gouri - 7:08 pm on Dec 18, 2012 (gmt 0)

It may be that you've too obviously targeted your deep page and Google is aware of the manipulation, so Google is pushing the page down.

Robert,

I read this and think that this is something that I might be facing. I want my home page to rank for a two-word phrase and for some time it did rank for the phrase, then an inner-page started to rank for it (the inner page I believe has the phrase mentioned on it more than the home page), and now the home page is ranking for it, but the rankings are not very high.

The home page has a couple of links with the phrase pointing to it, but they are from article directories so I don't think that this is what is causing the home page to rank for the phrase. I think that the inner page might be over optimized for the phrase and maybe this is why the home page is ranking for it.

When the inner page ranked for the phrase, it was ranking higher than where the home page is now ranking.

Could over optimization be the reason for what I am seeing?