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
-
Google Update? Anyone seeing a drastic change in rankings?
Hey everyone, Has anyone seen a drastic change in clients Google Rankings, we have one which has dropped from 9.5% visibility to 5.4% in one month.. It's extremely worrying as I have never seen a drop like this before since I've managed the account, in fact rankings have increased month on month since we took over the account. I've also looked at google, no penalty showing, I've started removing spammy sites who link to us and also added no follow to some of the links on the site which linked out to try and keep some link juice in the site. Anything else I can try / do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Unbranded_Lee2 -
Change domain.com to www.domain.com - influence on linkbuilding, seo, etc.
Hello, Do you know what can happen when i change domain.com to www.domain.com? Will it have an influence to my link-building portfolio (external links to domain.com), position on google search, etc. Thank you for help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Reyzer0 -
My client wants to change domain name... Redirect help!
Hello, I have a client who wants to change domain names. The site is designed using WordPress, there are many plugins that will redirect links but they have to be same domain links. When I change the domain I would like to redirect all the old links to the same pages on the new url. How do I accomplish this? The plugin redirection or Yoast will not allow a redirect from one domain to another. Thanks for any help on this matter. I have 200+ Urls to redirect.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | donsilvernail0 -
HTML5: Changing 'section' content to be 'main' for better SEO relevance?
We received an HTML5 recommendation that we should change onpage text copy contained in 'section" to be listed in 'main' instead, because this is supposedly better for SEO. We're questioning the need to ask developers spend time on this purely for a perceived SEO benefit. Sure, maybe content in 'footer' may be seen as less relevant, but calling out 'section' as having less relevance than 'main'? Yes, it's true that engines evaluate where onpage content is located, but this level of granular focus seems unnecessary. That being said, more than happy to be corrected if there is actually a benefit. On a side note, 'main' isn't supported by older versions of IE and could cause browser incompatibilities (http://caniuse.com/#feat=html5semantic). Would love to hear others' feedback about this - thanks! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mirabile0 -
Changing Structure of Links... Yay or Nay?
Hello there,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NikitaG
My site: MigrationLawyers.co.za was made with no sub structure.
It has no categories, and no child pages, all the pages are simply added to the end of the URL.
Sometimes this results in a rather lengthy URL like:
**/Immigration-Permanent-Residence-Work-Permit-South-**Africa
I was hoping to arrange the pages a bit into a logical, parented structure that looks more like:
**/Immigration/Permanent-Residence/Work-Permit-South-**Africa I would have parented pages, making up the same pretty much URL Now the Questions:
Is it worth it?
Will google read my parented URL with all the keywords, or only the page's keywords?
What should I expect to see from google?
Will my SERPs be all messed up? I will, without doubt, 301 redirect all the old URLs to the new parented ones. Any advice would be great,
Thanks,
Nikita0 -
The Affects of Removing Anchor Texts from Super Menu on Homepage
Hi, Currently we have a div that drops down our super menu which has subcategories, ie. under Shop by Color (super menu) Black Ties, Blue Ties, Brown Ties, et, al. (see Ties.com Anchor Text image attached) If we were to remove these subcategories from the div (in other words, they do not get crawled from homepage, will we loose ranking for those keywords? We are trying to reduce link count on homepage. Thoughts? UBHu8.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ties.com0 -
Effect of 301 redirect to a relative url to homepage?
One of our new clients recently encountered a site-wide ranking drop for many keywords and I'm pretty confident regarding their link profile as to being 98% legit. Background: 1. Client full site is https, and all http pages are 301 redirected to their https counterpart 2. Client has ~50 links partners (all legitimate sites + schools etc) links to client with urls such as www.example.com/portal/123.aspx that redirects to www.example.com. 3. Client homepage 301 redirects from www.example.com to www.example.com/default.aspx and then 301 redirects to the relative url "/Home.aspx". 4. Client launched some testing with Google website optimizer tool. ~1-2 months ago. Symptoms: 1. Rankings dropped for basically many/all 30-40+ keywords by ~15 positions 2. Seomoz reports close to a double of existing pages + (600+) duplicate content in the same date range. Webmasters only report 80 duplicate titles though. 3. Domain authority by seomoz reduced a bit + backlinks recorded by seomoz to the website nearly halved in the past 2 months. I'm not sure if I narrowed this towards the right direction, and it isn't clear when the relative url 301 redirect was implemented: 1. The 301 redirect to the relative page (www.example.com/default.aspx to "/home.aspx") is accounting for the loss of links recorded by seomoz. 2. The ~50 links the client currently use (www.example.com/portal.123.aspx 301 redirecting to www.example.com, also relative) as a tracking tool is being considered 301 redirect abuse. 3. Maybe something went wrong with the usage of google optimizer tool for SEO purposes? Visitor traffic to each of the tested pages looked fine. I would greatly appreciate any advice/insights on what I might be missing in terms of direction / factors. Thanks! Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sixspokemedia0 -
301 vs Changing Link href
We have changed our company and want to 301 old domain from new domain in order to transfer the benefits of backlinks (DA: 50, 115 Linking Root Domains). I have the ability to modify around 50% of the backlinks. So my question is: Instead of redirecting all the links, should I update the 50% to link to the new domain instead of relying on redirects? Would this possibly trip an algorithmic filter and devalue these links? Or should I just do a 301 and not worry about modifying the links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice0
