What should I name my Wordpress homepage?
-
I work almost exclusively in wordpress now. And I always hesitate when it comes to naming a site's homepage. I have to give it a name - right? I usually pick the business name or /home. And then that is identifies as the site's static homepage in the Wordpress settings and it works just fine.
But I've started to get warning that it is an issue because it creates redirects. For example, I just ran the Ryte service analysis on a website and it warned me about "Non-indexable pages with high relevance" and it's basically my homepage that has 29 incoming links that "passes all pagerank to https://ourdomain/home
But what am I supposed to call my homepage if not "Home"? It's not like the old days where anyone has to type it in. The root domain loads the homepage just as it should.
Can anybody advise me regarding best practices for what to name a Wordpress homepage for good SEO?
With thanks in advance for your help.
-
"The primary domain will definitely resolve to the homepage. My question is fairly Wordpress specific. When you create a new page or post you give it a title. Calling it "home" makes it easy to find on the admin side in the list of pages.
Whatever page I set as the "homepage" in the Wordpress admin settings, then the domain will resolve to that page no matter what I call it. And no one has to add the title as part of the URL or anything after the / to get there.
I could leave off the title of the page completely. It's not ideal for when I hand it off to clients. (People like things to be clearly labeled what they are.) But is that what you are suggesting I always do? "
I would call the homepage "Home" for the clients Because is ideal for breadcrumbs. In some situations especially e-commerce, it might be smart if it's a very well-known brand do use the well-known brand name as a homepage. For instance, switching "Home" with "Bestbuy"
"Home » SEO blog » WordPress » What are breadcrumbs? Why are they important for SEO?"
See: https://yoast.com/breadcrumbs-seo/
the SERPS will show
"Home » SEO blog » WordPress » What are breadcrumbs? Why are they important for SEO?"
<title><strong>This is an example page title</strong> - <strong>Example.com</strong></title>
Yoast SEO offers an easy way to add breadcrumbs to your WordPress site via PHP. It will add everything necessary not just to add them to your site, but to get them ready for Google. Just add the following piece of code to your theme where you want them to appear:
`if ( function_exists('yoast_breadcrumb') ) { yoast_breadcrumb( ' ','` `' ); } ?>`
-
If you have old you are I was like example.com/index.html or something like that. You can use this fantastic tool below the one labeled number two it is a miracle tool in my opinion for rewriting URLs U can write in anything in the custom URL and have it added to your htaccess file or nginx config file and you're up and running
-
https://yoast.com/research/permalink-helper.php (love this tool)
-
<label for="struct1">Default
?p=123
</label> -
<label for="struct2">Day and Name
/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/
</label> -
<label for="struct3">Month and Name
/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/
</label> -
<label for="struct4">Category - Name
/%category%/%postname%/
</label> -
<label for="struct5">Numeric
/archives/%post_id%
</label> -
custom you can use /%postname%/ or anything
<label for="struct1"></label><label for="struct2"></label><label for="struct3"></label><label for="struct4"></label><label for="struct6">Custom: or add what you want to change no matter what the URL</label>
RedirectMatch 301 ^//([^/]+)$ https://yoast.com/help/my-redirects-do-not-work//$1
Add the following redirect to the top of your
.htaccess
file:RedirectMatch 301 ^/([^/]+)/.html$ https://homepage.com/$1
Add the following redirect to the top of your
.htaccess
file:RedirectMatch 301 ^/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/([0-9]{2})/(?!page/)(.+)$ https://homepage.com/$4
<form method="post">```
Even for NGINX> <form method="post"> > > Add the following redirect to the NGINX config file: > > ``` > rewrite "^/index.html" https://homepage.com/?p=$ permanent; > ```</form> If you’re moving your WordPress site to an entirely new domain, you’ll need to perform a domain redirect to avoid losing your content’s SEO. These instructions assume that you’ve backed up your site and[ moved it to its new domain](https://wordpress.org/support/article/moving-wordpress/). To perform this redirect, open up your _.htaccess_ file, and add this code to the top: `#Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newsite.COM/$1 [R=301,L]` Use your new domain in place of _newsite.com_, and then save the file. You can also use any of the above-mentioned plugins to accomplish this task, as long as you activate it on your old site. Use your new domain in place of _newsite.com_, and then save the file. You can also use any of the above-mentioned plugins to accomplish this task, as long as you activate it on your old site. * https://wordpress.org/support/article/creating-a-static-front-page/ * https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-themes/how-to-create-a-custom-homepage-in-wordpress/ * **Big photos** * https://i.imgur.com/U3rPAox.png * https://i.imgur.com/IR8plPZ.png * If you like APIs * https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/functionality/custom-front-page-templates/#is_front_page * https://wpengine.com/resources/wordpress-redirects/ Hope this helps & is not to overkill, Tom [IR8plPZ.png](https://i.imgur.com/IR8plPZ.png) [U3rPAox.png](https://i.imgur.com/U3rPAox.png) [GH6TeOJ.png](https://i.imgur.com/GH6TeOJ.png) [1ae8hu6.png](https://i.imgur.com/1ae8hu6.png)
-
-
Thomas is making the right point that you do always want your domain to point to your homepage. How you "name" it depends on the platform you are using. Mine was a Wordpress question. But a traditional website used to call the homepage index.html and the browser or server knows to resolve to that for the homepage.
