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Home Page Shows in SERPS instead of Subpages

by Anteela
5 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi Warriors,

I have just started to take over work for a website (Tallahassee DUI Lawyer | Leon County Criminal Defense Attorney | Don Pumphrey, Jr.) for a criminal defense attorney in Tallahassee. One of many issues that I'm working to address is why the homepage shows up for results rather than the subpage related to the keyword. For example, if you search for "Tallahassee Second DUI Lawyer", the website comes up first, but it's a link to the home page and the the specific page on second DUI offenses. The results are similar for pretty much every other keyword.

This is a bit troubling since the content has been up for about 8 months and the subpages aren't even coming up for extremely low competition keywords, if the website shows up at all. I've worked with websites using a similar model and the specific pages show up just fine, generally in short timeframe.

Right now, I'm working to reduce a bit of the keyword stuffing and content quality issues, inner linking, and build deep links specifically to the interior pages. There's also a few things that I think are unrelated, but am working to resolve (i.e. the footer spam, alt/image and other over-optimization, some coding issues). I still feel like I'm missing something important, but there's quite a bit on my list to tinker with.

Have any of you encountered similar issues? If so, what steps did you take to address it? I truly appreciate any insight ya'll have. Thanks!!!
#home #page #serps #shows #subpages
  • Profile picture of the author Headstart
    How many links are pointed at the home page? How many links at the inner pages you want to rank?

    Also what is the keyword diversity like?

    It sounds like you need to start focusing on the inner pages, send more backlinks & make sure you have good on page content.
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  • Profile picture of the author cheapstuff
    One thing I want to point out is the URL structuring of those sub pages. They are kind of spammy and could be the reason, are none of the sub pages ranking over the main page?

    domain.com/CriminalDefense/DrunkDrivingDUI.aspx

    Could you possibly just name the pages after the main keyword for that page or the most descriptive keyword?

    example.com/drunk-driving-DUI/

    Beyond that there are a lot of little things I am not seeing like canonical tags and such. Seems like a nice site though, but a bit overwhelming with data.
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  • Profile picture of the author Anteela
    @kennyall - I'm also thinking that lack of deep linking is an issue. We're going to refine the on-page content a bit more to make it less spammy, but it's pretty indepth, especially compared to the competitors.

    @cheapstuff - I agree about the structuring. I'm just hesitant to rename them at this point since a lot of them have had that url for years. There is also the issue with the CMS being used, which I think had to do with the original decision to name it that way.
    It's quite a bit of content. The way it functioned for our other sites is that the exact page related to the query appeared, which helped conversions. Since it's not functioning as intended here, we're running into issues and giving people too much work to get to the appropriate page.

    Thanks for the responses, ya'll!
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    • Profile picture of the author Headstart
      Originally Posted by Anteela View Post

      @kennyall - I'm also thinking that lack of deep linking is an issue. We're going to refine the on-page content a bit more to make it less spammy, but it's pretty indepth, especially compared to the competitors.

      @cheapstuff - I agree about the structuring. I'm just hesitant to rename them at this point since a lot of them have had that url for years. There is also the issue with the CMS being used, which I think had to do with the original decision to name it that way.
      It's quite a bit of content. The way it functioned for our other sites is that the exact page related to the query appeared, which helped conversions. Since it's not functioning as intended here, we're running into issues and giving people too much work to get to the appropriate page.

      Thanks for the responses, ya'll!
      Yeah I've never had an issue ranking inner pages.. as long as you keep the keywords relevant and kw's in the H1, H2 & H3 and stay consistent with link building you'll do well.
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      • Profile picture of the author Anteela
        Originally Posted by kennyall View Post

        Yeah I've never had an issue ranking inner pages.. as long as you keep the keywords relevant and kw's in the H1, H2 & H3 and stay consistent with link building you'll do well.
        This is a new issue for me as well, sadly. But at least I can say it has little to do with the recent Google slap felt around the world, since it's been ongoing for about 5 months. I'm not sure if there's any sort of penalization issue for the subpages, which would explain why pages we create with content for an extremely niche area do not show up for 6+ pages at times (no competition either). Is there such a thing as a penalty like that (I know the "P" word gets tossed around a lot)? No notice in Google webmaster tools though.
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