Ranking Inner Pages or the Main Page?
-
Hello Guys,
I am relatively new to the SEO world. So I am just wondering what would be more helpful. Getting the homepage ranked for a list of targeted keywords or creating a separate page for each keyword and then getting those pages ranked?
Look forward to hear back,
Thanks!
Naimath
-
First off, if the keywords are pretty related, having similar synonyms, then it can be pretty easy to rank for all three.
For Example, I used my home page to target: Car Dealerships City, City Car Dealerships, City Used Cars, City State Car Dealerships, etc.
Since all of these are so relevant to each other, it made things as easy as just talking about my business in my city-state.
However, my internal pages are very specific: City state auto repair, city state car rentals, etc.
Point is, if your top three keywords are about the same topic, then it can be easy to rank for all three on the home page. However, if they are different, and highly competitive (Diets and Gyms), then you are going to need to split up the content into different pages to rank well.
As for which pages you should focus on, it depends on your current rankings, and traffic. If you currently rank pretty well overall for your home page, then get it bumped up to the top to increase traffic. After that, start working on all the other pages.
If you aren't ranked well yet, and you don't have much traffic, then go after a niche phrase with decent search with all your internal pages. This will help your bottom line more - easier conversions - and still help your overall domain authority. I'm having to turn around, and do this with all of my websites that I took over (In-House SEO).
-
Hi Mohd, sounds like you're getting there, have been some good answers & advice for you on here. You can target more than 1 keyword on the Homepage, is just more difficult than 1 and risks diluting the emphasis of the existing 1 keyword. Can certainly be done though I'd suggest sticking to just 1 H1 tag, focus that on the 1 main keyword and make use of H2 tags for the others. The Title and Description can of course contain all 3, depending on length of course. Clear sections of content related to all 3 is important, plus absolutely inbound links with varied anchor text covering all 3. Hope that helps.
-
Thanks Simon. I have a small service oriented site with few pages. And since it's a small website the URL structure is not highly complicated either. My confusion was whether I should target one keyword for the homepage or multiple keywords. I am thinking of 3 keywords as they're equally important and then creating separate pages for other not-so-important keywords..
But again, the problem that I am facing is - if I want to go for 3 keywords, then how do I go about on-page optimization. I have successfully optimized my Homepage for one main keyword following SEOMoz checklist. Now, if I have to optimize for more two main keywords, then it is giving me same checklist which kind of makes it difficult for me to do.
I mean can I have more than 1 keyword in H1 Tag, in my the homepage Title, etc?
Hope I made some sense. Appreciate your response Simon.
Mohd
-
Thanks Philip, My subsequent question was going to be "should we assign one keyword for the homepage or multiple keywords." I see that you prefer one keyword but I have seen people getting their homepage ranked for multiple keywords too. I wonder how they go about it? Do they work on all the keywords at the same time, or one after the other; how do you think one can go about it because that's something I am considering too (although I don't intend to target more than 3 keywords for homepage).
-
Welcome. From my perspective, I always start my SEO campaigns by first focusing on the home page. If you've structured your internal navigation correctly, the link juice you attract to the home page will filter down to the top level and second level pages. Once you've build a considerable number of links to your home page, I would suggest some deep linking to pages that are clustered around a particular keyword or niche.
Best of luck,
Mike
-
I often like to pick one main keyword to target with the main page and then less popular keywords for the other pages. Trying to rank one page for multiple different keywords (both [dogs] and [cats] for example) is tough. I stick to one main keyword per page.
-
Hi Mohd, Welcome to the world of SEO. (apologies for the lack of paragraphing here, doesn't work on an iPad). The answer really depends on your business objectives, website objectives and what it is you have to sell or provide. ~ Often, the homepage is a shop window leading to different departments within the store (product categories and such like), with the Homepage targeted and ranking for Brand terms such as the business name and related, with the deeper internal pages ranking for keywords and phrases related to what each page is there for, such as a product, service, topic offering. One way to help start the process is to figure out how you'd like the website to be structured, as in getting the URL structure aligned to what it is the website provides. Always try and cater for Usability and User Experience which are at least as important as the SEO of the site. Hope that helps, Regards, Simon
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Website Ranking well in Mobile but not in Desktop
Hello guys, Recently we are experiencing good rankings for our targeted keywords in mobile but in desktop the rankings are not progressing. For example, in Mobile, our main targetted keyword ranks in 7th position but in Desktop we are stuck in 11th position. In desktop the website have been stuck in 11th position for quite some time now, any suggestion will help.
