Wrong page ranking even after fixes. Why?

[Confetti_Wedding]

Howdy,

I've read a number of posts on this issue and followed all the advice I could find. My issue is this: several of our targeted keywords have the wrong page ranking which results in a loss of conversion and high bounce rate.

I use the site:mydomain.com operator to see how the pages are ranking which I find really useful. One of our targeted keywords is 'wedding stationery' and the page which should rank is shop.confetti.co.uk/branch/wedding-stationery however this page ranks 3rd on our domain.

I've done the following:

• Optimised the correct page
• De-optimised the ranking pages
• Added links from the incorrectly ranking page to the page I want to rank using keyword anchor text
• Added internal links to the page I want to rank from high Page Authority pages using keyword anchor text

Here is a link to the SERP which shows the ranking for our domain for the 'wedding stationery' search term.

I made the changes a couple of weeks ago.

Any advice or explanations as to what is causing this would be greatly received.

Thanks in advance,

Brendan.

[PPCnSEO]

You still have the word "Wedding Stationary" on the homepage which is probably why the homepage is still ranking.

Also the page you are trying to rank is a subdomain so is not directly linked.

I would expect that if you go overboard on trying to swap the rankings you will lose the home page and stay 3rd page for the product page - don't do this!

Instead simply continue to build links and optimise the product page and work at getting them BOTH on page 1.

Since google changed their rules I have many serps with both the homepage and the targeted page sitting next to each other on the front page. Twice the links gives twice the opportunity for clicks. And longterm aim for the 1 and 2!

[PPCnSEO]

Just noticed one other thing.... Your home page was actually linking to the "create your own stationary." page rather than the page you are hoping to target

Not that you should obsess over page rank but the home page is 5, page the homepage links to is 3 and the page you are trying to target is 0.

Try and sort out your internal and you might succeed, but don't do it at the expense of your page 1 ranking!

[Confetti_Wedding]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your response. The link to the "Create your own stationery" is correct as this is another of our targeted keywords.

We renamed the target page and gave it a new URL (with 301 redirects) which is why is has a PR of 0. It's actual PR will be around 3.

Your point about the subdomain is a good one so thanks for that.

Are there any more suggestions out there?

Thanks again,

Brendan.

[EGOL]

"Wrong page ranking even after fixes. Why?"

Because you are fixing the wrong page. 

No, seriously... don't expect a subdomain to inherit much authority or linkjuice from the root domain.

If this was my site and I wanted to fix this... I would redirect that subdomain to a folder in the  root and then try to rank the page in the folder.

[Confetti_Wedding]

Hi EGOL,

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately, redirecting the subdomain to the root isn't an option due CMS limitations. We're looking at this long term.

For now I've added a link to the wedding stationery page using keyword anchor text from every page of the subdomain including the high PA pages.

Any more ideas? It seems crazy that the homepage ranks for this term given there are no optimised links to it and the keyword appears only as links to the pages we want to rank.

Thanks in advance.