No Content on home page + rankings
-
If a home page has no content will it hurt the sites ability to rank? The interior pages will have content but not the home page. (See attached image)
My client does not want content on the home page as he feels it will take away from the look and feel he wants to achieve.
This website is actually 10 sites or locations in one as we intend to market each location (a total of 10) separately.
In reality the home page is a doorway page to each separate location.
I'd like feedback if possible as to the necessity or not, of content on the Home Page of this or any website. Will the lack of content hurt on the Homer Page hurt with SEO?
Thanks
Gary Downey -
Oh this is why I was under the impression that every page is ranked individually. http://www.seomoz.org/q/pr-of-homepage-when-other-pages-have-more-lniks
-
My guess is that the homepage tends to rank best because this is the page that other websites will tend to link to.
It sounds like you want to build links to inner pages in the hopes that they will rank, which is fine. But, if I am a reporter, or a customer who wants to write about my experience at your restaurant, I'm most likely to link to the home page.
-
Keri,
We are in the process of building a mobile version of the website along side of building a whole new site.
Thanks for the response.
-
After you fix these problems they should be making a lot more money.
-
Not rankings, but consider user experience, especially with mobile. If someone is looking for somewhere to eat in the next two hours and they're using their phone, they're going to want a page and site that makes it easy to find information about the location, hours, etc. You might also bring that aspect to the customer and let them know the potential conversion issues (unless you're already planning something for mobile -- the existing site looked just like the desktop site on my iPhone right now).
-
The website has a lot of SEO issues. I just took the contract on two weeks ago and we are in the process of rebuilding the website.
For sure we don't want to loose any of the inbound links pointing to the home page or other pages for that fact.
I agree with you as far as taking advantage of the home page and placing content on it. I will be trying to convince them to do so.
The challenge will be in changing the url's for each page without disturbing the inbound links currently pointing to url's like this one. (This is a current live url)
http://bobbyvans.com/Bobby_Vans_Steakhouse/46th_%26_Park_Avenue.html
The site currently has serious canonical and duplicate page issues.
-
Thanks for the answer. I have the same mind set as you. I'm under the impression that you can rank deep pages higher than your home page. This is a somewhat unique situation as we are trying to rank 10 locations under one sub domain. It's not your typical one location SEO project.
With this all said I'm going to try and talk my client into adding some content on the home page.
-
Run the Bobby Vans site on Open Site Explorer....
Homepage has... highest page authority, most linking root domains, most inbound links. I would be taking full advantage of that.
Also, there is a gold mine of wasted links because the site has a lot of canonical and URL problems that could be solved by a good SEOing.
-
I was not aware that SE ranked home pages higher. There are pages on sites that have higher PR then the sites subdomian. How can this be?
IMO the reason we usually see a home page ranking higher in PR is because its the home page and people naturally link to it, or type it in when they look for you. Also the subdomain is included in every URL. For these reasons I can see how the home page can get some extra authoritative qualities.
But I was always under the impression that every page is ranked independently.
-
Absolutely, every page is ranked independently. I have heard of sites that have deep pages that have higher page rank, then the subdomain.
Are you only targeting local areas? if so the home page does not need to have any content. However the pages you want to rank are independent and should have a diverse keywords in H1,Title, and Body. When building these local pages be sure to get links from these regions. ie if you targeting "Cars in Florida" build links within Florida to the site.
-
The homepage is usually the most powerful page on a website and it is a waste of that resource not to use it to go after one of the most difficult queries.
You can compete with an interior page but it generally is less effective. NYC steak house queries are rather competitive and to go after them with an interior page will probably result in lower rankings.
If you keep the homepage an image the client will make less money.
If this was my site the homepage would have quite a bit of text that includes lots of steak and other restaurant keywords. We would be making a lot more money with that text than we would be making with an artsy image homepage.
The decision is artsy versus money. Simple.
-
Just a side note. This restaurant chain has locations outside of New York City so it wouldn't be practical to have the home page Rank for "new york steak house". Besides New York City they have locations in DC, Long Island and JFK. Isn't the proper SEO strategy to rank the individual pages/locations? If I'm correct in my assumption then why is the Home Page that important?
