Non-home page ranking higher, very odd

[Joes_Ideas]

One of my new clients has an eCommerce site selling chair mats, that ranks first page for their primary keyword ("chair mats"), but the serp is not showing their home page... It is an odd "resources" page that mostly just has outbound links. I've never seen this.

Also, there are no external inbound links to this particular page. How can this be ranking higher than the home page... weeeeird.

Update: I haven't done any optimization yet... and yes, I know the site is outdated

• My location is set to San Diego. If I change it (New York City), the Resources2.htm page goes away from the page 1 ranking, and I get a page 2 home page ranking. This is so strange

[danatanseo]

I feel your pain! Although, sometimes cleaning up an outdated site can be the most rewarding because there is so much upward potential. Good luck!

[danatanseo]

I notice that when I navigate to an interior page, then want to go back to the Home page, that the little hyper-link in the upper left inside the home page logo actually took me to this URL:

http://www.thematstore.com/index.htm

instead of http://www.thematstore.com

I loaded them both into OSE: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.thematstore.com&comparisons%5B0%5D=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thematstore.com%2Findex.htm&=Compare

You can see that the /index.html version of your homepage has the lion's share of internal followed links. This might be something you want to correct so all those internal pages are actually linking back to http://www.thematstore.com

I agree with Irving's suggestion to get rid of those footer links to other search engines.

I disagree with Irving's statement that keyword tags "can only hurt" you. I don't think they are hurting you. But he is correct in that you don't really need them. It does help your competitors discover what keywords you're going after.

Since you are so close to page one, I would do just those things and see if your ranking improves. If it does. Proceed cautiously with Irving's suggestions "c" and "d." I'm not saying they aren't good suggestions, but that if you do everything all at once, and your ranking sinks, you won't have any idea what had the negative impact. I would be especially cautious in removing that page and "de-optimizing" things.

Out of recent personal experience, I decided to "de-optimize" a page that had SEO copy in small text way at the bottom of an e-commerce page. I was #2 in Google and hoped that by de-optimizing I could move up to #1. Guess what? I took out my keyword-stuffed copy, and boom, dropped to #4.

This is why I say proceed with caution. Do one thing at a time and evaluate the results before moving on and changing something else.

Hope this helps!

[Joes_Ideas]

Thanks, good suggestions. I just walked into this one and there are a lot of outdated tactics and work to be done.

The ranking is just odd. Right now I'm seeing /resources2.html at number 6, and the home page at 27 in Google. But in other search engines, the home page is ranked on first page, and the resources2 is no where to be found (as it should be).

[Joes_Ideas]

It's actually the "resources2" page that is ranking: http://www.thematstore.com/resources2.html, which has no inbound links and I think the only external link is from resources.html (more resources link).

[Vizergy]

Every page of the website links to it.  quickstart.clari.net links to that particular page.  And the rest of the site just isn't optimized (as you already stated) so I think that Google takes all of these things and for some reason decided that the resources page is the most relevant for the term.

Taking shots in the dark here... this is really odd  At least you know you will be able to correct it with no trouble at all, lol

[irvingw]

Looks fine to me I see #11 in Google with the homepage. Some suggestions though:

a) lose the footer search engine links, looks outdated and you're leaking PR for no reason and increasing bounce rate.

b) lose the keyword tags, they are stuffed and it's a tag that can hurt only and not help.

c) deoptimize the navigation links for "chair mats" it's overdone

d) completely delete the resources page, especially if this was part of a reciprocal link building strategy. I see a pool supplies link on there so i assume it was.

[irvingw]

Better on page optimization maybe and better page juice distribution across the site? Are you linking back properly to the homepage globally?

EDIT: ok i see you posted the URL now, i'll take a look that helps

[Joes_Ideas]

Yes, it is www.thematstore.com.

I have personalization disabled in Google search. The weird thing is, the resources page is showing up in Google (for me), but the home page shows up in Yahoo or Bing,

[danatanseo]

Hi Joe,

I am curious to know about how this could happen too.

Is your client in the USA? I just searched "chair mats" and outside of the major brands like Staples, Amazon and Sam's Club, there were only a couple of others listed, and the listing was for their home page. I didn't see any listings on page 1 that went to a subdirectory or resource page. This might be a silly question, but are you private browsing?

Dana