Why Your About Page Ranks Higher Than Your Home Page

From time to time, clients ask us why their campaign website isn’t ranking on Google for the candidate’s name.

There are several reasons why a website may not rank. It usually has to do with the amount of time a website has been live. Just because a site is created does not mean that Google will know that it exists. Search engines need to crawl web pages and index them in order for them to show in search results.

How do search engines find websites? Links are important in both quality and quantity. Most new political websites will get their first links from social media accounts, news articles and online press releases.

Another major (and common) reason for a failure to rank is due to the home page lacking important text. This includes information such as the candidate’s name, location and position being sought. Pages written in first person are especially problematic.

After all, how can a search engine be expected to know who “me” and “I” are referring to on a web page?

The home page is considered the most ‘important’ page of a website. It is typically the page that appears in common searches related to the site’s theme (such as the candidate’s name). Sometimes, though, a candidate’s “About” page appears in the search results ahead of or in place of a website’s home page.

Many of these items are political SEO factors that are used to determine a web page’s ranking in search.

So why would an About Page get top billing?

There is not enough Home Page text: We see this a lot. The home page is dominated by a large photo (or a splash page) that has very little text in it. Search engines reply primarily on text content to figure out what a web page is about. If there is little text or information for the search engine to read, then there may not be enough ‘meat’ on the page for it to rank properly.

Plenty of text on the About Page: Conversely, if your About Page (or any other page) has a large amount of text and detailed information about the candidate, that will likely be the page that the search engine favors.

Incoming links: This can happen on rare occasions but having too many links from outside sources point to a particular page can cause that page to be ‘over-weighted’. Generally, most links to a website point to the site’s home page. However, if an interior page attracts a lot of links, it may end up ranking for candidate name searches.

How to fix the ranking problem

If you have a problem with the wrong page ranking for general searches, try improving your home page content and/or removing any splash pages you may have in place. Getting a few links to point to your site’s home page can help as well.

Sometimes the ‘About’ page just has better content than the Home Page. If that happens, why not move some or all of that content to the home page? After all, if it’s that good, why bury it in the site?

There are a number of factors that go into search rankings. Though you want your website to rank well, create your content first with readers in mind. One tip is to create the site copy as if it is for someone who does not know the candidate or the issues on which they are running.

Related: SEO Strategies for Political Campaigns

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