the most powerful page. Why are these others outranking it? I checked the crawl and Google Webmaster, and there is no obvious problem on the home page.
Is this because the site is so new?
It goes against all previous experience I've had in similar situation.
Any guidance/ insight would be highly appreciated!!
-
Nicholas:
I'll check with the good folks at SEOmoz support. Might take a while to get an answer. I'll let you know what I find.
Cheers - Axel
-
Thinking it might be that I used a hyphen and you didn't, I just re-checked. Now, with hyphen I'm getting rank 19. Without, rank 9.
This is weird. :S
-
So check this out: Just like yours, ranked moments after your Rank Tracker check. Shows position #8. Either Google SERP results have a time-based random variable thrown in, or Rank Tracker is inconsistent. Would love to get SEOmoz view on this.
-
Quite possibly. I'm still getting a not-in-top-50, however. See attached image. :S
-
Nicholas:
Weird. All of us are using the same tool, and getting drastically different results. Check out Marcin's results above. When I try Rank Tracker directly just now, it shows #8 on Google Canada. Can the rankings be that "twitchy" moment to moment?
-
Thanks, Marcin!
Agree. But personalization effects should be off, since I am in fact using the SEOmoz ranking report (albeit released last Friday during regular campaign reporting). Also, keep in mind that the rankings I listed above are on Google Canada.
I'll double check using the Rank Tracker directly. Stay tuned.
-
I've checked your rankings with Rank Tracker and they are different from your results.
I have your site on place 15 for your your keyword, and it is the homepage that is ranking.
I can see that you have Google Analytics on your site.
Check your Landing Pages report, with a keyword as a secondary dimension. You will immediately understand where exactly people are arriving at when they visit your site for various keywords.
When tracking your rankings, always keep in mind that results can be greatly skewed by personalization.
-
What is telling you that you have these rankings? Rank Tracker has you NIT-50 for any page on your website.
If this is just you manually checking, there are many reasons you may be seeing your own pages. Search personalization is huge, from rank history to geography.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Least Text for Home Page
We are rebranding our web site and intend to create more visual pages with less text on the assumption that no one want to read anymore. What is the least amount of text that we can include in a home page without damaging out ability to rank on Google? Google recently increased the permitted amount of text on description tags. Can we shift text to the description tax and place more on ALT tags that are not immediately visible to visitors. Any thoughts, comments, advice?? I am adding image of the old home page and new home page (text to be written, 3 columns of dummy text) so the change in the amount of text is visible. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan GkvnNR8 UH9ptbh0 -
Home page not being indexed
Hi Moz crew. I have two sites (one is a client's and one is mine). They are both Wordpress sites and both are hosted on WP Engine. They have both been set up for a long time, and are "on-page" optimized. Pages from each site are indexed, but Google is not indexing the homepage for either site. Just to be clear - I can set up and work on a Wordpress site, but am not a programmer. Both seem to be fine according to my Moz dashboard. I have Webmaster tools set up for each - and as far as I can tell (definitely not an exper in webmaster tools) they are okay. I have done the obvious and checked that the the box preventing Google from crawling is not checked, and I believe I have set up the proper re-directs and canonicals.Thanks in advance! Brent
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EchelonSEO0 -
Content per page?
We used to have an articles worth of content in a scroll box created by our previous SEO, the problem was that it was very much keyword stuffed, link stuffed and complete crap. We then removed this and added more content above the fold, the problem I have is that we are only able to add 150 - 250 words above the fold and a bit of that is repetition across the pages. Would we benefit from putting an article at the bottom of each of our product pages, and when I say article I mean high quality in depth content that will go into a lot more detail about the product, history and more. Would this help our SEO (give the page more uniqueness and authority rather than 200 - 250 word pages). If I could see one problem it would be would an articles worth of content be ok at the bottom of the page and at that in a div tab or scroll box.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search
Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos. When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed. The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such: domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results. This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent: * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos? I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona0 -
Linking to local pages on main page - keyword self-cannibalization issue?
Hi guys, Our website has this landing page: www.example.com/service1/ Is this considered keyword self-cannibalization if on the above page we link to local pages such as: www.example.com/service1-in-chicago/ www.example.com/service1-in-newyork/ www.example.com/service1-in-texas/ Many thanks David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sssrpm0 -
Performing Internal Optimization Without Much Anchor Text?
Hi guys. We're in the process of building a new site, and are using a lot of icon based linking, image linking, etc. There is some basic text linking here and there, but not a whole lot. My concern is, because I'm not using actual anchor text, but just images, that crawlers are going to have a more difficult time determining what pages are about. Do I have a valid concern, or am I just worrying about nothing? If this concern is valid, what is the best way to remedy this concern? Alt img tags?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CodyWheeler0 -
Does the home page must get the biggest amount of internal links?
Hi All, I have an e-commerce website with thousands of unique pages. The site is built with quick access through the navigation bar to the main product categories. All of the product pages have navigation trees in them.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
What happened is that in one of the main categories I have so many pages (products) that it actually gets more links than the home page - it is getting the links both from the menu (in each page in the site) and from the product pages that belong to that category whereas the homepage gets only the one link from the menu. Is that OK or should I add a level in the navigation tree that points to the homepage? Thanks0