Ranking Inner Pages or the Main Page?

[Sizmic]

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

[ResslerMotors]

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).

[SimonCullum]

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.

[Sizmic]

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

[Sizmic]

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).

[mfleischner123]

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

[philipbuuck]

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.

[SimonCullum]

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