Does the root domain hold more power then an inner page?
-
Question,
Lets say a new domain is launched, the root domain and an inner page target the same term.
Google comes along for the first time and indexes the website.
Does it see the target term on the homepage as more important then the inner page because you are putting it on the root?
I get the feeling terms connected directly with the root domain have a better chance of ranking then the term being on a inner page.
Any thoughts on this?
-
yes, this is what I choose to believe because as you know in the dynamic world of SEO, there is no such thing as ultimate answer.
-
So in your example, you believe from the homepage would have a slight benefit over an inner page when it comes to ranking?
-
Ok there has been some kind of confusion regarding my earlier statement. This was what I meant to say – Say a site -
http://www.example.com – main service is website design and the focus is on “Web Design”
http://www.example.com/webdesign.php - service page_Now, let us imagine for a second, we are not building any links. In that case, what I believe and I have observed that home is going to get a bit preference in the SERP. _
-
As Google starts to factor in user behavior, like CTR, this kind of thing may be even more important. I think it's a very small piece of the ranking puzzle right now, but I'd expect it to grow in the coming years. Google wants to rank the page that best answers the question, ultimately.
-
This is a very complex issue, but I think Jonathan's summed it up pretty well. Generally, home pages collect a lot of the "mass" of inbound links, and so they can overpower other pages. On the other hand, deep pages are easier to target to specific keywords and sometimes have targeted anchor text. I've seen cases where someone wanted the home-page to rank, but a deep page was ranking, and I've seen the opposite.
Rand wrote about that general problem here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions
While it's not exactly what you're asking, it covers the general logic of why one page might win over another.
-
I would say no, importance is related more to the content then the fact of a page being a home page or no.
I would even think that for stuff like keyword in url, an internal page could be much better to optimize then the homepage. The homepage should give an overall picture to describe your enterprise. main keyword here would be your branding keywords to make sure you're first for your brand name.
I would then use internal pages for better optimization of the text, and SEO for the various terms. This way your page would be about the term rather then just mentioning the term - should be more relevant to the user / reader.
-
Think of it this way - if you're a user, and you want to find out info about this page, what is the best page for you to land on? If it's a specific keyword relevant to a deep page full of content, then you'd want Google to target your inner page. If it's a general term, maybe your best page is the home page.
Take one example - electronic cigarettes.
If someone searches electronic cigarettes, then that's the head term, and pretty generic - there's lots of relevant subtopics - so you'd think the main page should be your home page. But if someone searches electronic cigarettes quit smoking, an inner page relevant to the uses and scientific proof / lack thereof about using ecigs to quit smoking would be more relevant.
Bottom line - Keep the user in mind when doing keyword targeting, and think what the best page for you to display the keyword would be.
-
Cheers,
But what I mean is if you forget about links for a moment, lets just say the website has no links coming in.
Does Google think your target term is more important if it's in the homepage title tag rather then an inner page title tag?
You could think if a website has this term on it's root domain it must be one of, if not the most important term this website wants to rank for.
-
_Definitely home page carries the most SEO weight. And what I believe is that chances are that home page of a website will has the maximum chances of earning links than internal pages unless you are offering some cool stuffs in the Internal pages. If you ask my opinion, I would be targeting the most competitive term in the Home page rather than an internal page. _
-
I think what they're talking about is possibly duplicate content. Meaning that you might have a title tag something similar to that where you stating that you have named let's say for example Domain example.com and your title tag is "tag1". Then you have an additional webpage that is not your homepage stating that he .example.com/tag1 The title tag of "tag1" webpage.com
-
Yes and no;
The root domain usually tends to get far more links then your inner pages, as any links about your website / brand usually come in here. Should you target keywords on the root; it would benefit from having the increased in-links.
The result would then depend on the level of on-page optimization that you are able to do on the home-page or internal page. Usually on internal pages you can control far more the content and thus make better on-page optimizations, should the levels of optimization be more or less the same I would safely assume that your home page (root) would take prominence.
