Targeting Keywords at Home page or 301 URL?
-
Background info
This is a new site and I am using Wordpress for a CMS not a blog and I have set a static page as the home page.
The problem is when I configure the home page as a static page in wordpress it sets a 301 redirect to that page, which is this domain.com/software-consultancy (so the software-consultancy page is now domain.com).
I thought about creating a separate Home page but I didn't see the point as the pages would be almost identical.
**"Should I target keywords to the home page?" **
If I start link building using the phrase "software consultancy" to the home page should I link to domain.com or the 301 redirect URL domain.com/software-consultancy ?
My thoughts are that if the URL has the keywords I am targeting in it will help with SEO.
Or should I create a separate home page and just link the company name back to the home and have a separate page for "software consultancy" my thought is that having exactly what the company does on the home page would be better. But I don't want to lose out on search engine traffic by not having the keywords in the URL I am going to be link building for.
I guess if I link build to the 301 redirect URL I can always revert back to this URL if I want to change?
FYI here is my site structure:
The site is for a small software consultancy and I have the following structure:
domain.com/software-consultancy -- (Set as Wordpress static Page so essentially a 301 redirect to / )
domain.com/software-consultancy/areas
domain.com/software-consultancy/areas/london
domain.com/software-consultancy/areas/new-york
I would really appreciate some feedback on this, even if it's experience / advice and there is no exact answer.
Many Thanks,
J
-
I don't think area sub nav is that prohibitive, especially with listing 8 cities.
-
Hi Robert,
Thanks for your response
Let me clarify the 301 redirect, the home page is now set as the software-consultancy page and it looks like this in the browser domain.com for example. If you visit the software-consultancy page it 301's to the home page. Also all sub pages of software-consultancy/ still function as normal.
So essentially wordpress is just marking the home page as the software-consultancy page.
I am going to list around 8 areas / cities for the location part, I would lose the areas but it makes the drop down navs cleaner on the site. If I change this though I will deffintly lose the area sub dir. I guess having the areas sub nav is not going to make a massive amount of difference SEO wise?
Thanks Again
J
-
So, Domain.com redirects permanently to Domain.com/software-consultancy? If so, then directing links to either will give essentially the same value as the majority (90% +) of the juice flows through on a 301. You have a small software consultancy so the fact that Domain.com/software-consultancy is homepage is in no way a negative. (Visitors are not looking for off the shelf software and landing on consultancy.)
_If I start link building using the phrase "software consultancy" to the home page should I link to domain.com or the 301 redirect URL domain.com/software-consultancy ? _
Even though the 301 sends most of the juice I would still go to actual homepage. No need to give up 1 to 10% even.
I think based on you putting "company name" in you clarified for me a bit more of what you are asking which is "should I make an effort to have Brand {company name} have more status?" Well, based on current thinking, unless you have a well known brand, having it in the url/title tag won't help as no one is searching on it. You want to get out what they are searching on. They know they need to look for a software consultant, they don't yet know it is you.
But, one bit of advice on your structure: If area is really not something that needs to have its own page with sub headings (subdirectories) afterward, flatten it by pulling out the areas: domain.com/software-consultancy/London, New-York, etc. That would allow you later to still add specifics to London or New York if services are different for each, etc. I do not see where having Areas helps. For someone searching your site, unless you have a lot more categories or are going to list 8 -10 cities, you can get away with just listing the cities.
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
-
Is it ok to repeat a (focus) keyword used on a previous page, on a new page?
I am cataloguing the pages on our website in terms of which focus keyword has been used with the page. I've noticed that some pages repeated the same keyword / term. I've heard that it's not really good practice, as it's like telling google conflicting information, as the pages with the same keywords will be competing against each other. Is this correct information? If so, is the alternative to use various long-winded keywords instead? If not, meaning it's ok to repeat the keyword on different pages, is there a maximum recommended number of times that we want to repeat the word? Still new-ish to SEO, so any help is much appreciated! V.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vitzz1 -
Going from 302 redirect to 301 redirect weeks after changing URL structure
I made a small change on an ecommerce site that had big impacts I didn't consider... About six weeks ago in an effort to clean up one of many SEO-related problems on an ecommerce site, I had a developer rewrite the URLs to replace underscores with hyphens and redirect all pages throughout the site to that page with the new URL structure. We didn't immediately update our sitemap to reflect the changes (bad!) and I just discovered all the redirects are 302s... Since these changes, most of the pages have a page authority of 1 and we have dropped several spots in organic search. If we were to setup 301 redirects for the pages that we changed the URL structure would there be any changes in organic search placement and page authority or is it too late?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16116990439410 -
What to do when your home page an index for a series of pages.
