"keyword" - rank the home page or sub page domain.com/keyword?
-
One of my clients has a pretty decent website that ranks 1st place for most major keywords in their line of business.
EXCEPT one keyword that i've been struggling to get 1st position on Google (currently 2nd).
My problem is:
let's say "tennis shoes" as a keyword
the home page of course has several other shoes listed but I've seen that Google took my home page and made it 2nd position (on 1st page). Where the section domain.com/tennis-shoes is on 2nd page of Google.
My question is should i rel cannonical from the /tennis-shoes section to the home page so it focuses more on the specific keyword that i need to get the home 1st? Or should i leave the home page generic and focus more on /tennis-shoes to get that 1st position?
What do you Moz'ers Think?
-
Wouldn't the other pages get less value because the home page has a clear focus on a specific keyword?
Don't want the rest of the pages that are solid on 1st position to get affected because the home page doesn't relate as much to them.
-
I would do BOTH!
-
Hi ennovation
You say "other than building links" but it may be that is where you need to focus your efforts next. It sounds like the on-page stuff may already be done well and that your efforts so far have helped the product pages rank number 1 for their keywords. Perhaps the home page has multiple inbound links to it containing anchor text "tennis shoes" and that is why it is outperforming the product page?
As link related factors are belived to be such a large element of the algorithm it sounds like it would br prudent to spend time on this area next.
-
I'm thinking the same. The only problem is the rankings on page /tennis-shoes. The page is completely optimized so other than building links i don't know what to do. Wouldn't it be better to slightly optimize the home page so the home page is tennis shoes then the rest are related sections.
P.S. other pages ex: /golf-shoes rank 1st place so no need for targeting home page on those specific sub pages
-
I'd leave the homepage generic and focus on /tennis-shoes. You can't optimise your homepage for every keyword you want so splitting them up on their own dedicated page is your best option.
DD
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
-
I am confused/frustrated/surprised how bad my website is doing on google ranking
Hello, I am confused/frustrated/surprised how bad my website (flyhy.co) is doing on google ranking and I have no clue why even though I have been doing my homework regarding SEO. Just a bit of background, I have created a new website about 6 months ago for the paragliding community, the primary goal is to provide a platform for people to publish their ads (osclass), but also to provide some interesting reviews and tools to help paragliders chose their wing. We have been putting a lot of effort to provide a nice user experience and tio build the tools mentioned above. Our main channel to connect with the community is Facebook, and we have been quite active there. I have looked at many SEO articles and I made sure the website provides a good UX, the URLs are SEO friendly, good meta data, etc. Also have been using the google search console and analytics to monitor all of this. But here is the thing, all these does not seem to change anything in our ranking for important keywords such as "paraglider for sale", "paragliding equipment", etc. We seem to only rank (looking at Google’s keyword tool) for very specific wing model names that people have mentioned in their ads. I have ran out of ideas on how to improve our SEO !!!!!! I know the website is only 6 months old, but by now we should get some results. As an example, I will mention one our main website competitors: www.paraglidingequipment.org. OK the URL is pretty obvious and this website ranks in page #1 for "paragliding equipment" (but also for "paraglider for sale" and other paragliding related key phrases). OK there is the URL (paraglidingequipment.org), but I thought nowadays google bots are smarter than just that. The website is 1 year old (so not really much older than us, and was ranking high anyway even 6 months ago). The website looks like it was clearly made by one person and then quickly just left it running, so no content has been added (except for people putting their ads), there is almost no activity on the Facebook account. I have run some test such as "pagespeed insights" and we both rank the same. On "seositecheckup.com", we are clearly better with more 10 points. Is there anyone out there who can tell me what is going on? Have I missed a very important aspect of SEO? Is our website somehow compromising the robots crawling (although I can see about 80 pages have been already indexed in google search console)? I know content is king, but in paraglidingequipment.org the only content I see are ads, and we have ads and other interesting (ie reviews and tools) for paragliders. To conclude, I am basically completely clueless of what to do to rank at least on the first couple of pages of google for the key phrases above. I need help. Hichem. PS: in Moz bar our score is non existing (PA=1,DA=10), on paraglidingequipment.org (PA=23,DA=15). So it looks that essentially we are not apparent on the web! PSS: We have also tried to build some backlinks on few important paragliding community websites.
Competitive Research | | hichemboudali0 -
Why are they ranking?
Hi I've been looking at domains which rank well for a particular search term - plastic storage boxes to try and see why they rank. http://www.poundstretcher.co.uk/home-furniture/storage-organisation/plastic-storage ranks particularly well. From what I can see, they have about 6 backlinks, 28 DA, and 11 PA - which isn't that high compared to others ranking on the first page. I can't work out why they rank so highly, they also rank for over 100 other storage terms for this page. Am I looking in the wrong place?
Competitive Research | | BeckyKey0 -
Link juice from links that are not on the page?
Hello, Thank you in advance for your help! I was doing research for backlinking opportunities by looking at competitor backlinks using Open Site Explorer and I ran into a puzzle. When I do an Open Site Explorer search for http://whatsdavedoing.com/ I find that link equity is being passed to the site from a number of pages on the http://www.travelsupermarket.com/ blog with the anchor text "What's Dave Doing" When I go to these pages and do a source code search I cannot find this anchor text. When I do a google search with the following: site:travelsupermarket.com "What's Dave Doing" I find that there are tons of items that come back with a list of blogs in their description: "Dec 5, 2013 - ... foXnoMad · Inside The Travel Lab · itravelnet · The Mad Traveler Blog · The Mad Traveler Online · Uncornered Market · What's Dave Doing?" Where is this coming from? What is going on here? Is this a linking tactic that sites use to pass link juice to contributors without linking to them directly? Any help is much appreciated! Thanks!
Competitive Research | | overlandundersea0 -
Ever worked with Sojern.com?
Just curious if anyone has experience working with: http://sojern.com/? If so, and you don't mind giving me a quick overview of whether it was a good experience, email me at patrick.garmoe@travelex.com Thanks, Patrick
Competitive Research | | Patrick_G0 -
What are the competition's Google Places pages optimised for?
I'm doing some work on a client's Googe Places page, and wondered if there's any way to see what a completitors Places page is currently optimised or categorised for? Basically, we're trying to rank for 'Bathrooms Edinburgh' and almost all of the page 1 SERP's are (unsurprisingly) full of Places results, with #1 Organic slot right down at the bottom of the page. In short - we NEED to get our Places page kicked into shape, and pronto! So, is there any way to find out how the competition's Places pages are ranking so well? e.g. What have they categorised themselves under? Cheers in advance folks, JM
Competitive Research | | JamesMio0 -
Domain name advice please
Hi i am trying to work out what is the best when it comes to domain names. What i mean is, should you go short or should you try and fit in what you need. So as follows. say i need a domain name that i wanted to buy which i have done research and found that these two words together are good keywords. please note that this is an example the two keywords are manchester airport and the next two keywords are cheap flights should i get a domain name that say manchesterairportcheapflights or should i have a shorter domain name like manchester cheap flights or another example say i wanted a domain name that fitted the following two keywords in manchester hotels budget accomodation should i just get a domain name that says manchester hotels or should it get the following manchesterhotelsbudgetaccomodation I am looking at buying a number of domain names and i am trying to find out if shorter is better or if a longer domain name is better
Competitive Research | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Ranking keyword VCA
We want to rank higher on the keyword VCA. Our direct competitor VCAnederland ranks one place higher and we want that place. If we look at some statics from the Open site explorer, we score better. PA: VCAdirect = 53 VS competitor = 46 DA: VCAdirect = 43 VS competitor = 39 Total links = VCAdirect = 8415 VS competitor = 3051 External followed links = VCAdirect = 8178 VS competitor = 1059 Linking root domains = VCAdirect = 146 VS competitor = 105 SEOmoz competitive Domain Analysis (gives other numbers) DA: VCAdirect = 44 VS competitor = 40 DMozrank: VCAdirect = 4.30 VS competitor = 4.50 DMozTrust: VCAdirect = 4.00 VS competitor = 4.18 when I analyze the site with the SEOmoz tool. We see this figures: VCAdirect: PA: 53 / MozR: 5.89 / MozT: 5.89 / Tot links 8415 VCAnederland: PA: 46 / MozR: 6.95 / MozT: 6.16 / Tot links 3051 On the on page Report card we score both an A. Where should we focus on to win the position?
Competitive Research | | PlusPort0 -
My client has shown me a similar site, though not a competitor. He wants to know what sites they are linked from that give them such a good Google rank for certain kewords. Can SEOMoz tell me this?
When using google.com.au and searching for "travel to france", www.frenchtravel.com.au is the 3rd organic result. (the 1st two are not travel businesses, they are non profit travel guides) My client, who runs www.visituk.com.au, an Australian site that organises tours of the UK, said "so we just need to add these sort of words to the site?" I said, yes, but it doesn't end there. The real task is to have a link to your site on other sites surrounded with the words "travel" and "UK". He asked if he could see a list of the sites the french site was being referred by relevant to the search phrase. Is there an SEOmoz tool for this? Or is there another way I can generate that list? Thanks Simon
Competitive Research | | electrik0