Are we confusing Google with our internal linking?

[vtmoz]

Hi all,

We decided to give importance to one of our top pages as it has "keyword" in it's slug like website.com/keyword. So we internally linked even from different sub-domain pages more than homepage to rank for that "keyword". But this page didn't show up in Google results for that "keyword"; neither homepage, but our login page is ranking. We wonder why login page is ranking. Has our internal linking plan confused Google to ignore homepage to rank for that primary keyword? And generally do we need to internally link homepage more than anyother page?

Thanks

[TomRayner]

Possibly. Internal links and their anchor text can certainly give Google a priority on what the page is about, and which preferred landing page you want to rank.

However, there can be more to it as well. How much does the sub-page 'talk' about the keyword? What is its content like? Do you have any canonical issues? How about the homepage, how much content is on there about the keyword.

You could be cannibalising efforts by having a number of pages all talking about the same thing. Content is quite often just as 'confusing' to Google as the internal links.