Inner pages not ranking well

[CayenneRed89]

Hi Guys

I'm currently working on a website and scratching my head.  It seems certain pages of the website rank absolutely fine.  The homepage, certain pages on footer and the primary navigation pages are ranking fine.

Pages, however, that sit on the inner navigation (e.g 3rd level navigational pages) - do not rank well at all.

Looking in webmaster, it is apparent these are fluctuating in and out of the Google index - sometimes they are there - sometimes not.

I fully understand issues with Google penalties but I don't believe this is case as other pages are ranking fine. Link building has been done to these pages  but to no effect.  We have also increased internal links e.g by putting the pages on the footer - but still nothing.

One thing that may impact the ranking is possibly the URL structure

The website URLs are all www.Example.com/widgets - even if they sit on the 3rd level of the user navigation.  Could this be a reason why? Would it help if 3rd level pages had the URL structure www.Example.com/services/widgets ?

If anyone can provide help that would be great!!!

thanks, Duncan

[JaredCarrizales]

Hi Duncan,

Hmmm, seems like there might be something else going on here. Are you able to share the domain so I can take a deeper look?

And no, the URL structure wouldn't be causing this.

[LSIversen]

It doesn't sound like a penalty problem at all, otherwise you'd see more of your pages impacted.

You're saying you've done internal links to them - but only mention footer links. Have you also put internal links in your texts, pointing to these pages) I honestly don't put much value on footerlinks, as they're not part of the main content on a page. From my experience these don't really add much compared to links in the main content (the category/product descriptions or whatever text you have on there).

I would focus on a few of the deeper pages and give them some internal links from your stronger pages to see if you can boost their authority.