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
-
Puzzled by high ranking page (#2 in SERPs) with zero/low page or domain authority
So, I get the smoothie that is page authority and domain authority and the link metrics that Moz uses to predict how well a page will rank for a certain keyword. I can look at a specific search term where we are on say, page 2 or 3, with a page authority of 1 and domain authority of 26, I get why competitors rank above us. But then I look at a keyword that is much more competitive, where we rank #2, which is awesome, where the landing page is also showing a page authority of 1, and domain authority of 26. How can we rank higher than competitors with a page authority of 56 and domain authority of 65? Their onpage optimization for the keyword is no worse, and sometimes better that ours but we maintain this ranking. By the way the competition also have hundreds if not thousands more linking root domains than our page. Any ideas why one keyword is a rockstar and one is a dud, with the same poor PA and DA?
Link Building | | seo-lab1 -
'Too many links' on our pages.
This figure includes links that sit within our navigational menus. Is there a way to block this somehow so that Google and Moz do not read them as 'internal links'? Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | Ashley-Jacada0 -
Diverse SEO On & Off page questions!
Hey everybody. I have been reading several resources on SEO, and wanted to know your opinion on these topics. I know they are diverse and should be on a different set of questions, but i wanted to give it a try. I run a Heavily Specialized Steel B2B eCommerce Site. So my question would be what is the importance of the following topics, taking into mind the nature of my site. The importance on how often the page is updated ? Recommendations on updating relatively static pages ? How important is to meet HTML and W3C Standards, also its validation. The NoFollow and Follow ratio of incoming links. Your opinion onthe inclusion of outbound links to other relevant pages. Is there a best practice? Any comment is welcome, and would be deeply appreciated. Regards,
Link Building | | JesusD1 -
Friendly and pages regular expression
Hi, I am trying to fix this with a reg expression but I dont know how. Here is the example: I would like to have my link like this: mysite.com/noticias/123/here-comes-the-title-page-2 I have a mod_rewrite rule with this: RewriteRule ^/noticias/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)-(pagina)-([0-9]+)$ /myphp.php?&id=$1&ipag=$4 [L,NC] It doesnt work. I think that the problem resides here ([a-zA-Z0-9-]+) because the title is split with "-" and the rule doenst know when the title finish. Now, if I have a rule like this it works: mysite.com/noticias/123/here-comes-the-title_page-2 RewriteRule ^/noticias/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)_(pagina)-([0-9]+)$ /myphp.php?&id=$1&ipag=$4 [L,NC] How can I fix this to have a "-pagina" instead of "_pagina" Thanks
Link Building | | informatica8100 -
How to identify page authority and authority link to it?
Please help me to identify if joining ASTA - American Society of
Link Building | | NadiaFL
Travel Agents will be beneficial to me. One of the benefits ASTA offers link from their site with logo. http://www.asta.org/ How I can identify if this link is authorative? Thank you!0 -
Ranking strategy -which pages to rank?
Hi, I hope you can help. I am looking to rank for 10 keywords. My homepage has some authority. On what pages should I focus my optimisation on? Should I create a new page for each keyword and build links to these pages or try and optimise my home page for a number of keywords? If so how many keywords should you optimise for from your home page to get the most clout? Im a little confused about which strategy would be the most effective. Many thanks.
Link Building | | rpoon0 -
Links from internal pages from other website.
A website link to our site from internal pages of that site where page rank is 0 but page rank of home page of that website is 5 ,it will helpful or I should get links from a page where page rank is available there?
Link Building | | SEOteam20110 -
PPC Landing pages and SEO landing pages query
We do a fair amount of work on PPC and because of this a lot of our PPC landing pages also do quite well in SEO. We are thinking that the landing pages do well because they get a lot of traffic from PPC and therefore, maybe google can index and take note of these pages quicker? The pages that usually shoot right up the rankings are new pages used for long tailed keywords. So I have a few questions: Does the traffic from PPC actually have any effect on SEO rankings? If we were to create a page that was to act solely as an SEO landing page, would google take note if there was no traffic? Would simply linking from our main site to the landing page be enough to give it a bit of authority, in which we can build upon? Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | esendex0