My websites Internal page is not ranking.

[sunny.popali]

Hi,

I had "x1", "x2","x3" keywords ranked for my websites internal page that is "www.somesite.com/internal-page.htm" i was fairly doing well for my keywords mostly in top 5, but now the case is from last couple of weeks, my internal page url is gone & replaced with home page.

And I don't see internal page anywhere mostly in top 1000, is that penalty to internal page ?If yes how can i troubleshoot this ? I see my other pages in top 20-30 but that specific page is not anywhere.

Please let me know.

-Sunny.

[PanuKuuluvainen]

If your homepage has keywords x1, x2 and x3 in its title, headers and content it might be that Google considers your homepage stronger than your internal-page.htm. That could explain why you are seeing your homepage in the SERP instead of internal-page.htm.

You can try to tackle this by making sure that you don't have overlapping titles/headers/content plus perhaps tossing a few internal and external links to www.somesite.com/internal-page.htm.

And one more thing: patience!

[RyanKent]

Would you mind sharing a link the page? It would be much easier to talk specifics if we could look at the page.

In general terms, you want to examine the page and your site for the desired keyword. The two questions I would ask are:

Is your page optimized for the "x1" keyword or phrase?

Earlier today someone asked what he could do to improve his ranking for "Las Vegas vet". An examination of the site's home page showed that phrase was not used a single time on the page. You need to ensure you offer solid content with appropriate usage of the term, without stuffing the page.

Is your site canibalizing your SERP?

When you search for the keyword, do other pages from your site appear? If so, try to figure out why. Google apparently believes the page offered is a better match for "x1". You can help by modifying the page a bit and replacing "x1" with a different keyword designed for that particular page. You can also use anchor links for x1 throughout your site. These links would help users find the desired page and let Google know you are focusing that keyword to a particular page.