Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Home page and category page target same keyword
-
Hi there,
Several of our websites have a common problem - our main target keyword for the homepage is also the name of a product category we have within the website. There are seemingly two solutions to this problem, both of which not ideal:
-
Do not target the keyword with the homepage. However, the homepage has the most authority and is our best shot at getting ranked for the main keyword.
-
Reword and "de-optimise" the category page, so it doesn't target the keyword. This doesn't work well from UX point of view as the category needs to describe what it is and enable visitors to navigate to it.
Anybody else gone through a similar conundrum? How did you end up going about it?
Thanks
Julian
-
-
Rob's advice is very good in regard to sending people to the more effective inner page.
I would not mess around with canonical tags, unless the content is actually duplicated. Rethinking your internal links might be helpful. One thing I have done in similar situations is to use a keyword anchored link from the category page to the home page. Moz Analytics will tell you this is keyword cannibalization, but it does often work to nudge Google toward ranking the home page. So on a page about "Red Widgets", you could link to the home page with "Red Widget Company". What is likely to happen is that you will sort of split the searches based on user intent, and searches that are more than just the base keyword. Searches that Google thinks are more informational would go to the Red Widgets page, where someone looking for a supplier or maker of red widgets might be sent to the home page. Similar links throughout the site where they are appropriate would also be good. Like, if you have a page or a blog post that mentions red widgets, link to the category. If it says something about manufacturer of red widgets, link to the home page. Just like incoming links, you don't want to overuse the same keywords, though. Mix things up a bit within the same topical theme (red widget maker, manufacturer of red widgets, red widget company...)
-
Hi Rob,
I fully agree with you about sending people directly to a deeper page. A well-designed category page full of useful info is way better than a generic homepage for the visitor. I also agree about having more keywords and expanding reach that way.
The problem is that we're after a competitive term which the CEO keeps an eye on and which we used to rank well for. Over time, however, we didn't link build and others are now way ahead. That's why I am thinking that our homepage with its 500 linking domains might get a better shot than the category with 10. Question is, how do I switch the focus from category page to home page, while keeping the useful category page live. Canonical tags are one solution...
-
Hey Nick, thanks for your answer.
This is not a hypothetical situation, but something that is live in the SERPs. I have a live category page in position 11 (varies between positions 7 and 13) and I want to try that keyword with the homepage instead.
Also we're about to relaunch a different website where I currently rank with the homepage for a keyword, but the business wants to create a category page with that keyword, thus possibly cannibalizing my homepage rank.
-
I would say there is another option Julien. Just because your 'primary' KW is the focus of the homepage, it doesn't mean it is the highest converting KW for your company/site or for that specific product. Of course, you have to dig for data a little looking at how best to approach it and how that internal page performs, what KW's drive traffic (digging deeper than not provided)
Yes, your homepage has the most domain authority value (mainly, but not always). It's again, not the best page to rank for all your terms, if the bounce and exit rates are above average and/or high. This indicates that those KW's are not converting for your homepage at the best possible rate.
In the past, I have moved the KW focus to the actual product landing page and taken the focus away from the homepage, optimizing and working on improving the UI/UX, information, product, image, video etc, on that specific page - in hopes it would outrank the main primary page and thus, convert at a higher rate. As these product pages when worked on helped the 'visitors' get directly to the page that they are looking for, without having to search for it and navigate to it from the homepage (yet, another click). Why not simplify the process sending them directly to the main page of information?
Work to identify other KW's you can use to draw focus for on the main homepage and shift that focus around.
When building out your product page for the KW, I suggest as I mentioned above - work everything about the UI/UX, design, information, photos, videos, etc etc making it an extremely valuable page (think - make it THE MOST valuable page you can think of) to help visitors, thus, more than likely converting at higher rates, decreasing bounce and exit rates to the page.
As well, the added page authority, which will strengthen the domain authority overall on the site will improve the overall experience to users.
Just a thought to help you out on success I have had with similar issues.
Cheers, Rob
-
You may be over-thinking this, or taking that "one keyword per page" advice too seriously.
You are right that you should accurately describe the category page, and using that keyword (and anything else that accurately describes the topic) is going to be part of that. Since that page is the one that is actually about the category, I would not un-optimize it. I wouldn't even worry about removing the keyword from the home page, either, since it is also relevant. You may want to link from Home to the category where that keyword is used, though I don't think that would make a huge difference.
The good news is, you just might end up with both showing in the SERPs.
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
-
Why home Page is not showing showing in search results?
