Changing the relevance of the homepage
-
One of my new clients is hell bent on changing the content of their homepage. They are one of the world's largest resort companies. The site is graphics-heavy (with embedded text), and barely contains any content. I haven't started any of the on-page optimization yet, but when I do, it will be a major overhaul. Despite the poor on-page of the site, they are getting great rankings and a ton of traffic due to number and quality of their backlinks and domain authority.
My concern is this: they want to change the homepage and make it into a "vacation sweepstakes" type of page. Their logic seems to be that they will generate a lot of interest on the site and get people excited about winning an expensive dream vacation, which is all fine and dandy, however, my feeling is that this will change the relevance of the page. So, instead of pitching their ownership-based program, now, they will be promoting vacation contests.
So here's the stupid question: would this have the potential to negatively affect their search engine results or the Domain Authority?
I'm thinking of suggesting to them a less drastic approach. Perhaps something like the lightbox sweepstakes overlay on marshallsonline.com. At least, this way, we can keep the current homepage and improve on it, rather than going into another niche. Any feedback or suggestions on this is greatly appreciated!
-
Hi Letty,
That is also a great idea. I've already sent the client my recommendations. If they insist on doing it their way, then I will definitely suggest they split test the two pages, and go with the winner. Thanks!
-
hi Ollan,
I do recognise the persistent from inside the company if somebody pitched an idea, which they think is the best idea every. It can be very hard to convince people not to do it, because they only see gain and a flashing website and don't have enough inside in the long term impact. Maybe a suggestion for trying to convince the company it do an A/B test first with adwords. Use the same keywords as you do on the homepage now, and lead them to the homepage (or a special landingspage similar to the homepage, maybe even already optimized). And target the new keywords a lead them to a special landingspage with the proposed new idea of sweetstakes.
Otherwise a keyword research with the different targeted keywords gives them better insight in the difference in numbers of traffic.
-
Hi Brad,
I agree with you that it would be a poor decision to change the focus of the page. I would rather improve on an existing page that has good ranking despite poor on-page, than start over with entirely new and untested content. I wouldn't want to turn off regular visitors by providing them with an entirely different user experience. I also don't want to be blamed for the drop in traffic if they go ahead and do this!
Thanks to both of you for your feedback!
-
Hi Takeshi,
44% of the visitors to the site hit the homepage, (roughly 600,000 UV/month to that page). The marketing and creative departments seem to think the sweepstakes should be on the homepage. My opinion is that it could easily be a prominent banner on the homepage going to a landing page, or a lightbox.
-
I think your concerns here are very valid. If they have such a strong backlink profile and then you change the focus it is opening up several cans of worms. For one the bounce rate could go through the roof. The new meta descriptions could lower the over CTR which could hurt ranks. I don't see this affecting DA but this seems like a very poor decision. How about a landing page on the site and a promotion link to the sweepstakes from the homepage? Seems like an extreme change in direction from a casual observer.
-
It shouldn't affect domain authority, but could impact relevance to the keywords you're currently ranking for.
Here's a question: Do these sweepstakes have to go on the homepage? What percentage of site visitors visit the homepage? Maybe it makes more sense to have a separate landing page for the sweepstakes, with prominent graphical links from the homepage and navigation. Or use a lightbox like you said.
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
-
Changing URL's During a Site Redesign
What are the effects of changing URL's during a site redesign following all of the important processes (ie: 301 redirects, reindexing in google, submitting a new sitemap) ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jennifer-garcia0 -
Hold Off on SEO Changes After Domain Migration?
