10 replies to this topic

[davidbrett]

Hi All,

We have launched a few new sites over the past 6 - 12 months and we are noticing something unusual with the results.

Lets say site A is targeting Keyphrase 1 on the home page and Niche Keyphrase 1 on an inner page.

In a large number of instances when you search for Keyphrase 1 it is the inner page that is been shown in the results with no sign of the more targeted and relevant home page.

All of the pages have been picked up by the search engines so I am not sure why the home page is not getting the results.

Has anyone else seen something like this happen?

[chrishirst]

Has anyone else seen something like this happen?

Yes! Everybody and all the time.

There's only you that thinks your "home page" is "special". To a search engine, it's simply A.N. Other page and the page they decide to show is weighed to be a "better fit" for the query.

[davidbrett]

Thanks for the reply,

Of course it often makes sense for inner pages to rank ahead of a home page. They are often more relevant for different niches etc..

However I don't think this is what is happening with our sites. I don't think I explained the issue as well as I could have in the original post.

For a number of our target phrases the home page was in or close to the top 10 results for the main target phrases. However now a number have dropped off the list (others have retained there positions). The ones where the ranking has dropped invariably the home page is not coming up in the SERPs any more and has been replaced by one of the internal pages (albeit further down the list in the SERP's).

I don't think this is happening because the internal pages are more relevant.

[chrishirst]

I don't think this is happening because the internal pages are more relevant.

That's your opinion, the SE algo has determined otherwise.


Have you tried logging out of Google, clearing your cache AND cookies before "checking"?

"rankings" are so vplatile they cannot be taken as a reliable measure or anything at all.

[Jill]

Sounds like it could be a technical issue. Is that page's info perhaps duplicated elsewhere?

This is one of those things that we can guess at all day, but would need to really look closely at what's happening to know for sure.

[davidbrett]

Thanks for that Jill,

I was thinking it might be a technical issue and I will evaluate the sites to see if there is any instance of duplicate content. There shouldn't be but it is worth checking out as there is some overlap between some of the sites.

We are working on the links and adding more unique content at the moment so I would be hopeful that this will help improve things in time.

[qwerty]

Could your internal links to the home page be using a file name in the URL, which you're not 301-redirecting back to the domain's root address? Since it's a relatively new site, I wouldn't count on the search engines figuring out for themselves which version of the home page is canonical, so in a case like this, you could be splitting PR between / and /index.whatever.

[davidbrett]

Hi Bob,

This is a possibility. The issue may be with the CMS which displays the sites as sitename.avvio.com rather than sitename.com. I have done a few site:sitename.avvio.com checks on Google and these domains have been picked up.

This may be causing an issue.

[Jill]

Yep, so there are two domains with the same info. Makes sense.

[davidbrett]

Thanks all for the feedback.

I have put redirects in place which hopefully will solve some of the problem.

[nuttakorn]

From search engine perspective and user experience, sending the visitors to most relevant page from relevant keywords, that would be generated more conversions. You don't need to focus all traffic must send to homepage.