Keyword Strategy for Very Large Website Launch

[getbigyadig]

My friend and I are launching a website used to track alcoholic beverages.  It has over 115k pages, three tier site structure.  I am curious about the keyword strategy for the homepage.  I know I will get a lot of long tail search traffic for drink names and how to mix drinks. Do I need a Keyword Strategy for my homepage with so many internal pages? Its a new brand we created, not a keyword domain.  We would like to rank for how to mix drinks, etc...  However with the number of pages we already have a lot of internal link juice.  Where should link building be focused?

[Marcus_Miller]

In an ideal world the links to your homepage should be descriptive and help people looking for what you offer to find you. So, most of those would be branded terms then there would be a wide variety of descriptive terms with some having more  value than others.

Re selling your application, what does it do? Is it in demand? is it unique? Does it do it better than the free ones? Are you in a position where getting the app out there and build brand recognition is more  important than generating a few bucks?

There are no generic answers for these kind of questions, it depends on the business and your specific goals.

[getbigyadig]

In addition, I am also curious if we should be selling the app or not.  We invested some money into mobile app development, but our primary competitor makes their money from showing non-intrusive ads.  Offers a free mobile app, and is more established. Would it be a bad move to charge for our app?

[getbigyadig]

The website is still in development, so I cant share the URL right now its just a landing page.  The pages all pulled from a large database, not one of those dynamically generated websites based on whatever people search for.  So I think the title tags and headers would be important to focus on for the long tail.

As for the homepage - I am releasing a mobile app for the website. So I am hoping to generate brand recognition via people looking for mixed drink apps, beer apps, etc...

What would be nice is it there was a tool for measuring search volume on the major app stores, similar to the adwords tool.  It would help me gauge if this app and website will self promote, or if it will require a lot of marketing.

With that in mind, should links to my homepage all just be my brand name (ex. DrinkThat), or should I target the highly searched terms related to my website like "mixed drinks".  Because the website is so large, I am not quite sure if link building is needed as much as a solid website structure and proper title tags are.

[Marcus_Miller]

If you are looking to build a brand  name,  then much of the homepage link building should focus on using the brand identity to get visibility for that term. Couple that with some basic PPC for your brand name to ensure that if people do search for you, they can find you.

Other  than that, without more specifics, it's kind of tricky to know what to say. Can you distil what the essence of the site is down into a  couple of words? Can you then do some keyword research to see if there is any traction for this or related phrases?

If you are thinking that the 2nd and 3rd tiers will be the primary landing pages for  specific searches then I woud really concentrate on the brand name and  message  on the homepage but... if you want to post a link or give a few more details I am sure I (or someone else) can give you a more targeted and detailed answer.

Hope it helps.
Marcus