Getting individual website pages to rank for their targeted terms instead of just the home page

[Vahe.Arabian]

Hi Everyone,

There is a pattern which I have noticed when trying to get individual pages to rank for the allocated targeted terms when I execute an SEO campaign and would been keen on anyones thoughts on how they have effectively addressed this.

Let me try and explain this by going through an example:

Let's say I am a business coach and already have a website where it includes several of my different coaching services. Now for this SEO campaign, I'm looking to improve exposure for the clients "business coaching" services. I have a quick look at analytics and rankings and notice that the website already ranks fairly well for that term but from the home page and not the service page.

I go through the usual process of optimising the site (on-page - content, meta data, internal linking) as well as a linkbuilding campaign throughout the next couple of month's, however this results in either just the home page improving or the business page does improve, but the homepage's existing ranking has suffered, therefore not benefiting the site overall.

My question: If a term already ranks or receives a decent amount of traffic from the home page and not from the page that its supposed to, why do you think its the case and what would you be your approach to try shift the traffic to the individual page, without impacting the site too much?. Note: To add the home page keyword target term would have been updated?

Thanks,

Vahe

[Alex-Harford]

Do you still link to the homepage using anchor text containing the keywords you're talking about? Is the service page linked on every page (as I guess the homepage would be)? Have you analysed the backlink profile for both pages and broken it down by site and anchor text?

The homepage is the most visited page on most of the sites I work on, so I wouldn't see this as a problem, only if you have a keyword cannibilisation issue.

[Vahe.Arabian]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for the response. I should have clarified to mentioned that the home page keyword target for the home page would be updated. The issue is that the home page get's the bulk of the traffic and keywords, which makes me think that it's an internal linking issue. Ur thoughts?

[Alex-Harford]

In the majority of cases, each individual page on a website should be targeting unique keywords. If I was you (if it's not too late) and you're getting traffic and conversions from it, I'd keep the homepage optimised for "business coaching" and target the other pages with another term (for your example page, maybe something closely related to "business coaching"). Read up on keyword cannibilisation.

The search engines will rank whatever page they think is most appropriate for a particular term. So if you have been committing keyword cannibilisation that could explain why. The homepage probably has a higher Page Authority than the subpage so this will naturally give it a boost over other pages targeted to the same phrase.

If you don't want the homepage to rank for that term, replace the term on the homepage with something else and hope for the best that the other page will permanently replace it. Also keep the Penguin update in mind with regards to any link building and over optimised onpage tactics.

[SanketPatel]

Hi Vahe

I hope Below 2 Links will help you :

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/internal-linking-strategies-for-2012-and-beyond

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/7-simple-deep-linking-tactics-you-ought-to-use/43236/