Constant change in SERPs - related to changes on homepage?

[MadeWillis]

I have a site where the domain contains the major keyword and one other word. This site is an authroity site.

My problem is that for the major keyword one of my cateogry pages is ranking higher than the homepage. Not all that bad, but the SERPs change on almost a daily basis, causing my listing to constanly move between positions 3 and 15. Almost every day the listing moves. Other sites seem to remain in same positions.

The homepage has around 250 internal links. Could this be a reason for the homepage not ranking for this term? Some content on this page also changes about every 30 minutes (featured products change only, so not much content changing).

Could duplicate content play a role in the constant movement in the SERPs?

Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks

[tedster]

It's a challenge to pin this one down, but I'd say you're considering some good areas. If you only have a small area of changing content, you might consider serving that through an iframe. That approach would leave the rest of the page stable.

250 links on the home page is certainly more than Google recommends (under 100 they say), and more than I would recommend - although some people feel it works for their site. The thing is, anchor text can also work as a on-page factor, and that much anchor text can really blur a page's relevance signal.

My usual challenge is the other way around - Google ranks the home page when an internal category page would be much better for the visitor from that search. External backlinks with the right anchor text are quite often the key to stabilizing this kind of thing for me.

[MadeWillis]

Thanks tedster. I agree that too much anchor text on a page is typically a bad thing, but would you agree that anchor text has a greater affect on the page being linked to than the page the anchor text actually resides?

[tedster]

That's certainly the effect that most website owners focus on - and yes, there certainly are more powerful on-page factors, notably the title element.

[tedster]

Another factor that can stabilize rankings is backlinks. If you can gain more strength there, things may not be so wobbly.

[jimbeetle]

My problem is that for the major keyword one of my cateogry pages is ranking higher than the homepage.

I don't really see this as a problem. In fact, I see it as the way it's supposed to be: as the home page is carrying 250or so links, the category page is probably the more focused and the one that, when you think about it, should appear in the SERPs -- and it's also the one I would want to drive people to instead of them mulling over which one of the 250 links on the home page they should click to find the category page they want.

For fairly large sites I usually don't worry too much about ranking the home page, the money is usually a bit further down the line. Check out the classic WebmasterWorld theme pyramid thread [webmasterworld.com] for a great discussion.