Homepage SEO

[TIG99]

Hi

I have designed my site with about 10 pages which focus on my main keywords.

My question is what should I do about the homepage?

Do I focus on a keyword on just my brand name?

The homepage is a showcase of all my services and a bit about us.

Thanks

[vivekrathore]

I suggest you optimize your home page for high search volume keyword in your category / business (site's category/business as a whole).

[GPainter]

Hi Jamie,

"I have designed my site with about 10 pages which focus on my main keywords."

You may want to be careful not to over optimize your site now you've created a site with a focus on keywords but don't forget Google's focus is users, if you focus on users you're already on the same page as Google - so you can have some great content that users will love and if users love it Google will, there is nothing stopping you from slipping a few keywords in there either.

Now onto the Homepage, think of it like a Tree, the homepage is the trunk that all your users will navigate to all the different branches, so you want to make sure its easy to get to the branches and then easy to get back again. It's a good idea as you said to have a bit of an intro and make sure its got some good navigation.

I really recommend taking a look at a nice Moz guide - http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development

If you're still unsure take a look at some of your competitors see what they've done get some ideas.

Hope some of that helps and best of luck with your homepage.

[JaneCopland]

Hi Jamie,

If the product pages are strong enough off and on-page to rank for their keywords, the home page can act as a catch-all for brand traffic - you see large corporations rank like this often. For instance, say Aviva insurance ranks with its car insurance page for [car insurance], health insurance page for [health insurance], etc., its home page ranks for the brand name and maybe for some general insurance queries that do not specify what the person wants to insure.

On the other hand, there was a time when confused.com ranked first and second in the UK for some insurance terms, once with its home page and once with its specialised insurance page. This isn't ideal and Google usually puts a stop to this pretty quickly, and it's usually only very strong sites that achieve rankings like that, albeit temporarily.

For an extremely weak site, sometimes focusing on the home page is better, but Google would prefer to rank specialised pages for specialised queries as they serve the needs of the searcher better.