Ranking a homepage for keywords
-
We recently found a handful of keywords we would like our homepage to rank for (for example - customer experience). On our homepage we have articles (4-5 posted daily) that feature the keywords we are targeting (one being customer experience). How do the keywords we are using in our daily articles that are posted to the homepage affect the overall keyword ranking for the homepage?
In other words do the keywords used in the articles (title, first 2-3 paragraphs, meta description, etc.) all roll up/build up to the homepage's keywords or how does that work?
-
Hi Carly,
if you want to know more or need further help: Bryan Dean's On-Page SEO Anatomy infographic serves as a good start.
You may also provide a more concrete example by a private message via my profile page. I can help you.
-
Wow, this is great, thank you! Do you have any advice for those looking to create or determine a "hub" page?
-
Hi, Joost De Valk wrote a great article on this subject in 2011:
“You see, sites don’t rank: pages rank. If you want to rank for a keyword, you’ll need to determine which page is going to be the page ranking for that keyword....Adding that keyword to the title of every page is not going to help. Nor is writing 200 articles about it without one central article to link all those articles to. You need one single page that is the center of the content about that topic. One “hub” page, if you will.”
Now that you understand that you should probably create a page in an url http://www.domain.com/keyword rather than trying to rank http://www.domain.com — here’s the answer as best as I can give easily since Google is secretive.
3 Basic Factors:
- relevancy signals
- internal and outbound linking
- content freshness
1. Relevancy Signals
Bryan Dean's article gives, among other ranking signals, a good overview of relevancy for a page (not a site), many of which you mentioned:
- Keyword density and latent semantic indexing
- Heading and meta tags. See: http://cbutterworth.com/do-h1-tags-still-help-seo/ and much more..
- Content length. See: http://blog.serpiq.com/how-important-is-content-length-why-data-driven-seo-trumps-guru-opinions/
It is reasonable to presume that when Google goes through your site (perhaps via an sitemap) it does make some minor conclusions about the general themes of your site and that may affect your homepage’s rank.
2. Internal and Outbound Linking
Now, this is the easiest way to affect the rank of your homepage with the help of the posts you are doing. Make sure to link to the latest news, categories and tag cloud on your homepage.
You may show posts from a specific category, where the category is the keyword for which you want to rank. Thus Google sees that your homepage displays keywords and links about that topic prominently.
Don’t go overboard obviously. 3 latest news items in the category defined by the keyword, a link to the keyword as category and as tag or two is plenty enough for the homepage.
3. Content Freshness
Cyrus Shepard’s 2011 post on the Moz Blog serves as a good introduction to how content freshness might impact your site:
“Websites that add new pages at a higher rate may earn a higher freshness score than sites that add content less frequently.Some SEOs insist you should add 20-30% new pages to your site every year. This provides the opportunity to create fresh, relevant content, although you shouldn’t neglect your old content if it needs attention.”
Google also measures how your users react to your content:
“As content becomes outdated, folks spend less time on your site. They press the back button to Google's results and choose another url. Google picks up on these user behavior metrics and scores your content accordingly.”
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
-
Two major pages ranking for the same keyword phrase
Hola all, So I'm having an issue where I have two important pages (homepage and page that lists products) that seemingly take turns ranking for an important keyword phrase. One day the homepage is in the top 20, one day the other, one day neither. And it's gone on like this for a couple of months. Both are optimized for keyword phrases that contain a shorter keyword phrase. So for example, let's say the homepage is optimized for: "Get paid to take polls" and the other page is optimized for "Earn cash for paid polls and more." Both contain: "paid polls." Is there cannibalization happening here? Should I completely remove "paid polls" from one keyword phrase? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Roman
Keyword Research | | Dynata_panel_marketing0 -
Keywords ranking however the URL shown is not related to the ranked keyword?
Hi, Some of our ranked keywords and URLs are not related. e.g. the served URL is not optimised for the specific keyword, any ideas? Thank you Daniela
Keyword Research | | EurekaSolutions0 -
Keywords with no search volume
Hi there! What are your thoughts on optimizing pages for keywords that have no search volume (using the Keyword Planner)? I'm not sure it should be done, since optimizing for keywords that no one searches for is kind of useless, right? Or should I do it hoping that sometime in the future the keyword will have a surge on searches? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | sararufo0 -
Ranks moving up & Down for a certain keyword search
Hi, We had lost rankings for certain keywords completely from google's index about 5 months ago. Recently the rank for the keyword reappeared on google. But it keeps moving up and down. One day on 26th position, next day it is on 45th position, then it comes back to 30th position. This has been going on for over a week now. What is the cause of this ? can someone shed some light on it ? Thank you
Keyword Research | | orion680 -
Branded vs Generic keywords - is Google treating their rank equaly!?
Several times I have noticed that website receiving sort of a rankings drop penalty for certain wrongly built on-page strategies that involves keyword stuffing, wrong keyword density(too much) etc. The question is - how you guys think - is branded keywords receiving the same treatment from Google then generic ones? And here is why - for one popular brand I see that they ranking for their brand keyword very high(1th) but keyword density is awful - more then 10%. So, my guess is - if this keyword density you would apply for generic keyword you will end up nowhere to be found for it! Is that could be truth? Any experiments info about that? thanks and regards, Jungles
Keyword Research | | Jungles0 -
To Meta Keyword or Not To Meta Keyword, That Is The Question
I can't seem to get a reliable answer on this one. It seems to be split down the middle as far as who agrees and who doesn't, of course some of that content is outdated. So, for today, should I be using the meta keywords tag or not? Thanks, Steven
Keyword Research | | sfmatthews0 -
Homepage Title
What would be the best Title of your Homepage if your top 3 keywords would be: taxi service Seattle (5400 exact searches) Seatle taxi (4400 exact searches) Seattle taxi service (1900 exact searches) Would you go for all of them or just the one with more searches? I guess you can target them all on one page being almost the same but what is the best strategy to apply in this case to get the most out of it? Do you take into account the broad numbers of searches which are different from the exact numbers? Tools I used:Google sktool Thanks for reading!
Keyword Research | | echo10 -
So you have a keyword, and you want to see what page a competitor ranks
Say you are looking at a bunch of keywords and you think a competitor ranks for one of them. Is there any simple tool you can use to 1. put in keyword 2. put in domain of site RESULT - it tells you exactly where the site ranks. Like **The site UpperYupper.com shows up on Page 3 at position 35 for the keyword "yupper undies" **
Keyword Research | | denimblog0