Home page keyword effecting internal page ranking

[BobGW]

Hello,

My client has a second keyword for the home page that is competitive.

The home page is not being ranked for this keyword. Instead, an internal category page is ranking.

This internal category page is more relevant than the home page - it shows the categories for the actual products that this term refers to.

But everyone around us in Google's page results has far more backlinks than the internal page, and we're all heavily optimized for this term.

My question is, is it safe to pull the second term off of the home page or is this internal page strong because it is somehow being strengthened by the home page optimization?

[jmueller]

What is it you want to pull from the homepage? Some copy-text of a couple of hundred words?

I would recommend not to pull it off, as it works and seems to work good. What is it you want to gain by removing it from the homepage?

[EricPratum30]

Internal pages are almost always more relevant to specific phrases than is the home page. If you run a website that sells doors, the home page is going to mention regular doors, french doors, etc, but when someone searches for French Doors, the SE is going to send them to your french doors page not the home page because they're not looking for doors of all types. They want french doors.

If your home page is still relevant to the keyword, keep it there. Just don't keyword stuff.

[BobGW]

Thanks Eric,

I'd like to take the second keyword off of the home page to focus on the (first) main home page keyword, which we're slipping for. Do you think the home page strength (with my second keyword) is somehow supporting my internal page with the same keyword (the second keyword)?

[EricPratum30]

Welcome. As far as things like that go, I'm not the most well-versed unfortunately. If you are linking to that page with relevant anchor text, then it seems possible because your home page is at least somewhat relevant to the keyword, but it's tough to say.

[jmueller]

Since Google already found the most relevant page on your site for the kw (combination), I would say that things would not change. I assume that the general site topic remains the same - even though you remove the text from your homepage (about how much text is it? just text? links as well? <- if yes .. this is where it gets tricky).

[BobGW]

Sorry for the misunderstanding - I'm just talking about both title tags