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Wrong Page Ranking At The Top Of Google's Search Results 
By: Aaron Wall 2007-08-07 Question: I have recently launched a new site and got it a few authoritative links. For my search queries related to my brand Google is ranking an internal page instead of the home page. Why?
Answer: When a site is new and has few inbound links the PageRank computations tend to be rough estimations. It is common for a page linked to sitewide, like an about us page, to outrank the homepage until they better understand the internal site structure and PageRank flow. What if My Site is Older? Filtered Page Some pages get filtered out of the search results for being too focused on a keyword or keyword phrase. Make sure you mix up your inbound anchor text, page title, meta description, page headings, and page content. If you see a women's volleyball page outranking your core volleyball page and your core volleyball page used to rank really well but is now nowhere to be found then likely it got filtered out. Poor Internal Site Link Structure If the wrong page style ranks and gets linked to then that advantage sorta builds on itself and the wrong pages continue to rank. If you have printer friendly pages or other duplicate content pages ranking you may want to look into demoting their role in your internal link structure. Information & Sales Pages Informational pages tend to outrank most sales / conversion oriented pages because typically they have more relevant on page content and deliver greater value to common web users, which makes people more likely to link to them. If you have an informational page ranking where you would like your sales page to rank you have numerous options. Advertise your product or service aggressively on the information page. This allows you to maintain rankings, maintain forward link momentum, and increase conversion rates. This is a low risk approach. If the idea of advertising too overtly scares you then you may want to consider using smaller ads and working the advertisement into the content with a text link. Switch the contents of the two URLs. This carries some risks, as some people who linked to the information page may remove their link if they see the advertisement page, though most old links stick. The other big risk is that competitors may eventually catch up because your ranking page may not gain links as quickly as their informational pages do, so the day you switch to an ad page you help them catch up. Change internal link weights. If you are placing a lot of link weight on the informational page but little on the sales page you can try to increase your internal link weight to the sales page while lowering the link weight to the informational page. Market both pages aggressively. It is typically better to have two listings in the search result than one. If one of your documents is a self reinforcing authority and your other document is within striking range of the top results you can market both of them. Ensure you make the descriptions and titles for each of them appealing to the right searchers. For example, the listing for the sales page can use commercial words like buy and best, whereas the informational page can use words like free, tips, reviews, etc. Comments Tag: Google Add to  Del.icio.us |  Digg |  Reddit |  Furl Have a bookmark! -  About the Author: Aaron Wall is the author of SEO Book, a dynamic website offering marketing tips and coverage of the search space, free SEO videos, and free SEO tools. He is a regular conference speaker, partner in Clientside SEM, and publishes dozens of independent websites. |
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