Homepage Hogging Too Many Keyword Ranks?

[holdtheonion]

Hello:

I've been the publisher and SEO for Indie Rock Cafe since starting it in 2007.

It's done great, and has #1 - #5 positions in Google for many strong keywords like "best new albums", "best new bands", "top new bands", "popular indie rock songs", and so on.

However, for many of the results, the homepage keeps popping up over and over again. I thought I'd done everything right to get other pages on the site to rank for top keywords.

Another potential issue is that I expected the homepage to have a 6 PR by now, but it seems stuck on 5.

Any ideas?

Insight from SEOs and experts is always enlightening and helpful, so thank you in advance for your thoughts and advice.

[holdtheonion]

Hi Marcus:

Thanks for your reply.

Actually, I do have other pages already employed with keywords I'm trying for - but those pages all stay at a PR of 3 for some reason:

http://www.indierockcafe.com/new-releases/ - "best new releases" or "best new albums" or "popular new albums" - You'll see I rank for these words - but it's almost always the homepage - I do realize that it has to do with links and anchor text going to the homepage rather than the other pages. Maybe link building for these pages will help change this?

http://www.indierockcafe.com/artists-and-bands/ - "hot new bands" "best rock bands" - you'll probably see I have #1,2,3 for all these rich keywords, but Google is almost always choosing the homepage.

(PS - I'm not trying to rank for variants that include "indie" because the site is saturated for that term

and

http://www.indierockcafe.com/top-ten-songs/   - "best new songs" "hot new songs" "popular rock songs", etc.

Regards

Phil

[First]

Remember that Google is trying to pull up the most relevant result for the specific search. So we need to see why Google would think that your homepage is more relevant then some of your interior pages that you have been trying to optimize for.

Now when you say "I'd done everything right to get other pages on the site to rank for top keywords."

Can you be more specific as to the strategies that you have implemented_?_

Also I wouldn't consider being "stuck" on PR5 a potential issue_._ Many site perform better then others with higher PR.http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/06/beyond-pagerank-graduating-to.html

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Phil

I have had a quick look but to make life easier could you possibly supply a few pages with the keywords you would expect them to rank for? We can then provide some direct feedback rather than generic advice which hopefully you can take and put into action across the site.

Cheers
Marcus