Does homepage SEO exist at all?
-
hi
Just read a Yoast article explaining that the homepage should never be optimized for a specific keyword and should only be optimized for its business or brand name.
i have a large site that I'd like to rank (or increase traffic for as I know people get irritated with that term now) for 'Campervan hire'. It has plenty of sub pages going after 'Campervan hire 'location'' for example.
it makes sense to me for the homepage keyword - my core keyword - to be 'Campervan hire' and for the homepage to be optimised for this. However, the article I've just read (https://yoast.com/homepage-seo/) suggests a separate page for this keyword.
What are your thoughts pls??
thanks
-
Thanks, this makes sense!
-
Hey James,
I read through the post and it's interesting because Yoast isn't necessarily saying homepage SEO doesn't exist (even though that's the name of the post... clickbait much?), he's saying you shouldn't be targeting it with one keyword. So if you go the route of targeting a general theme of the site + brand, then you're going to be much better off than simply trying to rank for the one keyword you want to rank for. Going back to my example of an attorney and using the general term of Criminal Defense, then using internal pages to rank for the most specific (and potentially more likely to convert) phrases is the better way to go.
All pages on the site should speak to the theme, because it will help users and Google understand what the site is about. For general, and especially local, terms I see a lot of homepages ranking well. Not optimizing the homepage could cause you to miss a large amount of users just starting their search. They may not know exactly what they need yet, but there is a need. The queries will start broad and get more specific as they hone in on what they really need. Make sure you catch the users on the broad query because they will be more likely to remember your brand later down the road.
-
Hi,
i do see what you mean and i think I can see the sense in what Yoast are saying. if I were typing a general term like 'Campervan hire' into search though, I'd not be looking for an informational page on this but to actually rent a camper. Coming across a homepage for rentals nationwide would seem a 'useful' result. My worry is that I'll miss an opportunity to rank well for a competitive keyword With my view.
Our high content/text pages are in the form of Campervan travel guides and so focus on visitors rather than engines. A page on Campervan hire for the sake of it may be a bit spammy.
Thanks again- James
-
Hi, thanks for this. I agree with you based on what I've read elsewhere. I have shared the link a few times but I guess it's not showing up.
Here it is again: https://yoast.com/homepage-seo/
if you google Yoast . Com / homepage - seo
thanks
-
Hi James,
As with most things in SEO, the answer is 'it depends'. If the only service you offer is 'campervan hire', I believe the homepage for that would work. Then, as you've already mentioned you do, have pages built out for more specifics terms like locations.
I think there are use-cases for using the homepage for some high-level, top of the funnel keywords that broadly describe a business. But for the most part, I do agree with the Yoast article, as it can be difficult to put content on the homepage of a site while maintaining the aesthetics of a homepage.
-
Hi Don
thanks for replying. Article: https://yoast.com/homepage-seo/
lm thinking it's wrong too. We rank #1 for a local camper rental website- the homepage optimized for the core/head keywords and it's always the page at the top.
James
-
I think the homepage should be optimized for the vertical or the wide-scope most competitive keyword. Your homepage will be the strongest and most authoritative page on the site, so leaving it optimized for just the brand (which you should rank well for anyway) is kind of a wasted opportunity. For example a DUI/DWI lawyer could optimize the home page for Criminal Defense Attorney, but then have sub pages for DUI and DWI to speak to the user with specifics about each case or the different types of situations. Start broader with the homepage and narrow down with internal pages.
Not optimizing the homepage would be a wasted opportunity in my opinion. Which Yoast article were you reading? Care to share a link?
-
Hi James,
An interesting question, my initial thoughts is that the Yoast article is wrong, or at the very least kind of wrong. In the sense that no one strategy is going to work for every site.
Do you have a link?
Interested to hear other opinions as well.
Don
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
-
What is the safest way to redirect for best SEO benefits?
