Home Page Keyword Ranking Problem

[mikeH]

Anybody noticing that their only website page not ranking well for the targetted keywords is the home page. Anybody got a cause for this problem?

[Brett_Tabke]

Poor optimization. No other legitimate explaination. If you can rank internal - you can rank at root.

[mikeH]

Could be Brett but the homepage was in the top 10 for it's targetted keyword last month and for about a year. Then 1-2 weeks ago suddenly it started to slip to page 2 and then page 3. When it got to page 3 I changed some content text and the title and it disappeared totally for the keyword targetted. Apart from this all the other pages are ranking the same as normal and the site is still a pr6.

[Petrocelli]

>> Poor optimization. No other legitimate explaination.

Can't agree to that. I'm having a PR0 (formerly PR6) SUB page
here which is definetely not optimized for my keyword. It went
down from #3 to #10 while the (fairly optimized) root page (still PR8 and formerly #2)
went down to #23 ...

[annej]

Mike,

I've had the exact same experience and have been trying to figure out why ever since. Others here have discussed the same problem. In my case it may be because Google seems to be giving more credit to root level index pages but that doesn't explain it all. I think we are just going to have to wait until all these changes are done on Google and see if it sorts itself out.

Meanwhile concentrate on getting your content pages up. Content pages can bring in a great many visitors and usually involve more specific, less competitive search terms.

[AthlonInside]

this is something new with this update. Search for 'semi penalty'. But I no longer involved in the discussion due to too many disaggrement.

[mikeH]

Yeah just got a feeling this could be a bad sign, can't for the life of me think why it's happened, the page is completely clean.

[mikeH]

a post from googleguy would be really welcome

[AthlonInside]

a post from googleguy would be really welcome

I've been waiting for him for 300 posts in a thread. :)

[mikeH]

yeah know what you mean AthlonInside, but you can but hope, bit like winning the lottery. Just I know this problem has affected quite a few people and all of them seem to be as clueless to the cause as me. My home page has ranked well for this term for 1 year.

[amazed]

changing the title of my index page a while ago did seem to take the complete page out - before this update or whatever. the page came back in though ...after a while.

during this update or whatever I had the experience of not finding my index page for what was on page just for anchor text and title, this did change though. Either something was wrong with the way I searched or the way google searches had changed.

I am not taking anything seriously just now.

[mikeH]

yeah just odd how it's affecting my home page but not that of web sites around me, they are the same as normal

[Brett_Tabke]

>started to slip

Been reading this forum for the last 30 days? Seems to be a real common situation. Algo tweak.

[mikeH]

yeah didnt mind it slipping brett, but the disappearing act scared me, i have gone through the page with a tooth comb and can't find any reason why i may get a penalty

[Ataulfo]

Hi every body,

IŽ ve been around all these days about this subject and I have some conclusions:

www.mysite.com not show in the results after freshbot is in index results (some short of penalization occurs), main page retourn to the former positions when freshbot results vanish, so for that people having beat by fressy every day this last may not occur.

I am the owner of 4 domains very well targeted in different but related areas, Top one has this problem (the site is updated every two days and the main kw has hight density on page) the other three are more statics and due to they are only optimized for Title and url maybe they are not "penalized" for over-optimization, the funtion seems to have a maximun and if you overpass that maximun you rank lower, nothing to do with PR (my PR still the same) is just a filter, or may be the other sites are more statics and fressy do not visit so frecuently (i really do not belive this last one to much), unfortunately i do not have logs for those static domains.

So my static domains with no Kw1-Kw2 on text, just one Kw1-Kw2 on title and url are performing well and stable, the other one more dinamic, more optimized in the main page is not showing in index in good positions after freshbot results are in index and it is show after my fresbotted pages disapear.

I was #1 for the main Kw of the four domains.

I think there is nothing you can do right now, maybe G is using your optimized pages to check their filters and no final threashold is stablish yet, or if it is stablish may change in the future very often.

Problem appart is the backlink count, and the three months cached pages (the results when freshbot index results dissapear are based on the three or two moths ago cached pages)

Sit, wait and relax.

[edited by: Ataulfo at 10:44 pm (utc) on May 30, 2003]

[jimh009]

Had the same problem with the keyword (not a popular one) that was targeted on my home page. At first, I thought about that semi-penalty people are talking about. But, after some research, noticed that Google "lost" the homepage, for lack of a better word. It somehow got the url wrong for the home page. Instead of being index.htm, the page was located buried in my forum, and had a PR0, even though on my site it still showed PR5.

Freshbot picked it back up and now lead the SERPS again for this obscure phrase. I banned Google from my forum in hopes that it no longer gets "lost" and misplaces my pages!

Jim

[John_Caius]

I agree that the current results are a bit odd in this regard - if I search for the name of my site, the first page that comes up from my domain is my feedback form, despite the fact that every page in the site links back to the homepage with the site name in the anchor text. Let's hope that this particular bit of the algo gets tweaked over the next few weeks... :)

[wantme]

IS THAT MEAN DENSITY SHOULD BE LOW!
I found many sites with high den. still comming up!
how to check?

[annej]

After looking over the top 10 serps with many search phrases I've come to the conclusion that Google accepts a huge range in terms of density. As long is the word is there or in anchor links I'm not sure Google cares how dense it is in the text. Having key words in the title makes a big difference though.