My portfolio website ranks well for the search term ‘web design portfolio’.
A couple of weeks ago I notice my ranking slipping slightly, so I made some changes to my site, most significantly I wrote a blog post that contained the term ‘web design portfolio’ - the title was Web Design Portfolio Tips.
Yesterday I noticed my ranking climb again, but tonight when I search for ‘web design portfolio’, instead of my homepage being shown on the list of results Google returns, my blog post is shown instead in its place.
This isn’t good for me because potential clients aren’t going to read an article about web design tips - they want to see an actual portfolio right away.
My question is why has Google replaced my homepage with this new blog post I wrote? Surely it should be included in the results AS WELL AS the homepage of my website which was already there? Should I delete the blog post for the main website to appear again?
What I would do is to make the “To my portfolio” link more prominent … I nearly didn’t see it hiding there shyly in the corner. Also you need to add text that says “To my portfolio”, even if you position it off-screen, so that Google knows where the link is going.
Deleting the blog post won’t necessarily help, because there’s no guarantee that you’ll get the homepage back where it was. But if you increase the use of the word ‘portfolio’ around links to the homepage then there’s a better chance that it will pick up, and if you make that link more visible then even if Google keeps linking to the blog post, people will be able to find your portfolio more easily.
Google seems to be ranking my homepage high on the 2nd page for ‘freelance web design portfolio’ now, so maybe this could be a blessing in disguise. I guess time will tell!
hi Will!! I think that i know why is this happening.
On your blog you have the Keywords “web design portfolio” just in the first sentence. Maybe it’s for that. On your home page you have these three words together, one time that you scroll down.
Google try not to show more than one result from the same site for a non site specific search because their SERP wouldn’t be diverse enough. You somehow managed to outrank yourself., if you remove the mentions of the keyword phrase you’re targeting from the blog post, it’ll probably drop down in the rankings and be replaced by your homepage.