That's oversimplified, but the point is that it depends on the platform, but regardless of how you get there, you want your domain to go to your homepage.
-
Tom,
I appreciate your reply and attempt to help. But I'm not sure you understand what I am asking. I understand the concept of the root domain and redirect, etc well.
The primary domain, will definitely resolve to the homepage. My question is fairly Wordpress specific. When you create a new page or post you give it a title. Calling it "home" makes it easy to find on the admin side in the list of pages.
Whatever page I set as the "homepage" in the Wordpress admin settings, then the domain will resolve to that page no matter what I call it. And no one has to add the title as part of the URL or anything after the / to get there.
I could leave off the title of the page completely. It's not ideal for when I hand it off to clients. (People like things to be clearly labeled what they are.) But is that what you are suggesting I always do?
-
Is it advisable to make a different name for your homepage and still get it ranked on search Engine? I open a new blog so that is what I want to know.
Thank you.
-
Name it https://ourdomain/
I would be extremely wary of creating a subfolder for the homepage. I would name the page home in the navigation name it whatever the site name is in the title tag.
To learn more about the title tag please read here https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag
if you are thinking of re-creating your URL structure in the same manner in which you demonstrated that you strongly recommend against it.
people who understand how to navigate websites and there are very many of them will go back to the/ after .com or whatever your URL TLD is I would strongly recommend against using /home unless you are redirecting from your old site to your new site which then I would strongly recommend redirecting both .com/home & .com/ to the same homepage that is simply one "/" after the TLD or .com
I hope that helps,
Tom
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
-
Questions on switching domain name of my site
Hey guys, I purchased a domain name on May 1st and have been running my site on it since then. At the time when I added the domain name to the shopping cart, I felt that it was the best domain name a human could possibly come up with. But now, after two months, I am not so sure about it. And that means I am thinking of getting a new domain name and redirecting the old domain to the new one. Give that the domain is only two months old, there is not much to lose. However, my domain name does have some valuable backlinks, and has built some credibility in the eyes of search engines. According to MOZ Open Site Explorer, its Domain Authority is 10 and Page Authority (homepage) is 20. It's not much, but I fear that if I switch the domain name, I will reset the clock and the new domain name will have to earn the rankings from scratch That said, after searching this forum, I come across articles like this one from google and this 2012 article from MOZ that gave me some confidence. The MOZ article is from 2102, and there have been several changes since then. Is there an updated version of that article, or another legit article on the internet that you can point me to? As you can tell, I want to be more than sure that we don't take any hit during the migration process. Also want to mention that the site is on WordPress -- in case that is relevant. Thank you for your help.
Technical SEO | | deathbyseo0 -
Homepage indexed and cached as the wrong domain
I'm a bit baffled by this one and would love if someone in the community could help provide some clarity! In general, my website (PSG1.com) is indexed and cached correctly. The exception is that the homepage is actually cached as plasticsurgerygroupnewjersey.com, another domain we own. Header checkers all confirm that plasticsurgerygroupnewjersey.com redirects to PSG1.com, not the other way around No canonical is set for that domain. At one time, I used the Moz toolbar to view attributes and it registered PSG1.com as having a response code of both 200 and 301 to plasticsurgerygroupnewjersey.com. However, I cannot replicate this. Any idea why the homepage of PSG1.com is not indexed/cached correctly? I appreciate your wisdom!
