Wrong pages ranking - what gives?

The wrong pages are ranking for target terms

[RankNFile]

I'm a bit frustrated with two things I keep seeing and perhaps someone can help me with them:

1) I'll often do search term research, map words and optimize pages, then observe. I'll notice that the site begins ranking for the term, but almost invariably, it will be the homepage (which almost never includes the target term) not the mapped page. Why would this be happening?

2) I often find that I dig into a client page, truly optimize it from top to bottom and see them get a major boost - they may go up 90 spots, let's say. Then a week later - BAM - they go DOWN 90 spots. I've seen these jumps and fall backs of the exact same amount again and again, across clients. What's that all about?

Any insight is helpful!

[lammert]

At #2) I assume that you are talking about Google. Do these changes occur only for you or also on other computers for other users? This can be an effect of Google's personalized search which boosts sites in the SERPs which you have visited recently. Those boosts are only visible for you and not for others. It is for enhancing the search experience of the average user by presenting them the sites they have used before and might be interested in again, and has as a side effect that non-biased SEO ranking optimization checks get more difficult.

[martinibuster]

Following up on what lammert posted, in addition to IE, I have Opera, FF, Comodo Dragon at my disposal for checking the SERPs. I also use a proxy to change my IP addy.

As for the home page ranking, if it's not the personalized search effect then it could be too many inbound links to the home page.

[toidi]

I am experiencing the same thing right now. Pages that used to rank on the first page have been replaced by the home page. The home page still floats around in the top 5 for what it is supposed to but doesn't carry the same weight for the rest of the pages, so those serps have dropped to page 2.

I have experienced this in the past and it went away all by itself after a short time but this time around it doesn't seem to be going away.

This has been verified on multiple machines in different locations with caches, history and cookies deleted.

[tangor]

Does your home page "answer a question"?

G is serving "answers" these days.

We can't depend on USERS to click through on the homepage to find the interior content, so you might want to look at the presentation.

These days (my opinion) every page should be served as a "home" page, ie, the "answer". And in that regard adjustments in the concept of "home page" accrue. Particularly important for eCommerce sites.

[RankNFile]

To answer some of you all's questions, I'm actually not checking this out on the live SERPs - I'm looking at these rankings in Bright Edge. Could that be a problem? I admit that I don't have the highest opinion of BE.

But what Tangor mentioned is intriguing. I'm not in a position to change all of the home pages to answer a question, but there are a few that I could shift around. Might be worth trying!

[toidi]

Does your home page "answer a question"? 

my homepage answers a lot of questions but not the specific question being asked. The pages it is replacing answers their questions specifically and to the point.

the snippet google serves in the results is the link text on the homepage to the pages that were replaced.

the site is for local service and the pages being replaced are the different geographic areas served.

[toidi]

Ranknfile

Could you check the serps and see if this problem exists for you in the real world? If i am the only one with this isdue then i know i can fix it. Thanks!