Problem appearing 1 st with a sub page when typing my company name and product

[seoanalytics]

I just did a test typing my company name followed by what I sell
Let's say  "company green widgets "

I noticed that my webpage ( which is a subpage ) doesn't appear 1 st on google when i type that keyword....

Either some website that talks about my product appears or my homepage appears.

Why is that ?

Could it be a canonicalization issue ?

Thank you,

[sergio_redondo]

Imagine that one of the keywords your homepage ranks for is your brand name. If you look for some of your services (subpage) and you make a search using a keyword containing a branded keyword within, probably your first result is your homepage.

Your homepage would be ranking for this branded keyword very well. Moreover, if your homepage has a lot of backlinks using your branded keyword as anchor text, then, making a search for finding a subpage using your branded keyword is a bad idea, as your homepage is ranking better than any other subpage in your site.

Hope to be helpful.

[matbennett]

That's a really vague question.  Really it could be absolutely anything. However you have 2 different issues:

1 - Someone else is out ranking you

2 - Your expected page is not appearing

Answering "Why is another site outranking mine" without knowing the URLs is impossible.  Their page might be better optimised, they might just have more authority.  I'd focus on the other question first, then come back to this if solving #2 doesn't fix this as well.

Question 2 is "Why is my sub page ranking above my homepage for that specific term".  Again, this is hard to answer without seeing it. However, assuming that the page is at least indexed, I'd be looking for issues such as:

• How good is the onpage optimisation of the home page?
• Is that page well linked internally?
• Does that page have unique (and preferably valuable) content?
• Does that page have any external links?
• Are you cannibalising your own rankings by repeating the terms you are targeting across both the home page and sub-page.

Answer those questions and you will probably be on the right track.  Solving this, and getting that sub-page performing better, may well deal with the competitor issue at the same time.

Before you rush off and look at all of that though, I have one more question: Do you need to rank #1 for that term?  Depending on how well established you company is the answer may well be yes. However for many companies the answer would be no. Your analytics will have the answer - are people searching that phrase.

Sorry if that last bit sounds obvious/daft - but it's an important point.  Lots of people chase listings that will never benefit them.

[sergio_redondo]

It would be helpful to indicate your URL and company name in order to evaluate this problem.

It's difficult to answer without data, but my first impression is that you can have a problem with title optimization. Does it contain that keyword? And your company name? How long is your title?

Please, send your URL for more accurate answers.