My homepage no longer ranks for a keyword, instead a page from the blog now appears in the results

[sophycolbert]

Hello,

Our site used to rank for a specific keyword - "eco products", with a link going to the homepage. However, in the last few weeks, we've noticed that the home page no longer ranks for this keyword, and instead the second result on the page is a link to a catagory page on our blog.

I'd be very grateful if anyone had any information about why this might have happened, and what possible steps I could take to remedy the situation.

Many thanks,

Sophy

[Marcus_Miller]

Ha, no worries buddy. Great minds and all that.

[WilliamBay]

Sorry Marcus, We must have been typing at the same time.

[WilliamBay]

Hi Sophy, It's actually in line with what Marcus was saying. Your two pages are competing with each other. If you look at the Title Tag for the home page, there is nothing that says "eco products." But if you look at your category page, you'll see not only does the Title Tag say "Eco Products," but it's also in the URL. So you'll have to make a decision as to whether or not you'll want Eco Products to have it's own page or to have it show up on the home page. If you want it to show on the home page, you'll want that in the Title Tag, and you will need to rename that category page as well as renaming the Title Tag.

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Sophie

In this instance, I am guessing you don't want to lose that page from ranking but the page itself is called 'eco-products' and the term you are targeting on the homepage is eco-products so you seem to have a conflict of interest between those two pages.

Lets look at the homepage:

**Title: **Nigel's Eco Store - Environmentally friendly products and eco friendly gifts for sustainable living 
Keyword Usage: 2 - once in a page title, once in an image title (0 times on the page itself)

Lets look at the /eco-products/ page

Title: Eco Products
Keyword Usage:  13 times on page & 27 times in total taking all HTML elements into account

Anchor Text

Additionally, lets look at the anchor text to the pages. The homepage has the standard logo and image links from the main nav but  the eco-products page has tons of links with the term 'eco products' from the 'posted in tags'.

Summary

In brief, without looking at the external issues, the ranking is kind of right. Everything on your blog page is saying hey, I am about eco products but your homepage hardly uses this term at all.

Your homepage ranks first (uk at least) for a bunch of other terms:
environmentally friendly products store
eco store

So, is this such a bad thing? I imagine, if you really want to rank the homepage for this term you could rename that page / tag to something else and work that phrase into the homepage a little more. You seem so strong for eco + x that it would likely be doable (and you have the historical ranking for the term).

Maybe it may be a good chance to look at your landing pages and add a new page to catch this traffic?

There are plenty of options but the approach depends on what you are looking for here but there is certainly no mystery why that page ranks for that term over your homepage. I think the simplest solution is just a case of changing the name of that page/tag to something more suitable and building some relevance for eco products on the homepage OR looking at a new optimised landing page for that term.

Hope it helps!
Marcus

[sophycolbert]

Hi,

Well, it's good to hear I'm not alone! The link to the homepage which used to appear for this term is http://www.nigelsecostore.com/, and the link to the page which now appears in second place for this term is http://www.nigelsecostore.com/blog/category/eco-products/

Thank you for your suggestions,

Sophy

[sophycolbert]

Hi Marcus,

Thanks for getting back to me so promptly, and thanks for the suggestions - very useful.

Here is a link to the page that comes up for this keyword - http://www.nigelsecostore.com/blog/category/eco-products/

Looking in Google Webmaster Tools, I can't see a single link to this page.

Our homepage http://www.nigelsecostore.com/ always used to rank for this term "eco products", and I can understand that its normal for your ranking to go up and down over time for a term, but for the homepage to completely disappear from the search results for this term, and to be replaced by this category page on our blog seems very weird!

Thanks,

Sophy

[portalseo]

Hi Sophy, I had a similar problem. I combated this by adding url conical. I also removed most of the backlinks to that particular category and redirected it to my index page. It took a couple of weeks to get back to how it was. It will be hard to find out the reason without posting a link though! Thanks

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Sophy

Could be a lot of things, could you supply a link?

• maybe the blog page is more relevant for that term or you have two competing pages
• maybe the blog page picked up some external links with that anchor so became more relevant than the homepage
• maybe the sites structure or linking gives more relevance to that page for that term

The solutions are kind of similar to the suggestions above

• make sure the homepage is more relevant for that term
• make sure the two pages are not competing for that term
• do some link building for that  term to the homepage
• ensure the internal linking and anchors are not promoting that page for that term

Hard to go further  than these general hints without a URL but happy to take a look if you want to post a link.

Hope it helps!
Marcus