Link Building | | NkZagreus0 -
Links to "boring" pages
Hello Mozzers, EDIT: Is internal linking enough? This question is my head for a long time. Let's say I have a webdesign company and a website (really?). I have a blog and write quality content on a weekly basis. The content is great and people love it, they share it on social networks and other webmasters link to these articles. Now I have one optimized page, that brings me the business. Lets say: mywebsite.com/webdesign-service On this page I only have boring stuff like saying what I am offering and testimonials and stuff. So basically a page no one shares and no one links to. But it's important to rank with the keywords targeted on this site. How do I get to rank this page? A page that doesn't offer value to anybody. Normally, we shouldn't have pages like this, but some companies do boring stuff and creativity doesn't help. Maybe this question is stupid, forgive me but I don't get it. I am thankful for any answers on this!
Link Building | | grobro0 -
Is my linking tactic affecting my rankings?
Hello All, I'd like to think that my SEO style was both helpful and useful. But lately i've been thinking that I may be damaging my own SEO! Let me explain, I love forums and technical gossip. Being a IT guy, I usually find an interesting question from websites like Yahoo, Microsoft, SOASE Forums etc etc and write a decent article on one of the questions going into real detail. I then post my basic answer (word limits) and a hyperlink incase anybody wants to read the rest of my article. I used to think that this was great for SEO, because it was certainly great for making great connections. However, a backlink check on my website shows that I have a good 40 - 60 hyperlinks, 40/ 50 of which from just Forums I've posted on but only from 3 - 4 domains. Would this affect my ratings? Looking at my own site from an SEO consultant perspective, having one source of links seems awfully suspicious to me!
Link Building | | Paul_Tovey0 -
Having pages in the footer
Hello, I have a website , and some keywords that im targeting i want to create separate pages for, so i can have good quality content on there, but at the same time i dont really want to have those pages in my header menu, its just for the Search Engines to see the quality page, with a keywords im targeting. So can i just have those pages in my footer menu? whats your opinion on this ? Thanks
Link Building | | vlad_mezoz0 -
Ranking going down slowly please help
Hi I got a domain http://www.childrensfunkyfurniture.com/ and my main keyword is childrens beds. Use to be on first page for the last six years now drop to page 2, I am struggling to find the cause. Would appreciate if anyone could look into the website and provide some information. Many Thanks
Link Building | | conversiontactics0 -
Link Building for Landing Page
Hey Guys, I have a client that is launching a website in about 2-3 months time. They have had a flash site for the last 4 years and have had no SEO/Link Building to the site and are now going to undertake my services for Content Strategy, Social Strategy and Link Building. In the interim (from now till the next 3 months) they will be launching a "coming soon" landing page. What I want to know is when doing their initial link building do I just concentrate on brand related links through local directories with the aim of getting a few local keyterms? Or should we be deploying a longer term strategy of going after the competitive keyterms now? Thanks,
Link Building | | ecentricmarketing
Michael0 -
Link velocity - still a significant ranking factor?
We have recently taken over the SEO for a site which had a pretty poor back link profile, lots of comment links, directories etc. Although the quality of the link was very questionable, the previous SEO were maintaining a decent link velocity. Obviously I have no intention of carrying on with spammy crap links, and am looking to build some good fresh content. This will obviously slow down the link velocity quite considerably, is that in itself likely to hurt SERPs? Thanks in advance
Link Building | | JustinTaylor880 -
Ranking above Auth domains question?
Hi, How difficult would it be to rank a new page above the likes of Wiki, About, Squidoo etc? I have a keyword I would like rank but most of the domains on first page are the likes of the above, wiki, about, squidoo etc. The pages themselves dont have a high Page Auth its just the root domain. Will it still be very hard to rank above these types of sites? Cheers
Link Building | | activitysuper0