-
Donnie,
I agree it won't hurt. The home page is one of many pages. Can't you focus SEO efforts on the other pages? Won't search engines spider and index the other pages within the website.
-
I realize no content on a page is bad for SEO, do search engines give more importance to home pages than other pages in a site? Can you not focus your SEO efforts on other pages? Why does it have to be the home page?
After all, at the end of the day is it not pages that rank?
The Home Page is just one on many pages on a website. Can I not focus my SEO efforts on the other pages and get them to rank for chosen keywords?
-
This restaurant is a chain. The plan is to setup a separate Google Places page for each individual location/page and market the locations individually.
In other words the goal is to rank individual pages within the site. If someone does a search query for "best new york steak house" or "steak houses in new york city" why can't one or several of the interior pages rank for that term? Does it have to be the home page? The Home Page is just one page within the site. Isn't it true that pages rank not websites per say? Is the Home Page more important than any other page?
I guess my real question is does Google give more importance to the home page than other pages on a site?
Thanks
Gary Downey -
Photographers like image heavy home pages as well.
They are horrid for SEO.
You CAN rank with no text, but it is very difficult & might not be worth the extra effort...
-
The more words that appear on the homepage the more traffic it will pull. Every word on the page can combine with every other word on the page to match queries typed into search engines by people searching for something.
It is possible to rank without content on the homepage and it is possible to get in trouble for hiding content on the homepage.
If client's goal is to rank for his name that will probably be easy with no content. If client wants to rank for "new york steakhouse" then he will need to accomplish that by anchor text links, the power of an interior pages or a strong effort on local search (which I see has already been done).
I would never have a zero text content homepage because I know that I would lose a lot of traffic and as a result a lot of sales. If client values the "artsy" look of his homepage he will pay for it with lost revenue.
-
It wont hurt. However, it wont help.
Google looks at the content in your title, H1, and body. I would recommend having some text on the home page.
SEO is 200 factors. I do as many as possible. In this case this may be one of those factors you wont be able to touch up on.
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
-
Google ranking content for phrases that don't exist on-page
I am experiencing an issue with negative keywords, but the “negative” keyword in question isn’t truly negative and is required within the content – the problem is that Google is ranking pages for inaccurate phrases that don’t exist on the page. To explain, this product page (as one of many examples) - https://www.scamblermusic.com/albums/royalty-free-rock-music/ - is optimised for “Royalty free rock music” and it gets a Moz grade of 100. “Royalty free” is the most accurate description of the music (I optimised for “royalty free” instead of “royalty-free” (including a hyphen) because of improved search volume), and there is just one reference to the term “copyrighted” towards the foot of the page – this term is relevant because I need to make the point that the music is licensed, not sold, and the licensee pays for the right to use the music but does not own it (as it remains copyrighted). It turns out however that I appear to need to treat “copyrighted” almost as a negative term because Google isn’t accurately ranking the content. Despite excellent optimisation for “Royalty free rock music” and only one single reference of “copyrighted” within the copy, I am seeing this page (and other album genres) wrongly rank for the following search terms: “free rock music”
On-Page Optimization | | JCN-SBWD
“Copyright free rock music"
“Uncopyrighted rock music”
“Non copyrighted rock music” I understand that pages might rank for “free rock music” because it is part of the “Royalty free rock music” optimisation, what I can’t get my head around is why the page (and similar product pages) are ranking for “Copyright free”, “Uncopyrighted music” and “Non copyrighted music”. “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted” don’t exist anywhere within the copy or source code – why would Google consider it helpful to rank a page for a search term that doesn’t exist as a complete phrase within the content? By the same logic the page should also wrongly rank for “Skylark rock music” or “Pretzel rock music” as the words “Skylark” and “Pretzel” also feature just once within the content and therefore should generate completely inaccurate results too. To me this demonstrates just how poor Google is when it comes to understanding relevant content and optimization - it's taking part of an optimized term and combining it with just one other single-use word and then inappropriately ranking the page for that completely made up phrase. It’s one thing to misinterpret one reference of the term “copyrighted” and something else entirely to rank a page for completely made up terms such as “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted”. It almost makes me think that I’ve got a better chance of accurately ranking content if I buy a goat, shove a cigar up its backside, and sacrifice it in the name of the great god Google! Any advice (about wrongly attributed negative keywords, not goat sacrifice ) would be most welcome.0 -
Keyword ranking for different page than the page optimized
I have optimized "equipment trailer for rent" on this page: http://www.bigtrailerrentals.com/flatbed-trailer-rentals/equipment-deckover. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me why Google has chosen to rank the keyword phrase for this page: http://www.bigtrailerrentals.com/flatbed-trailer-rentals/equipment-24 This is just one example. It has happened on several of my pages / keywords.
