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Ranking for Home page instead of Inner Page

by leowald
5 replies
  • SEO
    • |

The problem is as follows:
I am trying to go after a keyword with very little competition. The problem is that the home page is ranking for it (position 5). The home page is not at all optimized for that keyword. I created an inner page that is optimized but the home page is still ranking for the keyword and not the inner page. I believe that if the inner page would rank, I could move up from number 5 to number 1 or 2. I finally figured out the reason that the home page is ranking, there was a link pointing it it, with the keyword in it. I changed the anchor text on that link - but I still have the same results?

Any advise? Should I start adding links to that inner page? Again there is almost no competition for it. Competing sites maybe have one link. If so are PR 0 links (web2.0) good enough to make the switch?

TIA
#home #page #ranking
  • Profile picture of the author joshinaustin
    This is very common - Especially with really non-competitive keywords.

    If you can, first off go change that back link to link to your inner page instead - If you can't, no big deal.

    If you just created that page, give it a little bit of time for Google to recognize the relevance/index that new page.. and it will show up in the search results, instead of the home page. Has the new page been indexed? Go to Google and type in info:yourinnerpage.com and click on cache - And it will tell you when the last time it was indexed or if it is even indexed at all. If no cache info shows up, then it isn't indexed.

    I would wait until it is indexed, and wait a week until after it is indexed, and then start doing some light back linking. Nothing too aggressive.

    Even without back links, Google will figure it out. This happened to me with a website a couple weeks ago, now Google is ranking the inner page #4 on 1st page and the home page #5. Which is good, more pages on the 1st page for that KW, means more traffic for you!

    Hope this helps.

    Best,

    Josh S.
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    • Profile picture of the author leowald
      Thanks for your response.

      The last time it was indexed was April 15th.
      By light backlinking do you mean web2.0 ?

      Thanks.
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      • Profile picture of the author raviv
        When you build a website, it is the home page that is the strongest page on the site in terms of PageRank. The PR flows from home page to the inner page. Also, the home page is always a gateway page and it funnels visitors to other parts of the site.

        If your site is a new site, then the home page will initially tend to outrank all the other pages on the site. After a period of time, the inner pages optimized specifically for particular keyword phrases will start ranking due to higher relevance. By that time, the inner pages would also have acquired some pagerank.

        A single backlink with anchor text is not going to make a huge difference. You should see your inner page rank for the keyword you are after in near future.
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  • Profile picture of the author seobuzz
    From your question itself, it seems that you have found the answer yourself.

    As you mentioned you had a backlink towards your homepage. That's why your home page was ranking for the keyword. And if you want any specific page to get the ranking, you will need to build relevant links to that specific inner page. Then only you will be able to rank that page.
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  • Profile picture of the author Hansons
    Only building links to your home page is not good, your inner pages should also have links so that it would look natural and ranking of your site would increase as well.
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