We migrated our domain on April 4th. Our domain authority has dropped from 22 to 8. Traffic is down from 90 visits a day to 10. Search console has indexed about 120 out of 600 pages. I have been told it may take several months to recovers some element of domain authority. My SEO consultant has planned on implementing the following changes immediately: 1. Change in URL structure
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
2. Build internal links (my site has very few).
3. Optimize URLs for specific keywords
4. Keyword optimization of URLs using Yoast.
5. Modify Schema Do we risk confusing Google further by making these changes until are domain authority and traffic has recovered? Is it safe to proceed with some "softer" changes such building internal links and keyword optimizing text whicl avoiding more disruptive changes such as re-writing URLs? Are we better off focusing on off site ranking factors such as link building and local SEO until domain authority recovers? How about only adding new content to the site such as blog posts and listings? To complicate matters the site is old and dated and we are working on a new UX design. So perhaps it would be better to launch the new UX at the exact same time as the onsite SEO optimization occurs. This could be less work and less disruptive. At the same time I would very much like to enjoy benefits of optimizing SEO now. Any thoughts????? Also, my domain migration has killed traffic. It is very concerning!! Is a 90% drop in traffic normal in the first ten days!? Thanks everyone!!!
Alan1 -
Major Landing page removed from Google SERP and replace homepage URL.How do I fix it?
Hi Major Landing page removed from Google SERP and replace homepage URL.How do I fix it? In an SPA website (angularJS), Why it happens?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cafegardesh0 -
Category Page Outranks Homepage
I have an online party store and when I search for broad industry terms: (party supplies & party decorations) I notice that one of my category pages outranks the homepage. The homepage's Page Authority is better and more external links pointing to the homepage. Is there s technical SEO problem? Why would a category page outrank the homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PartyStore0 -
Image URL Change Catastrophe
We have a site with over 3mm pages indexed, and an XML sitemap with over 12mm images (312k indexed at peak). Last week our traffic dropped off a cliff. The only major change we made to the site in that time period was adding a DNS record for all of our images that moved them from a SoftLayer Object Storage domain to a subdomain of our site. The old URLs still work, but we changed all the links from across our site to the new subdomain. The big mistake we made was that we didn't update our XML sitemap to the new URLs until almost a week after the switch (totally forgot that they were served from a process with a different config file). We believe this was the cause of the issue because: The pages that dropped in traffic were the ones where the images moved, while other pages stayed more or less the same. We have some sections of our property where the images are, and have always been, hosted by Amazon and their rankings didn't crater. Same with pages that do not have images in the XML sitemap (like list pages). There wasn't a change in geographic breakdown of our traffic, which we looked at because the timing was around the same time as Pigeon. There were no warnings or messages in Webmaster Tools, to indicate a manual action around something unrelated. The number of images indexed in our sitemap according Webmaster Tools dropped from 312k to 10k over the past week. The gap between the change and the drop was 5 days. It takes Google >10 to crawl our entire site, so the timing seems plausible. Of course, it could be something totally unrelated and just coincidence, but we can't come up with any other plausible theory that makes sense given the timing and pages affected. The XML sitemap was updated last Thursday, and we resubmitted it to Google, but still no real change. Anyone had a similar experience? Any way to expedite the climb back to normal traffic levels? Screen%20Shot%202014-07-29%20at%203.38.34%20PM.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wantering0 -
Is it worth changing themes to be Responsive, and risk a SERP change?
I've got a site that ranks #1 for it's term. It's Worpress on Thesis 1.85. The site is not responsive and cannot be because Thesis 1x is not (and Thesis 1x is a dead end). I really would like my site responsive, but I fear changing things might affect my #1 rank. The least impactful change I could do is move to Thesis 2.x, but I have come to really dislike the company and hate to get locked in again. There are other frameworks I would prefer to move to, but their impact on my pages' source would be much more. So, my question is, is it worth moving to a new theme (keeping the layout looking exactly the same, although the "source" would look different) just to make the site responsive? Is it that important?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
Homepage 302 Redirect For SSL
Hi All, My site, http://domain.com, currently has a 302 redirect from http://domain.com to https://domain.com. The reason we have an SSL cert is because we have a registration and log in form on the homepage (as well as log in options in the top bar of every page on the site - email/password). My question is: When taking SEO best practices into account, would we be better having a 301 redirect from http://domain.com to https://domain.com as most of our inbound links are directed to http://domain.com. Thanks for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rogs.SEO0 -
I have 4,100 302 redirects; How can I change so many to 301s
hi, i have way to many 302 redirects, how can i bulk change these to 301 i have started in cpanel but i could be old by the time i finsih
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | freedomelectronics1