On-Page Optimization | | BigTrailerRentals0 -
How many keywords for home page?
I am a close up magician based in the UK and have just signed up for Moz Analytics and looking through the info now. The first issue was that it says my home page had an F grade for "table magician" My home page is not really optimised for table magician but Moz is suggesting I do. So my question is do I go with Moz and adjust my home page to match even though I have a dedicated page for table magician. Is this title tag for the home page too much. Roger Lapin: Wedding Magician - Close up Magician - Table Magician ?? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | rnperki
Roger
http://www.rogerlapin.co.uk0 -
Description tag not showing in the SERPs because page is blocked by Robots, but the page isn't blocked. Any help?
While checking some SERP results for a few pages of a site this morning I noticed that some pages were returning this message instead of a description tag, A description for this result is not avaliable because of this site's robot.s.txt The odd thing is the page isn't blocked in the Robots.txt. The page is using Yoast SEO Plugin to populate meta data though. Anyone else had this happen and have a fix?
On-Page Optimization | | mac22330 -
Moving Top rank Page urls off my Home page and nesting them on one page? Good idea?
I am basically trying to cut down the amount of links on my home page to make it less eye boggling and move stuff around. So i have of my Urls on my home page that lead to pages that rank very well within google. My questions is can i remove those urls to a separate page to group them together and then showcase that one link to that page on my home page. Is that a good idea or i am going to loose my link juice and position in search? The physical urls on those pages wont change at all.
On-Page Optimization | | Dante130 -
Keyword placement on home page or throughout the website
OK, I find the courage to ask this because there is not supposed to be a dumb question. Like all of us, I want my website to rank great with a particular keyword. Do I have to use this keyword only on my home page (the start page which I want to appear on top Google results), or does it make a difference if I use the keyword on several articles that I post on my website. These articles all have seperate links. Eg i want the www.website.com to be found by Google, but this website contains www.website.com/link1.html, www.website.com/link2.html.. etc. Will keyword usage on link1.html, link2.html etc be relevant so that www.website.com is found by Google? Or is every single page for itself? Hope I have explained that well and I would really appreciate your feedback.
On-Page Optimization | | polyniki0 -
Do product pages need unique content or does having duplcate content hurt on those pages?
We are adding product rapidly to our website but this requires allowing duplicate to exist on our product pages of furniture-online.com. From an SEO standpoint do we need to make this content unique for each product. Since we aren't link building to specific product pages and we don't anticipate product pages being found in a search result, are we ok leaving the duplicate content in place and spending our dollars elsewhere?
On-Page Optimization | | gallreddy0 -
E-Commerce product pages that have multiple skus with unique pages.
Hey Guys, With the recent farm/panda update from google i'm at a cross roads as to how I should optimize product pages for a project i'm working on for a client. My client sells tires and one particular tire brand can have up to 15 models and each model can have up to 30 sizes. IE: 'Michelin Pilot Sport Cup' comes in 15 different sizes. Each size will have it's unique product page and description bringing me to my question. Should I use the same description on every size? I do plan on writting unique content for each tire model however i'm not sure if I should do it for every size. After all the tire model description is the same for every size, each size doesn't carry any unique characteristics that I can describe. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | MikeDelaCruz770