Question about the photo site.

Hi Lisa. Not a igaming niche question, but I'd like to read your advice on the situation. The theme of the site - photo, in fact something like a collection of photos and albums with photos. The site goes some traffic from Google, but it goes to internal pages (categories, tags, galleries). If you look at the output by domain name, Google shows internal pages, the main page is not. The main page as if under some kind of filter. Can you advise me something, how can I get the main page out of the filter in the output? Given that the niche site photo, the site almost does not contain tekstovki. Behavioral on the site is good, dwell time, depth of browsing, etc. If you pull the main page in the output, traffic will be more times.

We're talking about photo-adalt now, I hope :)
As they say, it's hard to diagnose from a photo (I couldn't resist), but I think your problem is not with the «filter to main» but with the fact that Google doesn't understand what role the main one fulfills.

The search engine always ranks well for pages that solve the user's problem. Categories and galleries do. Home, apparently, does not.

When a site has no text layer and no semantic structure, to Google the main one looks like a decorative one: it does not lead to an answer, but only shows that the site exists. It's not enough to get a place in the rendition.

Now, what can be done to make the home page «valuable» to search again. Without turning the photo site into a blog:

• ✔️ Give the main objective.
  The home should not be a showcase, but an entry point:
  an explanation of what this collection is, how it's different, what to look for there.
  Even 700-900 characters of normal text can change the algorithm's attitude.
• ✔️ Add a minimal «structure of intent».
  Blocks, I guess:
  - popular albums of the week
  - new collections
  - selections by theme, season, author
  Google reads this as navigational weight: the main one helps the user move around.
• ✔️ Internal Relinking.
  Right now, the signal is probably going one way: category → photo.
  We need to close the loops: categories and albums should return weight to the main.
• ✔️ «Branded» searches.
  If a domain name has people clicking on internal rather than main - Google is perpetuating that pattern.
  Add an option to social media, newsletter, link signatures where the main one is the primary entry point. This often rearranges the output over time.
• ✔️ OpenGraph and favicon.
  For photo sites, it's a ridiculously underrated layer.
  A beautiful preview + the right title in social networks increase the share of direct clicks to the main page. For Google, this is a signal: the page is alive and useful.
• ✔️ Check canonical and noindex.
  Not because it's a «rookie mistake», but because that's where the problem is in 20% of such cases.

What photo sites usually lack
- of meaning on the main
- of internal weight cascades
- micro-updates (and photo sites can do them naturally)
- entry to a site that starts with a brand rather than a category

And yes, if you have good behavioral is a strong argument. It can be strengthened:
add small series of photos where the user is flipping through a micro story rather than just a gallery. This lengthens the session and increases the perception of the site as a media site rather than a stock site.

Home should not be the door, but the first solution to the user's problem.
Give it meaning and Google will bring it back to life.