Home page indexed not Post page

#76000
  • Resolved Patricia

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math pro

    Greetings,

    We recently published an article on our (travel-related) news site, but it was our Home Page that got ranked higher and appears in the first page of Google results for article-related keywords, not the individual Post (article). I can submit a screenshot if you’d like to see.

    I’m wondering if we have done something wrong? On the individual Post, all of the RankMath fields are properly filled in and it scores well (83/100).

    The article also appears with an excerpt in a Slider on our Home Page.

    We’re happy to make the fist page of Google SERPs, but I don’t know enough about SEO to know if we should, or should not, want our home page to rank? Wouldn’t it be better that the actual post/article itself outranks our home page?

    The only time I can think of where we would definitely want our Home Page to rank really well would be for our generic but primary industry keyword.

    If there are some settings we should tweak for our Home Page so that it doesn’t outrank articles I’m all ears. 🙂

    Any insights or suggestions would be very appreciated!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Alberto

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math business

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.

    That is a common issue, not with Rank Math but in the SEO world. Since the homepage has more “authority” than subpages; for Google that page has priority ranking.

    You should try to optimize your subpage for the keyword you want to rank, try to “deoptimize” the homepage for that keyword, link from your homepage to the subpage you want to rank (if possible, using as anchor the keyword you want to rank the subpage for) and building some internal and external links pointing to that subpage to gain authority.

    Looking forward to helping you. Thank you.

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    Patricia

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math pro

    Hi Alberto,

    Many thanks for your quick response, and apologies for my delay in replying.

    Our Home Page is not optimized for anything, it’s completely constructed from widgets, so I’m guessing that the problem is that the post appears on the home page more than once (as a photo & excerpt) in both a section for posts in the same category AND in a slider at the top.

    Given that, I suppose a solution might be to wait to have new content post to our Home Page until *after* it has been scanned/indexed by Google et al? Or possibly to ensure that it appears on our Home Page only once, and not in multiple sections?

    I’ll try both of those ideas (in reverse order, ensuring only 1 instance, and then none if that doesn’t fix it) by modifying the widgets’ settings and I’ll let you know how it goes. 🙂

    Michael Davis

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math pro

    Hello,

    Thank you for the follow up.

    In terms of Ranking Goggle checks multiple factors such as content and linking. And sometimes you can have the perfect article and still Google chooses a different article to rank higher than your specific article.

    Let us know if your strategy works for your article. Do not hesitate to ask if you have any further questions. Thank you.

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    Patricia

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math pro

    Hi Alberto,

    Just a quick followup to let you know that we did solve the problem by changing the categories for Posts to ensure that no article appears more than once on our Home Page.

    Previously we had posts that had multiple categories assigned (in our case, “News”, and “Featured” might be assigned to the same Post) and widgets that pulled Posts from “Featured” in our Slider and “News” elsewhere on the home page, that was causing the problem.

    By reconfiguring our Home page, the Home Page no longer ranks higher than the individual Post for the focus keywords selected.

    I know the problem is NOT with RankMath, but I could not find any better solution other than to tell Google to *not* index our Home Page, but that’s not ideal either. For now, this works. If we need Posts to be listed in multiple categories, I’ll be sure to pay close attention to how our Home Page is structured to avoid any duplication.

    Michael Davis

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math pro

    Hello,

    Than you for the detailed information. We are your issue is resolved.

    If you don’t mind me asking, could you please leave us a review (if you haven’t already) on https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/seo-by-rank-math/reviews/#new-post about your overall experience with Rank Math? We appreciate your time and patience.

    If you do have another question in the future, please feel free to create a new forum topic, and it will be our pleasure to assist you again.

    Thank you.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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