Technical SEO | | BTeubner0 -
Rel Canonical tag using Wordpress SEO plugin
Hi team I hope this is the right forum for asking this question. I have a site http://hurunuivillage.com built on Wordpress 3.5.1 using a child theme on Genesis 1.9. We're using Joost's Wordpress SEO plugin and I thought it was configured correctly but the Crawl Diagnostics report has identified an issue with the Rel Canonical tag on the sites pages. I have not edited the plugin settings so am surprised the SEOMoz Crawl has picked up a problem. Example: Page URL is http://hurunuivillage.com/ Tag Value http://hurunuivillage.com/ (exactly the same) Page Authority 39 Linking Root Domains 23 Source Code Considering the popularity of the plugin I'm surprised I have not been able to find tutorials to find what I'm doing wrong or should be doing better. Thanks in advance. Best Nic
Technical SEO | | NicDale0 -
BEST Wordpress Robots.txt Sitemap Practice??
Alright, my question comes directly from this article by SEOmoz http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/robotstxt Yes, I have submitted the sitemap to google, bing's webmaster tools and and I want to add the location of our site's sitemaps and does it mean that I erase everything in the robots.txt right now and replace it with? <code>User-agent: * Disallow: Sitemap: http://www.example.com/none-standard-location/sitemap.xml</code> <code>???</code> because Wordpress comes with some default disallows like wp-admin, trackback, plugins. I have also read other questions. but was wondering if this is the correct way to add sitemap on Wordpress Robots.txt http://www.seomoz.org/q/robots-txt-question-2 http://www.seomoz.org/q/quick-robots-txt-check. http://www.seomoz.org/q/xml-sitemap-instruction-in-robots-txt-worth-doing I am using Multisite with Yoast plugin so I have more than one sitemap.xml to submit Do I erase everything in Robots.txt and replace it with how SEOmoz recommended? hmm that sounds not right. User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | joony2008
Disallow:
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-login.php
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themes
Disallow: /trackback
Disallow: /comments **ERASE EVERYTHING??? and changed it to** <code> <code>
<code>User-agent: *
Disallow: </code> Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap_index.xml</code> <code>``` Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sub/sitemap_index.xml ```</code> <code>?????????</code> ```</code>0 -
Adding .html To Wordpress Site
I am working on a team (my part is the SEO) where the developer added the .html extension to the permalinks. I don't understand why, on Wordpress, you would do this. Is there any benefit, or penalty for it as an SEO standpoint? I usually just set mine up %postname% as the permalink structure, but I am not the web design lead on this project. I asked the designer why, but he seems to be reluctant to answer any of my emails about his work, (like he is above that or something). Not wanting to make things worse, I dropped it and thought I would ask here since I saw a few posts in reference to it today in the forum. Is there an advantage or disadvantage (either way) to using the .html extension on a Wordpress site?
Technical SEO | | kbloemendaal0 -
301 redirect on wordpress.com
Hi, How/where do I input a 301 redirect for my http site within wordpress.com. I am already redirecting my wordpress url to myy new non wordpress domain Thanks Lisa
Technical SEO | | lisamarieCunn0 -
WordPress Duplicate Content Issues
Everyone knows that WordPress has some duplicate content issues with tags, archive pages, category pages etc... My question is, how do you handle these issues? Is the smart strategy to use robots meta and add no follow/ no index category pages, archive pages tag pages etc? By doing this are you missing out on the additional internal links to your important pages from you category pages and tag pages? I hope this makes sense. Regards, Bill
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0 -
Wordpress 301 redirects
I use wordpress as CMS on a few sites and I noticed that word press automattically places 301s if I change a url etc. I believe it does it by having the following in the .htaccess file: BEGIN WordPress<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-fRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-dRewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress Should I use this? I feel like it limits my control over the 301s.
Technical SEO | | mmaes0