Optimize homepage or category for main keyword?

[advertisingtech]

Hello,

we have an advertisements website. Usually in each country we have this one "main" keyword which has the largest amount of searches. Now we have done both ways in different markets. Sometimes optimize the homepage www.example.com for the keyword, sometimes optimize **www.example.com/thekeyword **the category page.

I do not have solid data which works better, as Keyword difficulties are too big to compare. The good thing with category is that i would have internal links pointing to it and keyword in the url.

Questions:

1. Which do you recommend better?
2. Will there be any benefits in optimizing category vs homepage?

Thanks!

[LureCreative]

I would try to optimize your homepage for your main keyword, but it is ok to also optimize the main keyword category page as well (maybe a good opportunity to use LSIs in Meta Title?). Your home page will generally get more initial inbound links if you are a local business or have your brand name mentioned a lot online. Best case scenario is both pages rank, which I have seen happen on occassion as well.