What is happening when Google chooses a page within your site for results rather than the homepage

[johanisk]

This post is deleted!

[mediawyse]

Your home page is indexed. Google instead is just choosing to index your interior page over your home page for this specific query...which is more common than you think.

Why?

It could be that your home page is over-optimized for that keyword phrase or contains an excessive number of exact match anchor text rich backlinks on this specific target keyword. If either was the case, Google would choose to instead rank the second most qualified page from your site in search, which is going to be an inner page.

To troubleshoot this, make sure you audit the home page using a plugin like www.seoquake.com and review the backlink profile with an eye towards that specific search term "loch lomond lodges" over at Majestic SEO. Even if the page got an "A" with the MOZ tool, that won't analyze the backlink issue. And if your home page is made up of say 10% or higher (purely arbitrary number here) of links using the phrase "lock lomond lodges" that may cause Google to suppress the page from showing competitively for this phrase specifically.

That's where I'd start my troubleshooting analysis. I hope that was helpful. Good luck!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I have had very good success just adding a canonical from the internal page back to the homepage with circumstances like this and as you said, the homepage (and internal pages) is indexed, so that isn't your problem.

Just doing a search for that phrase though, where do you see yourself ranking? I don't see you on the first 3 pages?

-Andy

[johanisk]

Thanks Andy & Casey!

I've recently gone through the homepage to reduce the keyword repetition so hopefully that will help.  May act on the canonical tip-off.  The site is hardly ranking now, even for the internal page.

The site used to be first page (and usually in the top five results) but got heavily smacked down by some of the Google updates (quite rightly btw - the previous "consultants" SEO tactics were heavily based on Comment and Forum spam) so I just wasn't sure if this was some kind of Google penalty in action too.

Looking forward to helping turn it around though...

Colin

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Colin,

I did a very basic crawl of your site, and I can see that your link profile is in a bit of a mess with thousands of site-wide links across hundreds of domains.

It looks to me as though a disavow session would be a good place to start and clear out all those problematic links. I will bet Panda has had some say in what has happened.

This is an example of just one of the many questionable links on there:

http://medicalmarijuanadistrictofcolumbia.net/2011/04/21/protesters-ask-governor-to-sign-bill-legalizing-pot-dispensaries/comment-page-3/

Not really much to do with holidays in Scotland.

-Andy

[mediawyse]

Colin, per Andy above, your link profile is TOXIC. I mentioned previously that if your site had anchor text rich links higher than say 10% on any phrase then this can and will lead to suppression issues in Google, specifically via the Penguin algorithm. Go over to www.majesticseo.com and just look at the Anchor Text breakdown chart generated on your www. subdomain. It's terrible. Almost 70% of your entire backlink profile is anchor text rich, and it appears to be low-quality, non-niche related link spam like Andy's example.

Penguin was originally know as the Over-Optimization Algorithm and that applies mainly to the excessive use of linking anchor texts that make up your backlink profile. Your backlink profile SMACKS of a site that has been hit by a Web Spam penalty. I'd urge you to conduct a thorough link audit, identify the low-quality links referenced by Andy above, format and submit a disavow file, and look to PHYSICALLY REMOVE some of these links. Then, and only then, when Penguin is reran (refreshed) in the future, hopefully your home page will pop back-in to search for your various "loch lomond" keywords.

Penalty site audits are something of which I have some experience. So if you want a professional review I can assist you. Otherwise, make sure you read the quality resourses here at Moz and at SearchEngineNews.com on How to Conduct a Penguin Site Audit.

Good luck and make sure to head over to the Panguin Tool by Barracuda Digital to see visually if you've been subject to any recent algorithmic updates by Google. My guess is that you've been hit, repeatedly, over the last several months.

[johanisk]

Guys, this is great advice and kind of what I'd thought had happened but didn't know if this would affect the appearance of the homepage in search results.  What a mess!  Here's what I'm planning

Compilation of links from WMT, AHREFS and Open Site Explorer.  It will be pretty easy to spot which ones are spammy or of no use and let's face it, things couldn't get any worse
Using Remove'em and the data from above, I'll compile a list of sites that I need to ask for link removals from
Follow the process of doing three emails, contacting webmasters where possible etc and then submitting one big disavow file to Google.
Throughout this time, doing competitor analysis of other link profiles and looking for genuine and relevant sites to get links on
General improvements and relevant increases to web content and greater adoption of Facebook and Twitter

Does that sound like a reasonable [limited budget] plan? Any other suggestions.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Was going to send you a PM Colin but I can't. Drop me a mail over to info@inetseo.co.uk and will give you a tip or two

-Andy