Linkbait outranks actual target page?

[NetvantageMarketing]

Interesting dilemma I've run into. Working in an extremely boring B2B space and started making some quality content to grab some .edu links. Well, it worked. Let's put it this way, our target keyword is "{keyword} services" and we pulled in so many .edu links the resource page which is an educational resource with our target keyword in it, has now surpassed every commercial site and ranks second. The problem is, the page doesn't have much in the way of services on it, it's strictly educational and targets a different audience than our customer. The home page, our desired landing page, jumps back and forth between third and twelfth depending on the week.

Any thoughts on how to make these flip flop? We're getting a ton of traffic to the wrong page and bouncing most of them at the moment.

[EGOL]

Reoptimize for a different keyword.

Then your desired page will rank at 12th or maybe 10th.

That is my prediction.

Instead of viewing this as a "problem" maybe you could figure out a way to get traffic from that #3 page into your desired page.  If people don't want what is on that page it should be easy to funnel them to another page on your site.  Now you have success.

[NakulGoyal]

So is this a page on your domain that is ranking ? Just making sure. So it's the wrong page ranking for the right keyword ? If yes, does it make sense to add a canonical tag on this wrong page to the right page, which is like a 301 and that should do it. The question is whether it makes sense in your case. Was this all naturally done...was it like a linkbait or an info graphic or a widget kind of something that brought these links ? Once you have these answers, you should be able to act on whether it's okay to do the canonical change. Let me low if that helps.

[benjaminspak]

First to clarify:

Is the link bait on the same domain?

It sounds like the PA (page authority) of the link bait page is higher than that of the domain's home page. My suggestion would be:

1. Try to redesign the home page to incorporate the link bait, even if it's at the bottom of the home page.
2. Then 301 the linkbait page to the home page

• Why add the content to the home page?

• So that Google doesn't penalize you for not having the content your users wanted. If you link without duplicating the content it's grey hat.

SEO Moz was using this tactic back in 2006ish when Matt Inman worked at SEO Moz. They called it the "Link Bait and Switch"

[benjaminspak]

The guys @dejanseo mentioned this via Twitter:

link to money page with a contextual kw anchor text from the juiced up page.

[NetvantageMarketing]

should have mentioned we already have done this. thanks for the head's up, though.