If my home page never shows up in SERPS but other pages do, does that mean Google is penalizing me?

[greenhornet77]

So my website I do local SEO for, xyz.com  is finally getting better on some keywords (Thanks SEOMOZ)

But only pages that are like this xyz.com/better_widgets_ or xyz.com/mousetrap_removals

Is Google penalizing me possibly for some duplicate content websites I have out there (working on, I know I know it is bad)...

[TomRayner]

I'm pretty sure Irving means:

site:www.xyz.com

Put that in the search bar itself.

[greenhornet77]

When you say do site search do you mean do this?

www.xyz.com : search

or

http://www.xyz.com : search

[irvingw]

Is the homepage showing up as indexed in Google - do a site: search

If you did link building to your homepage (like everyone always does) with your keywords and now it's not showing up that's probably a penalty. You know the words you used as anchor texts for your link building, are those words no longer ranking?

Also does your site name rank IE if your site is  besttraininguk.com are you ranking for besttraininguk - if not you have a trademark suppresion

[TomRayner]

If you are being penalised, it sounds like you're working on the issue (employ the use of rel=canonical tags while you're rewriting the content). So let's look at ways to see if you have been penalised by Google.

First of all, check your messages in webmaster tools to see if you have received any warnings from Google.  If you have, then you will need to follow their advice on getting the penalty removed.

If there's no warning, your site may have been affected by link devaluation or a strictly algorithmic penalty.  When you type your brand name into Google - what comes up first?  Is it your homepage?  Similarly, if you type in your full web address (http://www.domain.com) into the Google search bar, does that page come up first?

If the answer to either of the last 2 questions is "no", then there may be some penalty involved.  In which case, I would first rule out any possibility of your site being actively penalised by checking webmaster tools and then reviewing what links are pointing your homepage.  If it is a very spammy link profile, you will need to work on improving it with authoritative and editorial links.  I'd only spend time actively trying to remove links if you have a penalty, or you believe that the vast majority of links to your sites homepage or spammy.