Ranking #1 ... but with the wrong page

[TheShortStack]

A bit of a strange one this.

I'm ranking #1 for "pokerroomname bonus", which is great. The only problem is that the page which is appearing in the number one spot isn't my "bonus" page. It's a news article that I wrote a little while back that happens to contain a few good keywords.

I'd obviously much rather have my 'Bonus' page up there seeing as it provides much more information as well as a stronger call to action ... but I don't know why it's not appearing.

The keyphrase is included in the title tag, the H1 tag, the URL and sporadically throughout the content ... but still, the news article is outranking it.

Does anyone know why this is?? Or what I can do to try to change this?

Thanks a lot in advance.

[OPC]

A bit of a strange one this.

I'm ranking #1 for "pokerroomname bonus", which is great. The only problem is that the page which is appearing in the number one spot isn't my "bonus" page. It's a news article that I wrote a little while back that happens to contain a few good keywords.

I'd obviously much rather have my 'Bonus' page up there seeing as it provides much more information as well as a stronger call to action ... but I don't know why it's not appearing.

The keyphrase is included in the title tag, the H1 tag, the URL and sporadically throughout the content ... but still, the news article is outranking it.

Does anyone know why this is?? Or what I can do to try to change this?

Thanks a lot in advance.

That's kinda what I had noticed about my site a while back... I know that my blog has more incoming links, is somewhat better traveled and indexes/ranks a great deal quicker than the "main portion" of my site. So, I had asked should I introduce content there, and eventually reroute the traffic to my main site where i want to perminantly house the information.

I experimented with that, and I can't say I had unfavorable results --- at least in the short run...

One thing you might consider is to adjust the canonical to reflect the page you're wanting to rank... That way, you might be inclined to remain ranked - even if it is the wrong page.

Another idea would be to add content to the already ranking page - just straight up place all the info in that page that you wanted ranked from the other page... Then, people clicking to get there will see what you want them to see anyways...

[Planet Mark]

Great question ShortStack... I have a bunch of examples of exactly this issue, hopefully some ideas out there on how to resolve.

When we located these we give the 'incorrect' article some landing-page treatment with more links / options for the visitors, but some way of swapping or divering to our preferred pieces would be great.

Mark

[Unknown Webmaster]

I'v had this problem too - Never figured out how to swap the pages, so I just added a bunch of promotions stuff to the news article.

[TheShortStack]

Am I right in assuming that link-building to your correct page would help?

[OPC]

I'd say something along the lines of link building could always help... lol

SEOmoz | Canonical URL Tag - The Most Important Advancement in SEO Practices Since Sitemaps <=== that is more along the lines of what I was thinking though

Meaning - take the page you're ranking #1 for, and list the canonical url to be the page you want to rank #1 with. I'm assuming they have "similar" content, though the one you're wanting ranking with is more sales oriented.

[Michael Martinez]

Do not attempt to use the canonical URL meta tag to fix a problem like this.

When a search engine shows the wrong page for a keyword, it usually means the "wrong" page either uses the keyword more often, emphasizes the keyword more, or has more inbound links (with the matching anchor text) pointing to it.

Less often but just as critically you might have done something to the "right" page that could cause the search engine to favor a different page. Many technical issues often slip past even a practiced eye. It could be as simple as leaving off a trailing slash in your internal links (or accidentally adding one). It could be as simple as breaking an HTML element on the page so that some of the indexable text doesn't get indexed.

It could also be due to more nefarious issues. Some people "optimize" their pages on the basis of bad or risky advice and they incur a penalty.

Canonical declarations won't help these kinds of situations.

Rather than simply toss blind solutions at a problem hoping it will fix itself, it's best to work toward identifying the actual problem.

[Andrew Scherer]

You might be overoptimizing for the page you want ranked, I would check that out.

[CorryC]

Do you have links pointing at the "right" page with the anchor text 'pokerroomname bonus'? If so, do you have the same going to the "wrong" page? I would think, the reason would more than likely have something to do with linking. Maybe you got a really good link pointing to the news page? With the anchor text related to the keyword search?

If that is the case, then I guess that means you need stronger links pointing to the bonus page to get that to rank higher than the news page.