Content page high rank than homepage

On one of my KWs which ranked 1st page about 5th, has slipped to about position 33.

However, a content page is showing about 10th for singular and 12th for plural version.

I know i have some good links to the internal page but this seems to have happened over night and the homepage dropped significantly.

All my SEO done is purely white hat.

It just seems strange that the homepage has dropped so much as this has some great links and many many more to it aswell.

Any explanations appreciated.

There could be many reasons for this. You might have lost good quality links to your home page or if it is a fairly new site then google may just have shifted your possition in the serps as they sometimes give new sites increased possition initialy and the reduce.

I wouldnt be to concerned that your content page is ranking higher, in fact I would see this as being a great sign for the quality of your content. people are linking to it for a reason. This will also add value to your link profile as just having links going to your home page isnt ideal.

It also means that you are getting traffic deeper into your site which can help with conversion as long as the landing page is effective

Thanks for your response very helpful.

The site is nearly a year old and probably very biased but believe it has the best content within my very specific niche industry.

The page that is ranking better is a description of my services, so as you say probably better than my homepage as it does have a lot of content on and is more a portal for rest of site. This will change when it gets the makeover planned as a realise this isn't ideal.

It just seems a little strange that the homepage has dropped so much and the inner page has increased so much. Not even sure where the inner ranked before this change if am honest.

Could this be a blip and will return shortly.

My site is still up there but rather than being middle of 1st page, its bottom or near top of 2nd.

So the question is would you prefer less traffic but to a better landing page or more traffic to a page which basically leads you in to the rest of the site?

I think that you would need to test it. I tend to believe that sales are king. I would happily get a little less traffic as a result of changing a page but that leads to an increased number of sales.

This might not be the case when you are looking for maximum exposue to attract links but for me the reason I do this is to earn a few bucks!

You might find that you dont have to change a great deal if you decide you would rather have a higher placing for your home page over a content page. You need to look at the details and try to work out the reason. I know it can be difficult but there must be a reason for the ranking.

I will leave it for the time being and see if it is just a blip. Will report back whether it is or if its not. Just interesting change i thought.

I have noticed some perculiar results showing so am guessing they are playing with algo again !!!

Checked this morning and site returned, google dance i reckon