Links page getting top results?

[mwack]

I just did a search for the keyword that I've been primarily targeting and that I've always been in the top 3 for. What's happening now, however, is that it will show www.mydomain.com as the first result, and then as the second result for my site it shows www.mydomain.com/links.html.

I don't really want all my visitors just automatically going to my links page and, therefore, to my competition, but I can't exactly do a noindex on my links page. Any ideas on what steps I could take so that the links page stopped dominating my other pages without hurting my link partners?

[caveman]

Is your search page linked to from most or all pages on your site?

[mwack]

Yes, all pages of my site... I understand why it's ranked so high (around 70 links with descriptions on one page is a whole lot of content), I just wonder if there's a way to not have it rank so high. None of the links are as relevent to the keyword as my site, since my site is the keyword and has multiple pages of content related to that keyword.

I thought about only linking to the links page from my homepage, but I don't want to become an undesirable link partner because of it.

[caveman]

Well, aside from the fact that seeing that page rank so well is instructive ;-), you're telling the search engines by virtue of linking to that page from every page on your site that you think that page is very important. Between your linking strategy and the contents of the page itself, the SE's are taking you seriously.

In your shoes (and I've been there), I might reconsider my internal linking strategy. ;-)

I might also put a little thought against how I could take the learning from this and apply it elsewhere on my site.