Subpage ranking for homepage keyword
-
Hi all,
May seem like a simple scenario and I might be missing something, but my subpage seems to be ranking for my main homepage keyword.
The subpage PR is 28 and my domain authority is 17, how can I get my main home page to rank instead of the sub page (product page)?
I want to stay away from exact match anchor text links, any suggestions?
-
Hi Phillip,
Try using the On Page Optimization tool under "Search" in your Moz Analytics account to grade each page for the term. It could be that the internal page is better-targeted for the term, even though it's only loosely related.
It's also possible that the subpage has received a high number of links from third parties, although this is fairly rare. There is no chance that the home page is under any sort of filter or penalty from backlink activity (e.g. too many anchors with the target term used as anchor text, pointing at the home page?). Although also not terribly common, Google has been known to penalise pages but not entire websites, based upon the page's backlinks.
You can also try linking to the home page from the subpage and including the target term in the link, but not linking to the subpage from the home page.
-
Hi Phillip
Thanks for your response.
My homepage is ranking no.1 when I do the site: search.
The home page is indexed, and yes sorry I mean PA, the sub page is loosely relevant.
-
Do you have competing title tags, headings, and content between this sub-page and the home page? If they are the same or similar, something on the home page makes it more appealing to rank than your home page. It could be better quality content that is more relevant to the keyword than the home page or it could signify issues with your home page as Philip alluded to.
Limited content or mixed content on the home page could be an issue or it may be technical. Is the home page not loading correctly or loading very slowly? Also, is your home page not ranking for they keyword or is the sub-page just higher in ranking? Does your home page rank for other keywords?
-
For some reason, Google has decided that the interior page is more relevant for the query. There's many reason this might happen...
Go to google.com and do a "site:" search for your domain. site:example.com -- Is your homepage ranking #1 on the SERP? If not, your homepage may not be indexed or might have a manual penalty imposed. Are you 100% sure the homepage is indexed? Do you have Webmaster Tools? Make sure everything is all square in there.
What do you mean by the subpage's PR is 28? Do you mean PA? Is this interior page very relevant for your main keyword or is it just sort of (loosely) relevant?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
New site failing to rank - could this be why?
I have a new client site that is not appearing anywhere in the top 100 for its main keywords. ASSUMING that this is not an issue with optimization or link quality, I am wondering whether it might be the following... The client's company has a parent company whose website has decent authority. This website links to the new (client) website. In addition, the 2 press releases we have done include links to both companies, since one was an outgrowth of the other. This is all 100% natural, so my inclination is that this is not causing the issue. But does anyone have any experience to suggest otherwise? That having website A linking to website B, and 50+ press release websites linking to both, could be causing the algorithm to throttle website Bs ability to rank? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zakkyg0 -
Checking Rankings Again & Again Can Drop Rankings
Is it possible that if i check my google rankings again & again it can drop ranking?Like checking where do my keywords rank every hours rank drop the rankings? Because this indirectly affects the CTR. Might be because of it? No one has faced such an weird thing before.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Weird Page switch for a keyword in Google Rankings
Over this past weekend Google switched the page which usually showed in search results for keyword benchmarking. It went from from http://www.apqc.org/benchmarking to http://www.apqc.org/benchmarking-portal/osb. Also on Google the Rankings for the keyword 'benchmarking' sank from 15 to 47 for http://www.apqc.org/benchmarking Just looking for some theories or ideas or anyone that has had this happen to them.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseninja0 -
Rank drop in June
Since fixing a major duplicate content issue in Dec 2012, our traffic saw steady and dramatic growth through the summer. It has started to settle down now and rankings have started to decline. I have a bad feeling that something is wrong but for the life of me I cannot figure it out. Our Moz rank is pretty high but some of our biggest keywords have gone from #2 to #9 in a fairly short time period which makes me very nervous. I am not even sure where to look at this point. Any suggestions are welcomed as I am kind of at a loss now but worry I am missing something basic. www.threeguysgolf.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | astaelin0 -
Dropping dramatically in keyword rankings
One of my clients has always ranked well for this keyword (janitorial services, nh). Then within a week, they dropped out of the top fifty in Google and now in other major search engines as well. My first thought of why the drop in rankings is due to duplicate listings within online directories. The previous marketing person on staff was listing the company more than once in these directories, and it wasn't discovered until later in the link building process. Sometimes the company was listed with "janitorial services" as part of the company name, and then listed again with "carpet cleaning" as part of the company name... sometimes with duplicate address, or using the po box instead - as if two companies. The odd thing in all this is that while they dropped in ranking for this keyword, they still come in usually 1st in Google Places for this keyword with 12 excellent reviews. And yet when I check their Google Places account, it says that it needs to be reverified, again, it doesn't meet the terms. (company is a family owned business, for over 30 years, they have a lot of potential). So all this duplication needs to be fixed, but how serious are duplicate listings on places like Manta, YellowPages, SuperPages, also Yahoo Business Local and Bing Business Directory? And now that "forensics" seems to be my task, any suggestions on how to start? Any processes I should go through with Google WebMaster? _Cindy And, too, if I could add, the site ranks very poorly for this keyword and while I have provided recommendations, and they understand the onsite issue, they have yet to go forward with implementation, making this a little more difficult issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CeCeBar0 -
What to do with keyword specific domains
I have a few domain names with the keywords I'm trying to target for my website. My website currently has been in operations for a couple years, and while not hugely authoritative, has built some value. Now, are these domain names with keywords any use to me? Is there any point to forward them to my site? Do I try to build up a page (or a few of content) and then have a link to my main site? Any insight would be mucho appreciated! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gregalam0 -
Should I Decrease My Keyword Density
On SEOmoz's On-page tool it is telling me that I should cut the number of phrases for a specific key phrase almost in half, from 27 to 15. However my keyword density for this page is only 1.68%. I would have thought that was a good keyword density to have, if not even a little higher. Should I trust the tool and decrease this keyword phrase? Would love to hear from anyone with experience in this. If you want to see the page it is http://www.mybluedish.com/. The key phrase is "satellite internet"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet0 -
Sudden rank drop for 1 keyword
A page of mine (http://loginhelper.com/networks/facebook-login/) was ranking in the top 10 for keyword (facebook login) and has been for at least 2 months, moving between 5th and 10th. Suddenly in the last 3 days the rank for the keyword dropped from 7th to 46th, yet none of the other keywords have been affected (they target other pages) and their ranks have continued to improve. I am trying to figure out what caused this sudden drop in the ranking of 1 page (the page has quality mainly text based content and isn't in the least bit shallow or spammy) I have been thinking perhaps a crawl or server error may be to cause leaving the page temporarily unavailable or with a big load time... Otherwise what could cause one page to drop so much so quickly whilst other pages improved their rank?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netboost0