Keywords going to Subdomain instead of targeted page(general landing page)

[nat88han]

Why are some of my keywords going to subdomains instead of the more general/targeted landing page.

For example, on my ecommerce website, the keyword 'tempurpedic' is directing to the subdomain URL of a specific tempurpedic product page instead of the general landing page.  The product has a page authority of 15 and the Tempurpedic landing pages with all the products has an authority of 31.

I have also noticed that my 'furniture stores in houston' keyword directs to my "occasional tables" URL! instead of a the much more targeted homepage.

Is there something I am missing here?

[Laurean]

You probably need to set your preferred domain in your Google Webmaster Tools.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/44231?hl=en

See if that is what you are looking for.

[nat88han]

Thanks for the response.  I looked into that preferred domain, but it is not what I am looking for.

My issue is that keywords are being targeted to specific pages instead of general pages. For example:

Keyword- flexsteel

directed at product: /living-room/sofas/reclining-sofas/flexsteel-crosstown-reclining-sofa

instead of flexteel landing page: /flexsteel-furniture

[Laurean]

Well you've got flexsteel as a keyword on two URL's.  Google probably is putting more empahsis on the deeper page  because it either existed longer OR has been crawled with higher factors for the keyword.

You may want to check out your other internal linking and make sure everything is going to the new product page.  Chances are you have lots of internal links pointing to the deeper page, hence making it appear more authoritative on your site.

Check on that, then re-upload a new sitemap for a new crawl.  Good luck!

[nat88han]

Now you may be on to something!  I don't know if this is the case because I was tracking 3 forms of flexsteel and each one directed to a different product page!  But I can go into the products and add a parent link to the main flexsteel page to give it a bit more internal link value.  Thanks for the tip.

[spencerhjustice]

Firstly, I believe that you are mixing up the terms subdomain and subdirectory. A subdomain would be occasional-tables.example.com and a subdirectory would be example.com/occasional-tables, which I believe is what you mean.

There are a lot of reasons why Google could be sending it to a page other than the one you're attempting to rank for but it's really hard to tell without seeing the actual page.

[nat88han]

You are correct about the sub-directory!

Sorry, these are the product pages:

keyword-flexsteel

http://www.galleryfurniture.com/living-room/sofas/reclining-sofas/flexsteel-capital-power-reclining-sofa

keyword-flexsteel furniture

http://www.galleryfurniture.com/living-room/sofas/reclining-sofas/flexsteel-belmont-reclining-sofa

keyword-flex steel furniture

http://www.galleryfurniture.com/living-room/sofas/reclining-sofas/flexsteel-crosstown-reclining-sofa

And this would be the ideal landing URL for the keyword:

http://www.galleryfurniture.com/flexsteel-furniture

[MoosaHemani]

Ok as far as I understand your question, you are saying your website is ranking but for some keywords not the preferred page on the website is ranking.

I will answer as per the best of my understanding…

Ok this usually happens when you didn’t setup your website navigation and structure correctly. I would prefer to give another look to your internal linking strategy.

Another thing you can do is to get some quality links with anchor text around your keyword to your targeted pages.

Get an internal link from the ranked page to the page you want to rank in search engines against your key term.

I am not saying this will work 100% but most of the times it works for me…