Home page keyword in url

[Matthew_smart]

I have been looking into SEO for a few weeks now trying to perfect a homepage. Going through various sources on MOZ, and other examples out there on the internet, I keep seeing that you should have your keyword in the URL of the page.

The homepage is the page most people want to rank the highest in google searches, however, you cannot put the keyword in the URL as most home page URLs are simply /.

Should I actually make the home like this: www.example.com/key-word-example? I would imagine this would not be the normal for many users and would seem like it's not the home page.

[Matthew_smart]

Hello, thanks for your reply.

The website I'm building for my client is actually a porn website ( Sorry if i'm not aloud to bring that up in these forums, but it is a professional business ).

Now the video category pages and actual video pages will be mainly just 5 videos in each row. As users will not really be looking to read content. However because the site is different than usual sites, i was planning on putting content on the homepage to rank for the main keyword.

Is this a suitable post? if not i will delete it.

[Deacyde]

Also I'd like to add, your homepage should be ranking for what your overall site / service does, not the main things it sells nor the main service. Kinda like a very general keyword usage there, since you want more control over how these keywords rank in SERPs.

I just got done redesigning a client's site that had most of it's keywords ( main ones included ) ranking the homepage for those keywords, which was kinda nightmarish, since customers were hurting our overall CPC campaign and our organic results since they were bouncing so much. A homepage isn't going to be the info hotspot a user wants when they search for a keyword, since it normally is the spot you do brief eye catching highlights of items or services. Think of the homepage more like clickbait.

When you have subpages that specialize on keywords, you have a better chance to give the user what they wanted when finding your page in SERPs which will improve overall rankings and if you advertise, can help lower costs and improve quality scores.

You basically answered your own question just didn't realize it, using example.com/key-word-example should be a subpage targeting a main keyword you want to rank for. That way you'll be able to focus on content for that keyword easier, without worrying about other factors that a homepage needs.

Hope this wasn't TL:DR

[LoganRay]

Yes, I typically reserve the homepage for branded search. On most sites, the content of the homepage is too broad to really be a helpful entry point from organic non-branded search.

[Matthew_smart]

Thanks for the reply!

I completely agree with what you said and i had those concerns as well.

So would you suggest not using my most important keyword for my home page?

[LoganRay]

Heyo!

I would not recommend your homepage exists at any URL other than example.com for the following reasons:

1. It's web development best-practice
2. Most of the links you will acquire naturally will point to example.com
3. Some citations won't accept a URL with anything after the .com
4. It's confusing for people
5. If bots can't access your homepage at example.com, they most likely won't find your robots.txt or XML sitemap files either

I'm sure other could drum up more reasons, but the ones I've listed here should be enough to dissuade you.

You can typically fare much better by giving non-branded keywords interior pages that are specific to that topic rather than the broader homepage content. This will increase the likelihood of people finding what they're looking for and is a better way to tailor your content to your audience and to algorithms.