Yesterday the home page of my site was 19th for my keyword. Today the home page is no where to be found for that keyword, and an inner-page from the same site has replaced it at 19th. I have no idea how or why. Yesterday: Main Page - 19th Inner Page - not even in the first 100. Today: Inner Page - 19th Main Page - not even in the first 100. Does anyone know what happened?
Its probably the "Google Dance" give it 2-3 weeks for Google to settle down, and your rankings will stabilize.
Something strange going on at google towers, one of my sites #1 for my keyword, and yesterday it totally disappeared from the SERPS (sub pages were still ranking, but homepage nowhere to be seen). It's back again now, so best thing just sit back and it'll likely just correct itself.
It sometimes happen when a particular inner page is actually a product or service page. Compare to your homepage, it MIGHT have a higher PR compare to your index or homepage.
I agree. That could whats happening. Have you been building links to that internal page? Do you have more/better content on it? It is hard to say, but who cares if it is the internal or a home page. You still got it.
Could be a million different things. For example, you see this a lot with blogs. If your site is a blog and your theme displays the entire post on the home page then the home page "version" of the post will typically rank instead of the post itself because the home page has a much higher PR than the post page. Then as the post rolls off the home page, the post page will often start ranking instead of the home page because the post is no longer being shown on the home page.
It happens mostly in new aged web domains! i am experienced similar kind of issues in some of my websites also where the inner pages showing better rankings than main one
If your inner page is more relevant to the search or it has a better PR than home page then it will be displayed...
Thanks for all the information. Like 12 hours after posting this it went back to normal. I'm guessing it's just the 'Google dance'. Thanks.
Its not strange or anything else. This happens if your inner page is more relevant to the keyword or inner page gets more reputation or it gets more (keyword hypertexted) backlinks than your homepage.
I didn't think it was strange that the inner page was higher. I thought it was strange that it swapped places with my home page so quickly. It wasn't even in the top 100, then it just swapped places with the main page.