Influencing which page google chooses as the authority for a certain keyword

[royboy]

I have spent the last year optimizing my site for a specific keyword that I believed would do well with respect to conversions.

The good news is that my efforts have somewhat succeed.  I am now ranking second for a pretty popular keyword, and this effort has definitely increased my traffic.

The bad news is that the target page that shows up for the optimized keywords isn't really the authoritative page on my site for the given keywords.  As a result, it is my belief that my bounce rate is increasing and my conversions are decreasing.

To be more specific, let's say I have optimized my site for the keywords "cool widgets". On my site, I am referencing "cool widgets" in key areas such as title, meta keywords etc.  I am referencing the above both on my homepage as well as the cool-widgets page.

So, http://www.mysite.com and http://www.mysite.com both contain pretty heavy optimization for "cool widgets".  When a user searches "cool widgets", google is displaying mysite.com - however, i'd like it to display mysite.com/cool-widgets like all my competitors.

Is there any advice or light the community can shed on how I might go about correcting this issue?  I don't think I want to de-optimize my home page, as I am afraid I might lose that position and not have it replaced with the more relevant target page.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Roy

[royboy]

Thanks Reload! Makes sense - I will get to work on some of your suggestions.

[Andropenis_Australia]

WHat Roy said and you may have tried too hard with your "cool widgets" page. Be sure you haven't over optimized the desired page. Good luck

[IainReloadMedia]

Hi Royboy,

It's a common issue with SEO, as we don't have the precise control the PPC guys do over our desired landing pages.

First step would be to optimise your internal links, make sure /cool-widgets is very well interlinked from within your own site.

Next build external links into that page. After awhile you may get both pages listed in one SERP, #win. Then you can re-target your home page to a more relevant competitive keyword.

Depending on your external link building, it can take several months though, but is worth doing.

In the mean time, put something very obvious on the home page pointing visitors towards /cool-widgets

Let us know how you get on.

Iain - Reload Media