What is the safest way to redirect for best SEO benefits? Example: loodgieter-aanhuis.nl -> loodgieters-ambacht.nl Does someone have any technical information on how to (root) redirect for best SEO practices?
On-Page Optimization | | hans-keeren0 -
Create 100% new content in existing page/URL?
We have about 30 pages of content that we are hiding from the website as these articles had some issues. If these pages ranked well, would you recommend that the new content is written within these pages? Meaning, we would replace the content that's in those pages with the same topic and keywords. Or do you think it's best to start a new page instead?
On-Page Optimization | | kvillalobos0 -
Simple on-site SEO - bet practice for keywords in content
Hello, The Moz on-page grader will give a grade of A if the keyword appears exactly in the content at least one time. If there are 500 words and a lot of it is about the main keyword, what have you found to be important to look for beyond the on-page grader - beyond the one exact instance of the keyword? I'm specifically talking just about keywords in the content. My guess is that it needs to occur 3 or 4 times in different forms and at least once exactly, but the on-page grader doesn't require it. What have you found?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
301 Redirect and SEO Rankings
I recently restructured my webpage URL's (about 300 ~ 75% of my total website) to make the URL paths more SEO friendly. Within a few hours of restructuring the pages, I did a 301 redirect to my old URL's and pointed them to the new pages. I have seen ~ 50% drop in organic traffic. I started the restructuring exercise 14 days ago and finished it a few hours back. I have 3 questions: How long will it take for me to recover my old traffic. Will I recover most of it or some of it? Due to a glitch in the specified path, some old URL's were wrongly redirected (this happened with 9 pages to be exact). I will explain exactly what happened: www.redirct.com/superseonow1 ---- redirected to ---- www.redirectnow.com/seonow1 **/superseonow was 301 redirected to /seonow. After 3 days I realize that /superseonow1 was actually /supernow1. The same thing happened to 9 pages - /superseonow2, /superseonow3 ..... ** I have removed all the wrong redirects. When I tried to enter the correct (old) paths now and 301 redirect them to the new paths, the page was not found using the old paths. Should I redirect the old paths to the New ones even now? 3. Finally, in how much time after you change the page structure should you use the 301 redirect. Since I had two different teams working on this job, there could have been up to a 24 hour gap between the redirection.
On-Page Optimization | | rajatsharma0 -
Will ReDesigning my website negatively affect SEO?
I currently have a one page website which lists all the company information on one page [domain name is www. bwd . co . za]. It uses javascript for navigation. My challenge is that the layout is outdated and I would like to update it with a high quality WordPress theme which will not be a one-pager. Currently on Open Site Explorer the website has a domain authority of 30/100 and page authority of 41/100. I've worked hard to push the numbers to get to where they are hence I'm a bit concerned. Will re-designing my website negatively affect SEO?
On-Page Optimization | | bonganig0 -
Moving our current homepage to a new URL
Our homepage currently speaks to a specific product and we're re-doing our homepage to be more about the brand which links to the product. The current home page has PA of 62 with thousands of links to the page. Question is are there any best practices around this or any risks? So current page is: www.xyz.com which we will be refreshing then moving the existing content to www.xyz.com/product so all the subdirectories gets shifted over 1 Thank in advance for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | JoeLin0 -
Contact Form On Homepage - Best Practices
How important is it to have a contact form on the homepage of a service-based business? I am trying to decide if having a form on front page will increase the number of people filling it out.
On-Page Optimization | | TheSEODR0 -
Facebook Comments for SEO
Hi, I read few opinions over the potential value of implementing Facebook Comments on internal pages and I got that search engines don't crawl the content generated7written by Facebook Comments. So do you confirm that from a SEO prospective this is not valuable at all? Would you suggest to implement this for example within every product page like Yelp has? Imagine all the value of UGC lost and not read by search engine crawler... In which case would you suggest to implement FB Comments and why? Thanks a lot! Cheers, Nino
On-Page Optimization | | printi0