Dupelicate content home page and custom page question

[anthonytjm]

I am working on a website that got hit by the penguin update. Didn't get hit terribly bad, but dropped from number one to number 9.

As I'm going through the pages, the theme and content is a mess. To give an example, say the site is about custom colored marbles.

The main page content covers custom colored marbles, custom promotional marbles, custom glass marbles, etc.

Custom colored marbles is mentioned and covered on all pages, which I am going back and trying to make each page theme specific. There is also a custom page, so I am at a cross roads on how best to employ the focus of the custom page and the home page.

I am thinking the home page should emphasize colored marbles, and the custom page should emphasize custom colored marbles. My fear is that making such a drastic change will bounce the site completely off front page and that it will take time for the custom page to come up in rankings.

AS it stands now I am confused as to how it even ranks on first page as there's two pages with custom colored marbles emphasis. Id like to clean this up as much as possible so there are no big hits with future google updates, but I don't want the site to drop off either as that would be hard to explain to the owner. Yeah, we are cleaning up your site and making it google compliant and in so doing you no longer rank on first page. That won't put food on the table.

Thanks for any advise on this.

[AdoptionHelp]

If the home page is ranking for "custom colored marbles" then I wouldn't change it and try to move that KW target to a different page. Your home page is your "custom colored marble" page. Double down on your efforts for optimizing the home page for that phrase, and then work on other phrases on other pages. Trying to switch the page that is ranking for a term when that page is already in the top 10 is most definitely a risky move I couldn't recommend.