The USA Glitz I search the exact title & keyword but still its not showing though there is no related websites in this term. What can i do ? What kind of strategy needs to follow ? Kindly help me out . Thanks 😢
On-Page Optimization | | henrichjrr4201 -
Value of using spaces or no spaces on product category page varient keywords
Hello, all fellow Mozzers,
On-Page Optimization | | JamesDavison
I have taken over a project and this account, so can't change the username according to MOZ.🙃 We run an eCommerce website, and to me, some of the content is conflicting as some pages have more information content than what I would put in a commerce page, but this is how the boss wants it to work, personally, I would separate the content out.
The page I'm working on:
https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/tyres/205-70-14.html
and this is an example of the rest of these types of pages, I will be tackling:
https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/tyres/125-15.html I was tasked to improve SEO ranking, when using the MOZ page grader I had a score of 24 out of 27 83% SEO score and 3-page problems. 7th position in Google for the search term 205/70 R14 As it is a generic product listing page, It was pointless to add to the URL and the Internal links I can't reduce as these are links to products, so I went to reduce the
keyword stuffing and making the page content more natural, this improved the page to 25 out of 27, 87% SEO score and 2-page problems. Improvement to 3rd position in Google, but he wants to chase 1st place to be above his competitors, which is fair enough. It turns out that in the past, they have used this type of page to try and get a high ranking for several search terms, as it is a different variation on a tyre size terms are:
205/70 R14, 205/70R14, 205/70 R 14
205/70 X 14, 205/70X14, 205/70 X14
and so on for all the different ways you can search for this tyre size. He is also convinced Google will see these as different search terms, and while I agree to an extent, this causes Keyword Stuffing on the page, which in turn was harming the rankings. Each product listed on the page already has its own title 205/70 R14, 205/70 HR14 and so on, so my question is. What is the best practice for writing content on these types of pages to gain high rankings for several Keywords, and what value does writing the same keyword with spaces and no spaces have? Any help or advice is welcome, so I have a better understanding of how to approach this for this page and the rest of the site. Cheers Mal0 -
Can you use the canonical tag and rel=next and rel=prev on category pages.
We have a conflict of information between our web developers and our SEO company. We are an on-line retail company hence we have a fair number of different categories. Our site is set up with the rel=next and rel=prev tags. Our SEO company have asked us to implement canonical links on our category pages and leave the rel=next and rel=prev tags as they are. Our web developers are saying by doing this we are asking Google to ignore all of our products on all of the pages except page 1 which would mean Google would not index a lot of our products. I have looked at a few articles but I am struggling to understand which way to go. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne0 -
No meta description on category page
Hi Moz is reporting no meta description on a wordpress category page like this one: http://www.dwliverpoolphotography.co.uk/category/uncategorized/ Can I add a meta description to a category? Best wishes. David.
On-Page Optimization | | WallerD0 -
Home page or landing page?
Hello, I want to ask a question related to that - Should we put keywords in the home page title if we wish to position another landing page better for particular keywords? I have read in one website about SEO that it's good the main keywords of your website to be positioned in homepage title also. f.e. Let's say we have website about web-design and our company is named Company Ltd. The title of the home page is "Company Ltd. - Web design, SEO, etc" We have also another inner page named "Web design | Company Ltd.". So should we leave the first page name only "Company Ltd." and the landing page's name "Web design | Company Ltd." . I don't know if they both have the same keyword in their title they won't compete with each other.
On-Page Optimization | | HrishikeshKarov0 -
Target keywords on homepage or sub page?
Is it better to target main keywords on a site's homepage, or in a sub page. I would usually assume the homepage, but if the domain for the homepage doesn't include the keyword is it better to have a sub page with an exact match URL? For example we target the keyword "abc123" Is it better to optimise the homepage: brandname.com Or create a page to target it: brandname.com/abc123/ And leave the homepage to target brand keywords, but link to the "abc123" page. Whats the best option?
On-Page Optimization | | timscullin0 -
Do alt tags count towards on page keyword density?
Hello...I have written a bunch of content for my site using a useful tool called Scribe SEO which recommends keyword density at 5% if I remember correctly. So all my my newly written content is below this level but I am left wondering if by adding alt tags with my chosen keywords I will be considered to be over the limit and cause a red flag? Can anyone clarify this for me please?
On-Page Optimization | | Wallander0 -
Impact of removing category sidebar with keywords?
Our site (a niche financial publication: insideARM.com) requires some more room in the sidebar. We're considering removing the categories (we call them topics) sidebar block, or cutting down the number of items displayed within it. My concern is that we'd be removing a direct link to landing pages for important keyword terms from our most powerful page (the index). Sure, we have the terms listed in the footer, but I am worried that the position change will lower the value of the links. Our users don't really use these links for navigational purposes, which is why it comes up as a potential removed item. Am I wrong to worry about this? Would we be crippling our category pages by doing this?
On-Page Optimization | | insideARM0