Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I am playing around with my logs and am wondering about the huge number of different keyword phrases that Google sends to our homepage.
How does Google decide whether to send a query to a homepage or to a more specific page within the site?
As an example, a query for a specific issue of our magazine such as "International Journal of Widgets Vol 10 Issue 22" gets sent to our homepage, rather than the specific webpage for that issue.
Thanks
However, backlinks to the internal page can swing the balance the other direction. From my work in this area, internal pages have a lot of trouble ranking for anything but very-long-tail search terms unless they have some external backlinks with well targeted anchor text.
Is it better to just bloat the content of the homepage?
It seems to me that the Google algo oscillates on the issue quite a bit....
Like once every three or four days. ;)
so does that mean its pointless getting as much content on the inner page about our topic?...
Google appears to be behaving somewhat parodoxically in this regard. I've experienced situations where a relevant link to a well-optimized internal page seems to push up the home page, and a link to a home page pushes up the internal page... but the links appear to be generally helping the pair move up. Occasionally, the pair switches order, or one of the pair will drop down.
It almost feels like something's squeezing a balloon that's pushing the bulge one way or another, but overall the balloon is getting larger.
I've also noticed periods where several inner pages will drop together, but that home pages that had a shot at ranking for these terms would stay up there in the serps for those queries. Sometime last year, there was a stretch of several months where I felt that home pages were being unnaturally favored, and then, almost magically, all inner pages came back.
Is it better to just bloat the content of the homepage?
I'd say no, but this is a tricky area where I'm seeing mixed results.
A bloated home page (or a bloated inner page, for that matter) will generally send confusing signals to Google regarding what the page is about. I have seen cases, though, where pages with large menus with repeated anchor text, eg, will rank for phrases contained in those menus. I've seen other cases where the same menu approach will cause the rankings to disappear. From what I've seen, the bloating doesn't necessarily have to occur in menus, but that's most naturally where it occurs.
Some possibly-related discussions....
Yo-Yo Effect - Observations and Understandings
[webmasterworld.com...]
Google -950 Summary (one of many discussions)
[webmasterworld.com...]
"Phrase Based Indexing and Retrieval" - part of the Google picture?
[webmasterworld.com...]
The "Mega Menu" Problem and Google Rankings
[webmasterworld.com...]
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:23 pm (utc) on Jan. 22, 2009]
I spend hours adding good content to an inner page... optimising the page with what I think is good seo... and then homepage is no. 10 on Google .com and the 'optimised' page is at number 16... and this with numerous 2-3 keyword search terms.. what to do!
Gemini23 - Where I've seen this happen, the homepage has some relevance itself for the queries where it outranks an inner page, and also has external inbounds that are supporting that ranking. It doesn't appear to happen on just any query, nor on every homepage/inner page combination.
One possibility I've considered is that Google at times apparently values anchor text more than non-anchor text, and it also sometimes downgrades the boosting effect of links within a domain if it senses overoptimization. Possibly, these two algo effects are in various states of flux, but, when they coincide, the rankings of inner pages that are on the cusp will drop down.
