Home page is ranking for seed keyword that's not even on the actual article? Help?

I'm looking at rankings and one of my seed keywords, which isn't even on the home page of my site is ranking on the home page of my site. I want the keyword to be ranking on the pillar article it's actually in, and it isn't. I have no idea what I did wrong. The keyword density on the actual pillar article is only 0.6%. Any ideas?

If that made no sense - here's maybe a better way of explaining
mydomain.com - no seed keyword - ranks 116 in G US
mydomain.com/pillararticle - seed keyword @ 0.6% density - no where to be found in G US

I think you should give it time till it sort it self, I have a website that there is no content that is ranking for a KW on the 6 page.

Also there are probably few reasons why this is happening, do you have the seed KW on your homepage?
If you have an aged domain with links on the homepage ( I forgot if you used expired or clean domain ) and you have the seed KW in it this is the reason why you are seeing ranking for the KW on the homepage.
Additionally if in the pillar article you are linking the homepage this also might explain why you are seeing the homepage ranking for the KW as you are pushing link juice from the seo you build for that KW to the pillar article straight to the homepage.

P.S. yeah, I am following your journey.

Wizard hit the nail on the head.

Google will eventually sort this stuff out.

If google picks up one page first it can or will rank above the others in the same niche. You can also find instances of pages ranking above others which are exactly targeting a KW because you build links to it. For example, you build links to page A about American Car Doors. Page B is about European Car Doors. When you build links to Page A it vanishes from SERPs and page B begins ranking for American Car Doors higher than Page A was.

After a little while Page A will pop back into place when Google is done evaluating the links. It happens to everyone and is normal. Do nto worry much about it and keep going.

If you have a sidebar with recent posts widget on your homepage, it is likely that your homepage is ranking high only because it contains the title of the article and keyword in the sidebar. Just continue building more links to the inner page and it will over rank your HP.

It usually takes about 2 weeks for some stable rankings to show up. Don't try to track ranking every hour, just do your thing and google will reward you if you give them quality.

Thank you everyone for the replies

My site is 2 weeks old, all pages indexed, how long will it take for it to rank??