Getting pages other than the home page ranked well?

Questions on how google decides what's good.

[askjoe]

How do I get google to rank www.mydomain.com/widgets.html instead www.mydomain.com when the keyword widgets is typed in?

Google is displaying my home page for these particular keywords when other pages are more relavent. All pages withiin my website have been indexed - why doesn't google display them instead?

Looking for tips, tricks, and/or secrets on how to solve this issue.

***My site has good content, good link structure, good inbound links etc.

[rogerd]

The major factors you should look at include internal link text (should be "widgets" in your example), external linkage (some outside links with that text would be great, any outside links will help some by boosting the PR for that page), and keyword density in the major areas of the page.

[jimbeetle]

You already have part of the battle won. While you're working on rogerd's suggestions I'd be sure to have a very prominent "Widgets>>" link on your home page.

[pshea]

Since the text of links back to you counts more than ever, switch your reciprocal linking campaign to request from your partner that they link the specific words you write, rather than the homepage. For example, ask for the link to read this way: Master Widget Company: Highly specialized blue widgets [webmasterworld.com] for the widget loving community.

Make your request as simple as possible for the lesser experienced webmaster to understand. When they return the link and get it wrong, gently write back RIGHT AWAY and explain what you really would like.

This is the text of an email I received just two hours ago in this precise scenario:

>>Ok I think I have this right....maybe!

If this is still not correct please let me know, I will be happy to change it again till you are satisfied with it.

You may want to type it out for me so I can see what it looks like. Don't worry about using any code if you type it out for me, I can take care of that. Just underline what you want hyperlinked.<<

Second attempt was the charm: my new friend got it exactly right!

Like all of us, I would like to rank high under a broad range of keyword combinations. I spend groups of time focusing on a keyword set, write a short sentence as above using the kw combo I want, and then gently nudge along the replying webmasters into getting it just right.

This works particularly well for webmasters which have contacted you first about a link. They are set, they are ready, they are hungry for links and in most cases will work with you to get it right. Explaining it quickly, simply and without sounding superior-in-your-knowledge is the trickiest, and I think most important part.

[BGumble]

When you search for link:www.mydomain.com are the results listed in Page Rank order of importance? My PR7 site gets most of it's inbound links from PR5's and below-- a ton of em-- I'm not sure if a campaign to get my links changed would be effective since I have so many small links that make up my bulk.

If I could see the inbound links ordered by Page Rank (maybe it already is?) then I could target the most important ones.

[world3d]

Welcome to Webmasterworld BGumble!
searching on link:www.mydomain.com brings up all of the known links to your site but in no particular order. There USED to be a command that allowed you to bring them up in order of pagerank but Google disabled it =(
For now, knowing who links to you is the best info you can get.

[startup]

Is "widgets" anywhere on the index page or is widgets used in any inbound links to your index page?

[BGumble]

Hey thanks for the welcome, world3d. This is a great site, I've already got a good load of information from it. Unfortunately I think I missed the deep crawl on my root index for this update.

It's pitiful that you can't modify the link: search in any way. I have a piece of php software installed out there that gives me thousands of inbound links from random sites.. some as many as 30 or 40,000 from some sites. I know it's not incredible since most of the pages are low ranking (an archive) and the inbound link text only mentions the site name, not any keyword. I doubt I can get them changed now. And when I search for inbound Google links, they're totally clogged with multiple results.

[askjoe]

The key word I'm trying to target is located all over the home page - it's just that there are other pages that are more specific - title, content etc.

I do not have inbound links pointing to each individual page. However, neither do my competitors that seem to have managed to get google to list their homepage for the keyword being targeted.

The only thing that I don't have going for me is the fact that there are no inbound links to each specific product page - just going to the home page? Is this all I can do?

[freejung]

BGumble,

>I have a piece of php software installed out there that gives me thousands of inbound links from random sites..

That's probably not a good idea. I'm in favor of reciprocal linking, but you should be looking at the sites you link to... do you mean that you link to them as well, or that they only link to you?

Anyway, such a schame is unlikely to help you and may hurt. It's better to do old-fashioned reciprocal links by actually emailing the webmaster.

[BGumble]

Don't want to hijack this thread-- continued discussion here please:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: NFFC at 7:00 pm (utc) on Mar. 19, 2003]
[edit reason] URL updated [/edit]