Home page outranking category page for category specific keyword

[atwoz]

Hi All,

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

I have a question regarding SEO ranking. Here is the scenario,

Website www.xyz.com has few sub categories www.xyz.com/abc , www.xyz.com/def , www.xyz.com/ghi and so on.

Now, we want our sub category pages to be ranking high for the respective category specific keywords. Say for example, when someone is searching for "abc", our category page "www.xyz.com/abc" should be ranking high than our home page "www.xyz.com". But for some reason, our home page is ranking high for the category specific keywords and our category page is no where in the top 100 listing. When I checked with my SEO person, he says that he has no control over which page to rank for which keyword and Google decided it automatically. Is this true?

Please let me know.

Thanks in advance for your help/advice!

AtwoZ

[aakk9999]

You can aim at ranking certain page but Google may decide to rank home page instead.

[tedster]

I've struggled with this frustration on several sites. It sometimes is not an easy change - the results can seem to fixate on the higher level URL. I'd guess the trigger is "keyword in anchor text" scored as an on-page factor for the higher level URL.

Two actions seemed to help - expanded content and vocabulary on the desired internal URL and some good external backlinks direct to that page.

[jaffstar]

I would focus your internal linking from specific pages to the disered page. You need make sure your topic and reputation are also aligned which Tedster also touched on.

[atwoz]

aakk9999, tedster, jaffstar - Thanks so much for your response! Much appreciated!

I do agree with you but the case here is different to my understanding. Correct me if I am wrong.

I found out something interesting, the meta keywords used in home page is the reason why our home page is showing for category specific keywords. And the same keyword is not present in the meta keyword section of the category page. Home page meta keyword has "top abc widgets" and its ranking on top for "abc widgets" keyword whereas category page meta keyword has "abc blue" and the category page is showing up on top for the keyword "abc blue". There is only one keyword on the meta keyword section on all category pages. Even the basic SEO stuff is not done on the website properly. No wonder why we are way behind our competitors in organic listings.

[Planet13]

I found out something interesting, the meta keywords used in home page is the reason why our home page is showing for category specific keywords.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. Google stopped using meta keywords as a ranking factor many, many years ago (I do not know if yahoo and bing use them at all as a ranking factor, but if they do, it is probably minimal).

Google also doesn't use the meta description as a ranking factor either. However, having a good meta description can be very important, because google MIGHT (depending on how she is feeling that day) display your meta description of your page right beneath your link on the google search results page. So if you have a well written description, then people might be more likely to click the link to your site.

[aakk9999]

@atwoz

In any case, you can easily test your theory - just remove meta keyword from home page and put it on the category page, wait for both pages to be re-crawled and cached and see if you see changes in which page ranks.

But I agree with Planet13 says, I don't think this will have any impact whatsoever.

[atwoz]

Planet13 - Thanks for your response. So this means that there is no need to use meta keywords at all? How about title tags? Could you please help me out by listing the factors that influence the ranking?

aakk9999 - We are going to rework on the meta keywords, meta description & title tags as none seem to be in good shape. I will keep everyone posted on the result.

[freejung]

OK, first, let's make sure to emphasize what Planet13 has said - according to conventional SEO wisdom which has been extensively tested for years, the meta keywords do not matter at all. Many webmasters feel it is best _not_ to use them because it's kind of like playing with an open hand -- you're just letting other SEOs know exactly which keywords you're targeting, although if they have any clue at all they can figure that out anyway.

There are lots of resources out there (and here at WW if you dig a bit) that list the commonly known ranking factors. Of course nobody knows exactly what all of the ranking factors are, but we have a pretty good idea about a lot of them.

Title tags, body text, and anchor text are probably the most important in terms of establishing relevance.

Definitely rework your title tags. Work on the descriptions, but not to improve rankings -- the description is listed under your title in the SERPS, so it's an incentive to click through. Do not waste so much as another second even thinking about the meta keywords, you can safely ignore them completely.

As tedster pointed out, this may not be easy to solve, but consider this -- is it really such a bad thing? I mean, you're ranking. You're presumably getting traffic. It could be a lot worse.

My advice, in general, would be to focus more on things that will _improve_ your rankings, rather than worrying too much about which pages rank. Note that both of the steps tedster suggested are likely to do both. Get more links, especially deep links (external links directly to the category pages). Put up more good relevant content for the categories. Those actions are likely to improve your situation regardless of whether the homepage continues to rank for the category terms.

That said, there are a few basic things I would check. Make sure the category pages are indexed. Make sure the internal links to the category pages use the category keywords as anchor text (and, of course, that those links are crawlable). Make sure you're using a sensible information architecture, which usually means use the standard "pyramid" architecture where you have categories and subcategories. However, it's likely that your SEO person has already taken care of these things, and there's not a whole lot else you can do.

Build the site. Get more links. Let Google sort out what should rank.

[atwoz]

freejung - Thanks for your detailed response. Very informative, I Appreciate it!