I have created an index stack. My home page is http://www.southernwhitewater.com The home page is the index itself and the 1st page http://www.southernwhitewater.com/nz-adventure-tours-whitewater-river-rafting-hunting-fishing My home page (if your look at it through moz bat for chrome bar} incorporates all the pages in the index. Is this Bad? I would prefer to index each page separately. As per my site index in the footer What is the best way to optimize all these pages individually and still have the customers arrive at the top to a picture. rel= canonical? Any help would be great!! http://www.southernwhitewater.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VelocityWebsites0 -
Should I use a rel=canonical to the home page
Hi guys, I have a site where the homepage is ranking for the term 'industrial flooring' around position 30 and the actual level 2 industrial flooring page is ranking well below at around position 60. I'm happy for the homepage to rank for this term and would like to see it improve, so here are my questions: 1: Is the existence of the level 2 page preventing the homepage from ranking higher due to keyword cannibalization etc.? 2: Would the use of the rel=canonical tag pointing from the level 2 page to the home page have a positive or negative impact on the homepage's rankings for 'industrial flooring'? 3: Is there anything else I'm missing? Greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blaze-Communication0 -
Canonical URL on search result pages
Hi there, Our company sells educational videos to Nurses via subscription. I've been looking at their video search results page:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 9868john
http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/cpd When you click on a category, the URL appears like this:
http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/cpd?view=category&cat=9&name=Acute+Surgical+Nursing
http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/cpd?view=category&cat=6&name=Medications Would this be an instance where i'd use the canonical tag to redirect each search results page? Bearing in mind the /cpd page is under /Nursing cpd, and that /Nursing cpd is our best performing page in search engines, would it be better to refer it to the 'Nursing CPD' rather than 'CPD' page? Any advice is very welcome,
Thanks,
John0 -
Google Is Indexing The Wrong Page For My Keyword
For a long time (almost 3 mounth) google indexing the wrong page for my main keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
The problem is that each time google indexed another page each time for a period of 4-7 days, Sometimes i see the home page, sometimes a category page and sometimes a product page.
It seems though Google has not yet decided what his favorite / better page for this keyword. This is the pages google index: (In most cases you can find the site on the second or third page) Main Page: http://bit.ly/19fOqDh Category Page: http://bit.ly/1ebpiRn Another Category: http://bit.ly/K3MZl4 Product Page: http://bit.ly/1c73B1s All links I get to the website are natural links, therefore in most cases the anchor we got is the website name. In addition I have many links I get from bloggers that asked to do a review on one of my products, I'm very careful about that and so I'm always checking the blogger and their website only if it is something good, I allowed it. also i never ask for a link back (must of the time i receive without asking), and as I said, most of their links are anchor with my website name. Here some example of links that i received from bloggers: http://bit.ly/1hF0pQb http://bit.ly/1a8ogT1 http://bit.ly/1bqqRr8 http://bit.ly/1c5QeC7 http://bit.ly/1gXgzXJ Please Can I get a recommendation what should you do?
Should I try to change the anchor of the link?
Do I need to not allow bloggers to make a review on my products? I'd love to hear what you recommend,
Thanks for the help0 -
301 redirect with /? in URL
For a Wordpress site that has the ending / in the URL with a ? after it... how can you do a 301 redirect to strip off anything after the / For example how to take this URL domain.com/article-name/?utm_source=feedburner and 301 to this URL domain.com/article-name/ Thank you for the help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
Google is ranking the wrong page for the targeted keyword
I have two examples below where we want it to rank for the targeted page but google picked another page to rank instead. This is happening a lot on this site I just recently started to work on. Example 1 Googles Choice for key word Motorcycle Tires: http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/cl/50/Tires-and-Wheels What we want Google to choice for Motorcycle Tires: http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/49/-/181/Motorcycle-Tires Other pages about Motorcycle tires: http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/d/12/Motorcycle-Tires We even used the rel="canonical" for this url to point to our target page. http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/50/-/181/Motorcycle-Tires Example 2 ATV Tires We want this page to rank http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/81/165/ATV-Tires however google has decided to rank http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/43/81/165/723/ATV-Tires-All that is acutally one folder under where we want it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoRM0