The importance of the home page and subdirectories
-
I am getting myself quite confused.
My home page and target for one of my main sets of keywords is actually located at: www.domain.net.au/keywords/default.aspx
BUT I have loads of external links resolving to: www.domain.net.au/ I had assumed that the best practice for getting the best ranking for the keyword would be to Canoniclise the page to:www.domain.net.au/keywords/
Is that a good assumption ? Or will it only work if I can change all the inbound, external links as well ?
Thanks
-Mark
-
It's tricky for home pages. Google really tends to prefer the root URL, and it's best if you can target that. Unfortunately, .Net has a bad way of forcing you to use a deeper page.
If you can't resolve to the root, then you need to be consistent with your internal links before you set the canonical. If you're resolving and linking internally to:
/keywords/default.aspx
...then canonical to that page. It's not quite as good as the root, but by setting the canonical to "/keywords" you could actually be creating a third URL that isn't represented in either your inbound or internal links.
In other words, the first step to a good canonical implementation is to actual use ONE URL, no matter what it is. The canonical tag itself is a bit of a band-aid. It's effective, but fixing the on-page structure is the first, best step.
-
Hey Mark,
Read this:
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/duplicate-content
The bit that will interest you is "The rel=canonical passes the same amount of link juice (ranking power) as a 301 redirect, and often takes up much less development time to implement." I think that is the answer you are looking for. However, if it is possible I would suggest the 301...
Cheers
-
I don't know for sure, I'm no expert. But I would keep it real simple and make sure you have your best keyword or phrase in title tag assuming you haven't already.
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
-
Too many on page links
Hello, I have a page that isn't ranking very well. http://nicontrols.com/uk/drives-motors/variable-speed-drives According to the MOZ research tools I have too many on page links. I believe most of these are a result of the advanced filtration options on the left hand side of the page. I don't want to remove the filters as they are extremely useful for customers but I am also worried about the number of links Anyone get any ideas about the number of links? Should I care?
On-Page Optimization | | DavidLenehan0 -
What kind of pages are they?
Hi all, after making an analysis of my website the tool has found two pages that I don't know what refers to: /?page id=2058 (only one page of this kind) /?attachment id= (only one page of this kind) does anyone know what kind of pages they could be? Do the have relevancy regading SEO? The plattform is Wordpress. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Why isn't our site being shown on the first page of Google for a query using the exact domain, when its pages are indeed indexed by Google
When I type our domain.com as a query into Google, I only see one of our pages on the homepage, and it's in 4th position. It seems though, that all pages of the site are indexed by google when I type in the query "site:domain.com". There was an issue at the site launch, where the robots.txt file was left active for around two weeks. Would this have been responsible for the fact that another domain ranks #1 when we type in our own domain? It has been around a couple of months now since the site was launched. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | featherseo0 -
Home page mostly graphic image
I have a new customer that is redesigning her website. The graphic designer has designed a lovely homepage that is mostly an image with some navigation and footer area for text information. My concern is that there isn't any real call to action or anything on the homepage design other than an interesting and fun graphic. It seems like years ago this was a common practice and then later it was looked down on as not good for the user experience or SEO. What is the latest thinking on this type of design? Should the homepage (www.mysite.com) be allowed to be mostly images? Or should we focus on the optimizing the internal pages and let the homepage be more creative?
On-Page Optimization | | ChristiMc0 -
On Page SEO Tool
Hello - I'm looking for one tool that does the following and was wondering if anyone knew of such a tool? In a perfect world I would like to enter in one domain name and have a report generated that shows All Internal links, link titles, and anchor text All internal broken links / redirects All images, image size and image alt, if the image alt is missing. I'd love to be about to export these reports to excel and quickly run my on page optimization. The goal is to produce a checklist for a developer to execute quickly. Thanks for your help Gabe
On-Page Optimization | | Gabe0 -
Home Page Content - In a Div?
Is putting content in a div so it doesn't muck up the look of the home page create a problem in doing well organically? Example - http://www.callawaygardens.com. We have lots of clients that want no text on the home page and we are trying to figure out how to do this while still ranking well organically. What are your thoughts? Can we get in trouble? Are there negative impacts with SEO doing it like this? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | RezStream80 -
Page titles and descriptions
A website has several wigets to show Each wiget with its own page The wigets mostly just vary in size How would you suggest titles be done? Example: Wiget 1ft Wiget 2ft Wiget 3 ft an so on........ Would this trigger a duplicate content issue given “Wiget” leads in the page title?
On-Page Optimization | | APICDA0 -
Getting page cached
I am reworking some content that is deep in my site. What is the best way for google to find it? Some of the pages were cached about 3 weeks ago, but I don't want to wait too long to get them to see the new content (and links).
On-Page Optimization | | azguy0