Website URL Structure - keyword targeting on homepage vs internal pages
-
I have developed a few websites before where the homepage contains the content for the keywords I was targeting. This has been reasonably successful as I have found it easy enough to get links to the homepage.
I am considering a new site in a totally different industry that I am thinking about structuring like this:
mybrand.com (not necessarily targeting any keywords)
mybrand.com/important-keyword-1/ (definitely want to target)
mybrand.com/important-keyword-2 (equally important as 1st keyword)
There will be several (30-ish) other pages targeting keywords but they are not as significant as the two mentioned above, more so they are about publishing informative information. The two important keywords are quite different but industry related.
My questions are: should I be careful targeting keywords away from the homepage when the homepage gets the most links? Would I be better off building 2 different websites where the keyword content is captured in the homepage?
Thanks,
-
The majority of your inbound links will likely be to the homepage. If one set of keywords describes what you do but are shorter tail than the rest, those are good homepage keywords. You will naturally attract more homepage links though - so the authority should be much higher overall.
-
Thanks for responding.
Yes, the keywords are somewhat related like your example of the wedding and portrait photographer. Can I ask, why would you put the harder keyword on the home page and not on an internal page eg. http://mybrand.com/keyword-1/?
-
I think this depends on how much different the focus KWs are. For a wedding & portrait photographer, I would target the harder KW (wedding) to the homepage and "portrait" to a "services" page (along with a backup "wedding" page - that was optimised differently. Having both on one site would be fine since they're related.
However, if you sell tents and do tours of Africa, well ... I'd probably have two sites for that. If you sell tents and you're a personal trainer, two sites for sure.
Hope that helps!
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
-
Blog page took over homepage
I don't manage to rank my homepage I am trying to rank my homepage on the product name "Rubbee" in Switzerland https://bit.ly/2S004lL, I have .ch domain and it the homepage appears nowhere in the 1 st 20 pages in Switzerland... whereas a website like this one https://bit.ly/2RYCCVT with zero text appears on the 13 th page. For your info when I put the website online over 2 years ago... my homepage was ranking on the 1 st page but since I created a blog page https://bit.ly/2UnL2aX, the blog page took over and it is now impossible to rank the homepage.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Can I know which keywords lost their top rankings on google a year ago if the client didn't checked the keyword rankings in his website?
Hi, Can I know which keywords lost their top rankings on google a year ago if the client didn't checked the keyword rankings in his website? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Does the url in for your homepage impact SEO
Is there any harm to SEO having a homepage url that is not clean like www.domain.com. For example citi uses https://online.citi.com/US/login.do Does that matter in any way? Would a company like citi benefit from changing to www.citi.com as their homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kcb81781 -
Swapping page keyword?
If we have swopped the keyword (leaflet printing) from this page http://www.fastprint.co.uk/leaflet-flyer-printing/ and moved it to http://www.fastprint.co.uk/ But the inner page is still ranking for the keyword is there a way to tell Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Duplicate content across internation urls
We have a large site with 1,000+ pages of content to launch in the UK. Much of this content is already being used on a .nz url which is going to stay. Do you see this as an issue or do you thin Google will take localised factoring into consideration. We could add a link from the NZ pages to the UK. We cant noindex the pages as this is not an option. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jazavide0 -
Help me choose a new URL structure
Good morning SEOMoz. I have a huge website, with hundreds of thousands of pages. The websites theme is mobile phone downloads. I want to create a better URL structure. Currently an example url is /wallpaper/htc-wildfire-wallpapers.html My issue with this, first and foremost is it's a little spammy, for example the fact it's in a wallpaper folder, means I shouldn't really need to be explicit with the filename, as it's implied. Another issue arises with the download page. For example /wallpaper/1234/file-name-mobile-wallpaper.html Again it's spammy but also the file ID, is at folder level, rather than within the filename. Making the file deeper and loses structure. I am considering creating sub domains, based on model, to ensure a really tight silo. i.e htc.domain.com/wallpaper/wildfire/ and the download page would be htc.domain.com/wallpaper/file-name-id/ But due to restrictions with the CMS, this would involve a lot of work and so I am considering just cleaning up the url structure without sub domains. /wallpaper/htc/wildfire/ and the download page would be /wallpaper/file-name-id/ What are your thoughts? Somebody suggested having the downloads in no folder at all, but surely it makes sense for a wallpaper, to be in a wallpaper folder and an app to be in an app folder? If they were not in a folder, I'd need to be more explicit in the naming of the files. Any advice would be awesome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo-wanna-bs0 -
Is there an optimal ratio of external links to a page vs internal links originating at that page ?
I understand that multiple links fro a site dilute link juice. I also understand that external links to a specific page with relevant anchortext helps ranking. I wonder if there is an ideal ratioof tgese two items
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Apluswhs0 -
Category Pages in competition with Homepages
I am finding it a real uphill task with a few of our clients with there either product or category pages competing against other sites on main keywords. The sites either categories or product specific pages are in direct competition with other sites homepages and I am finding it increasingly more difficult to break into positions. What are other peoples experiences with this ? Do you feel the way the pages are ranked within the xml sitemap with priority could also be a factor.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinemediadirect0