What to do if the wrong page is ranking?

[andrep]

What to do if the wrong page of your website is ranking and you cannot 301 it?

Apparently an outsourced company the previous manager hired build anchor text links to the homepage, when those links should have been pointing to a deeper page.

As a result, the hompage is now ranking for that term. But I think we can convert a lot more of the visitors if the deeper page is there instead. Obviously, I can't 301 the homepage.

What would you do?

[Webmaster_SEO]

Though it is not guaranteed that the correct page will start to rank but I think following changes might work. Add a link to the respective page you want to rank from the Home page of the site with the desired Anchor Text. Note that this link should not be in the footer but at a prominent position on the Home so it transfers most relevance as per Search Engines.

Try to get some natural links for the respective page without worrying about the anchor text. Make sure that the page you are trying to rank has optimized titles and other page elements with respect to keyword.

[KeriMorgret]

Rand also has some advice in his post about this at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions