Optimization of home page
-
Hi there
I have an issue which, despite searching hard, I simply cannot find the right solution for. We have an index page that used to rank pretty well for a main industry keyword. However following a revamp of the site last year the kw slipped and no longer brings in decent traffic levels.
The problem seems to be that the old static site had a sprinkling of variable anchor text links that brought value to the home page. Instead of the main anchor being "home" we would revert to "main keyword" and variations across the site sometimes in t he content but mainly on the nav bars. However the new CMS design structure restricts us considerably with anchor distribution and so instead we opted for the site logo on the masthead to have an ALT tag for "main keyword" but so as not to game google too much we added .."home" to the tag.
Probably pointless but we figured it could do no harm. This ALT text is site wide Problem now is that we have lost the spread of internal nav bar anchors and variety etc. We have slipped in the serps for "main keyword" and I cant help thinking we are not maximising the anchors as we should.
So what Im coming to is this....
How can we tell if Google is picking up the ALT tage anchor as the main anchor to rank the site at the expense of all internal text anchors. Despite retaining lots of embedded anchors - according to the Moz metrics these are not being picked up because OSE suggests the ALT tag anchor is taking precedence. The serps probably support this view as well.
Should we:
a) Vary the masthead ALT if there is no way of avoiding this being the most important link / anchor on the page
b) Remove the ALT anchor and instead opt for content links high on the page (we do have nav bar links saying "Home" site wide as well which may overrid the embedded links?)
c) Leave the ALT alone and still push for content anchors as described in b) What is the best way to handle this..?
Best wishes and thanks
Morch
-
It's the way the system is configured right now in that the original poster didn't mark any good answers. We're working on improving what's considered a featured question in the next couple of months.
-
Why is this question still featured even after one year and after so many apt answers?
-
Have you checked on the competition for the keyword, just maybe they got stronger?.
-
Hi Morch, I'm wondering what you decided to do, and if you've seen any more changes in your rankings. Do you have any advice to pass along to someone else who may be in the same situation, or any other questions to ask?
-
Hi there
We didnt see a significant drop just a modest one but when you slip from posn 2 to posn 7 you feel the difference.
Main worry is that we have removed some varied text anchors and supplanted these with the masthead main keyword anchor in the ALT tag of the logo.
My feeling is that ALT tag anchors wont carry the weight of contextual high up the page content anchors which is what Nemek seems to suggest.
Thanks for your feedback chaps
Morch
-
If your rankings slipped significantly after a redesign and never came back, I would be a whole heck of a lot more concerned at other issues instead of your internal link anchors. To answer your question though, just make the alt tag of that masthead match your keyword. Keywords in alt tags is not spammy to Google; keyword stuffed alt tags are. Just put the main keyword and not a bunch of other crap.
Other issues to consider might be number of indexed pages, duplicate content potential, presence and submission of a sitemap, keywords across the whole site, etc. Chances are very strong that your rankings slipped because of a lot bigger issues than just internal anchors.
-
Don't rely on the ALT tag too much. Normal text and standard anchor text in links have more influence than ALT text does. If you've deleted the keywords and substituted them with images with ALT text, it's never going to be as good.
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
-
Should a keyword be optimized on One page only?
I have a niche website that focusses on selling pizza delivery bags, the search keywords that are used by users are about 7 and their are another 15 long tail keywords. The question is do i optimize every keyword per one page only? i have a blog on the website www.prodelpizzabags.com/blog/ if i write a blog post that would "compete" internally with another keyword, what should i do, what are the best practices I would be thankful for any insights regarding keyword/page optimization
On-Page Optimization | | akramsabra0 -
Homepage On-page Optimization
How do you all handle homepage optimization, if you (or a client) offers a variety of services? Our homepage has the strongest link profile of any of our pages, but it lists all the areas of law we cover. Therefore, it has too many keywords and none really rank well. Should we just pick our most profitable areas and optimize for that? www.kempruge.com in case anyone would benefit from looking at the actual page. Thanks, Ruben
On-Page Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Deleted pages still registering as 404 pages.
I have a an all html site that I can only work on through the ftp. The previous marketing company ran a script that built thousands of location landing pages, but all they did was change the tags and headers and the keywords in the pages, other than that they are all duplicate pages. I removed them, but Google is reading them as 404 pages. How do I tell Google those pages don't exist? or do I just need to let the bots crawl it a few times and it will see that eventually?
On-Page Optimization | | SwanJob0 -
10 Mobile Pages. 5 Desktop Pages. Canonnical to where?
I have a mobile site with more pages than the desktop site. Normally I would just point the page equivalents to the desktop site using the rel canonnical tag. What about the 5 pages? Do I just leave them be? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Imajery0 -
Wordpress SEO. How to add static content above home page posts.
I think I many have some duplicate content issues as have been adding unque content above posts in categories using the all category SEO. How can I add static content to the posts on the home page though? Any help appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Optimizing web page
Hi I have implemented most of the suggestions, which are offered threw SEOMOZ on our web site www.zaposlitev.net. But rankings are not improving. Could anyone help please? Thanks Tomaz
On-Page Optimization | | tomaz770 -
Duplicate Page Content for Product Pages
Hello, We have one website which URL is http://www.bannerbuzz.com & we have many product pages which having duplicate page content issue in SEOMOZ which are below. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-1.html
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-10.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-11.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-12.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-13.html We haven't any content on these pages, still getting duplicate page content errors for all pages in SEOMOZ. Please help me how can i fix this issue. Thanks,0 -
Opinions please on Duplicate page titles & too many on-page links warnings.-
Hello folks, I'm a total SEO newbe but totally enjoying
On-Page Optimization | | CSC
using SEOmoz to learn more. We have ecommerce sites and the 1st crawl flags – as appears typical too many on-page links. We display up to 20 products (each with three links!)
and I’m trying to push to have fewer but meeting resistance from colleagues.
We have links duplicated all over the site believing it eases navigation. My question is just how critical is the number of products displayed
and the resulting volume of links to SEO results? Also we currently have collections of products displayed
across several pages which of course have the same page title and this is flagged
as a duplication error. I wonder if product auto-scrolling help as this means only a certain number of products are displayed at one time on one page thus reducing links and the need for duplicate page titles? My superiors are resisting change (perhaps nervous of spoiling
what already works) and I need to know where to direct my persuasive powers! Many thanks in anticipation, Spence0