Inner page ranking better than my homepage!

[woccy]

Hi Guys

I have been trying to resolve an issue with one of my site for quite a while, my site was ranking well and had done for many years.

However 3 months ago my rankings dropped, and now are stagnant, they hardly ever move, with whatever ive tried, Ive tried re writing content, getting some more links, not getting links and leaving it, altering the page with little tweeks.

also i noticed for one of my keyphrases, one of my inner pages is being listed in serps rather than my homepage, I found this very weird.

I have spoke to many people about my site and no one can seem to figure out what might have caused my site to be so stagnent in serps, after ranking so well previously.

Does anyone have any advice as Im running out of ideas as to where to go next ?

Ste

[goodroi]

Does the subpage that is outranking your home page generate stronger usage signals?

[woccy]

No not compared to my homepage anyhow

[Planet13]

However 3 months ago my rankings dropped...

What exact date did they drop on?

How many places did they drop?

How widespread was the drop (i.e., what percentage of pages dropped)?

How diverse was the selection of keywords that dropped? Was it just a few keywords? Or was it "across the board"?

...also i noticed for one of my keyphrases, one of my inner pages is being listed in serps rather than my homepage, I found this very weird.

Well, you have probably done this already, but I would check, double check, and triple check for technical errors to the home page.

Have you checked copyscape to see whether the home page has been scraped, or had much of it's content appear somewhere else?

...getting some more links...

What types of links were you getting BEFORE it dropped, and what types of links were you getting AFTER it dropped?

[woccy]

What exact date did they drop on?

In januaray, my keyphrases slowly dropped over the month from being in the number 1 position and slowly down to between 8 and 15 on google.co.uk

How many places did they drop?

All my keyphrases dropped slowly over the month slipping down a place every week or so, the important ones just dropped 10 places are so by the end of the month

Have you checked copyscape to see whether the home page has been scraped, or had much of it's content appear somewhere else?

I did my titles, descriptions had been copied and some of my content, so i replaced this with new titles descriptions and content, however Google still seems to be showing my old title and description when i search on some keyphrases, again I find this a bit odd too, I was hoping time would resolve this problem but hasnt seemed to up to now.

I have been thru my homepage with a fine toothed comb lol, found a few small issues, but none that i think would cause this strange issue, of my site being totally stagnant whatever i do.

What types of links were you getting BEFORE it dropped?

I was getting different links from different places, with plenty of link diversity, I stopped for a month or so and no change, and have been getting some more diverse links, social bookmarking etc since.

Ste

[Marketing Guy]

I've seen this too (Wordpress category page is also the main site keyword which the homepage targets - has no natural IBLs). Almost seems like a (home?)page specific Panda effect.

Homepage has been popping in and out of 4th place for the term a few days in and a few days out. When it's out, the category page is ranking 2/3 page.

Given this is the main subject area of the site, it looks like Google wants to rank a page somewhere but can't decide which to go with - the relatively clean category page or the historically well ranked, but tainted with some naff links (but also lots of decent, natural links) homepage.

It feels like Google's carrying up some split testing if I'm honest, but that's just a gut feeling.