Should I optimize my home-page or a sub-page for my most important keyword
-
Quick question:
When choosing the most important keyword set that I would like to rank for, would I be better off optimizing my homepage, or a sub page for this keyword.
My thinking goes as follows: The homepage (IE www.mysite.com) naturally has more backlinks and thus a better Google Page Rank.
However, there are certain things I could do to a subpage (IE www.mysite.com/green-widgets-los-angeles ) that I wouldn't want to do to the homepage, which might be more "optimal" overall.
Option C, I suppose, would be to optimize both the homepage, and a single sub-page, which is seeming like a pretty good solution, but I have been told that having multiple pages optimized for the same keywords might "confuse" search engines.
Would love any insight on this!
-
Thanks so much for the insight guys! This is super helpful, and definitely gives me a solid strategy going forward.
-
Yah, I was thinking it would be something along the lines of improving the subpage's authority with topic-relevant backlinks and anchor text. The homepage having the highest page authority of the domain, I figured Google was choosing it for that reason even without mention of the keywords on the page. Been getting a little frustrating when one month it's homepage on 1st page with subpage nowhere to be found, then the next month it's the subpage that's ranking and the homepage doesn't appear at all for the query.
Thank you for your advice!
(Sorry, Jacob, for hijacking your thread!)
-
Anchor text on backlinks will help Google sort it out, as will the content itself. Generally you won't want to rank two pages for any keyphrase but say in the SEO example - because you're pushing those pages so hard sometimes one falls. It's not that they replace each other in a bad way, it's because one is "sort of" being pushed too hard that it may fall and get replaced by your backup.
In a plumbing example, you'd target the homepage to say "Melbourne plumber" because of Google My Business but over time you may add services and swap it to another page.
-
Not OP, but hypothetically what would be your solution to the homepage and subpage cannibalising each other in search and jumping up and down replacing each other if homepage isn't even optimised for the subpage's target keyword?
-
I've seen many pages optimize both the homepage and an inner page. Think about how most SEO agency pages are organized. Homepage has some SEO content - and most pages that rank for "SEO" are homepages. But then you have the same sites also inevitably have an /seo/ page on them or /services/seo as well.
So doing both is sort of standard operating procedure for some businesses but it really depends.
- Best for ranking would be as Eric said. Optimize as if you're writing a book. Homepage should be optimized for the title / main topic.
- Best for conversions may be to have a dedicated landing page for each topic and use your homepage to tie them together.
-
Generally speaking, if you think of the keyword set as part of a large "topic", then you should optimize your site's home page for the main topic in general--and then the sub-topic keyword(s) and the "sub-sub" topic keywords would also be pages, as well. The sub-topic keyword would be linked from the site's home page, and then the sub-sub topic would linked from the sub-topic's page.
I like to think of this as a theme pyramid approach
Main Topic
Category
Sub-Topic
Category
Sub-Topic
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
-
My site on desktop browser: page 2 /mobile browser: page 0
Using my two most pertinent keywords in Chome my site shows up page two. Using the same keywords on my iPhone does not show my site at all (I clicked on to page 15). I have a mobile ranking of 84 on Google PageSpeed Insights. Could be a bit higher but not enough to totally ignore my site. What am I missing?
On-Page Optimization | | artsp0 -
Reducing multi-page website to one page & SEO ramifications?
Hello there! I just want to check in before I do this. I am reducing a multi-page website to one page (temporarily, but for at least 4-6 months). I will be 301 redirecting all old pages to the one, new home page. The new home page has a lot more content, long and short keyword phrases. Aside from losing the benefit of internal links, will reducing the number of website pages hurt a ranking? Does having associated keywords on other website pages provide benefit to another (in this case Home) page? Thanks so much for your invaluable advice!
On-Page Optimization | | lulu710 -
H1 tag- on home page - what is it best to include
is it best to have in the H1 tag 1. just our website address 2. combination of website address followed by short keywords about our website
On-Page Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
Understanding why our new page doesn't rank. Internal link structure to blame? + understand canonical pages more.
Hi guys. Sorry it's an essay...BUT, i think a lot of you will find this an interesting question. This question is in 2 (related) parts, and I imagine it would be an 'advanced' SEO question. Hoping you guys can help bring some real insight 🙂 Always amazed at the quality for this forum/ community. **Context... ** We had a duplicate content issue caused by this page and it's product permutations, so we placed canonical tags on all the product permutations to solve it. Worked a treat. However, we now have more **product ranges. **We now sell Diaries, Notebooks & Music books, which are clearly different from one another. So...we've placed canonical tags on all the product permutations leading back to the 'parent' theme. In other words, all the diary permutations 'lead back' to the diary page. All the notebooks permutations 'lead back' to the main notebook page. So on and so forth. Make sense so far? Context end..... Issue. Amazingly our Diary page outranks our notebook pagefor the search term 'Design your own Notebook'. The notebook page is well optimised for this search term, and the diary page avoids the word 'notebook' altogether (so no keyword cannibalisation going on). Possible reason? Our Diary page has a vast amount of internal links to it throughout our site. The notebook page has only a few. Could this be the issue? If so, what reading/ blogs/ content/ tools would you recommend to help understand and solve this problem? i.e) Better understanding internal link structure for SEO. 2nd part of the question (in the context of internal linking for SEO). When there are internal links to a page with a conical tag does that 'count' towards the 'parent page', or simply towards that specific page? I really hope that makes sense. If it's clear as mud just shout. Isaac. EDIT: All pages in question have been indexed since we added these changes to the site.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Title tag of product page including category keyword?
I'm doing some work on a site that essentially is about giving and getting reviews. It's heirarchy has categories and products within those categories. For the title tag of the product pages, they currently have "Best {Category} | {Product} Reviews" I've advised them that they should remove the "Best {Category}" part because a) they're already targeting the category pages themselves and b) from a user perspective, the product page should just have a title tag that makes sense for that particular page (the page is not necessarily the "best" and certainly is not a series of products within that category). I wanted to post here to confirm that my advice is sound. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | jim_shook0 -
Ranked page is not desired page
I have a question on a problem I am currently faced with. There is a certain keyword that my employer wants to rank for. The good news is that sometimes it does rank in the top 5 pages of Google. (It drops in and out) The bad news is that it is going to a page that we need to keep, but not the ideal place we want people who are looking for that keyword to go to. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this type of situation and what tactic they used to get people to the better page.
On-Page Optimization | | trumpfinc1 -
On-page Optimization - Is an A grade absolutely necessary?
It is commonly stated that three exact keyword mentions on a page is best practice for SEO. Recently, however, I have noticed a few articles that have hinted against it. matt @highonseo briefly mentioned the subject here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/going-beyond-moz-metrics-to-answer-why-is-this-site-outranking-me Also, one our clients competitors is ranking above them with only one exact mention of the keyword in the page title with no exact mentions in page copy. I know other factors can make a difference, but this is does raise questions of our on-site strategy. I haven’t found any literature that specifically recommends using one exact match of a keyword, so any opinion would be very useful! Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | PeteW0