Why is my homepage ranking BELOW a subpage?

[RateSetter]

Search "peer to peer lending".

The page http://www.ratesetter.com/peer_to_peer_lending.htm appears higher than the homepage.

I don't think this is because of keyword density on page either as Zopa (competitor) have zero mentions of this keyword on their homepage.

What are your suggestions for getting the homepage ranked higher?

Thanks, Simon.

[KevinBudzynski]

Remember you don't need to have that phrase exactly to be ranked for it. If the content has "peer" and "lending" in it, with some good off-page ranking "points" they could show higher than your site. Good luck!

[DarinPirkey]

I didn't dig into their site but I can tell you there is some sort of co-citation going on there.  Rand did an awesome WBF a little while back that probably explains exactly what is going on.

[RateSetter]

Thanks vzPRO, appreciate you doing an on-page. I've done this already and recognise the good ratings of each page. The subpage is more keyword rich but if you refer to my reply to Kevin this is what is confusing me.

[RateSetter]

Thanks TommyTan. Yes indeed it does, but see my reply to Kevin above.

[RateSetter]

Thanks Kevin. This is what I find odd though, if you search the term "peer to peer lending" our competitor Zopa appears top with their homepage as the result. They have NO mention of "peer to peer lending" whatsoever on their homepage.

[DarinPirkey]

I've seen strong correlation between the keyword being in the page name / url  and rankings but in general a sub-page is generally more targeted for a keyword.

I just ran the seomoz on-page report card for your home page and sub page with the keyword being peer to peer lending and though they both received an "A" there were more factors helping the sub page.

[KevinBudzynski]

Google feels that that page is more relevant for that keyword than the homepage. Just looking at the on-page factors, I agree w/Google. The url, heading and overall copy seems to reflect that term more than the home page. Also, this page is much better landing page than the home page for people searching for info on this term.

[TommyTan]

Hi Simon,

I just have to say it even though it may not be the reason, does your subpage have more keywords and content than the home page for bots to crawl?

Another reason may be because you are getting more backlinks and social share on your subpage than your home page.  Google may find that your subpage provide the better result to searchers than the home page because it might have more backlinks or contents for them to crawl.