Is it easier to rank high with a front page than a landing page?
-
My product is laptop and of cause, I like to rank high for the keyword "laptop". Do any of you know if the search engines tends to rank a front page higher than a landing page?
Eg. www.brand.com vs. www.brand.com/laptop
-
I haven't experienced a home page outranking a product page for anything other than a branded search. Most often a home page is not optimized for a particular key term. It is optimized as an outline for the site and to display promotions or other important things about the site.
-
Thanks for the reply. It was only an example with the laptop as product
My question is about if any of you have seen a trend in the search results that google rank front pages higher than landing page? I have been ranking #1 for a competitive search term with a landing page like
company.com/keyword
But now I have dropped several positions and the competitors that now outrank me have the front page as landing page. It doesn't seem that the competitors have done anything SEO-wise that should outrank me. -
Hi Peter. One problem you're going to run into is that people searching for the term laptop have a higher percentage chance of their search being an informational search than purchasing search. This is partly why you'll see Google displaying news, image, and related search boxes for example afterwards. They know that the term is so broad that people will most likely need to refine their search before getting to a result you want. For you this means a few things as far as how competitive it is...
- You'll be competing with the news. Unless your site is a repository and producer of computer news (like pcmag, pcworld, cnet...) you're going to struggle to compete with them.
- You'll be competing with global brands. Dell, WalMart, Amazon.
- You'll be competing with Info hubs. Wikipedia...
As such, you'll likely want to refine your goal keyword. What makes your laptop unique? How would a customer interested in your laptop describe your laptop? Things like that will help you refine your term as well as prepare your site for your future customers. Cheers!
-
On such a generic term you are going to need to strategically target and build your site around that topic.
Your home page generally tends to rank better because it brings a lot of traffic from people searching for your brand name and your domain name.
As far as URL structure. You want to have a structure that will really target your key term as naturally as possible. For ecomm sites you would use domain.com/category/product. That would be the best way to accomplish a strong keyword targeted URL.
So - johnnyslaptops.com/dell-laptops/dell-inspiron-5500-laptop
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
-
Avoid landing page redirects
Avoid landing page redirects for the following chain of redirected URLs. http://domainname.com/ https://domainname.com/ https://www.domainname.com/ Anyone know how to solve this issue the correct way?
Technical SEO | | Sammyh0 -
Rankings Bouncing Weekly
I have a client who ranks well for a number of keywords. This week we have about 20 keywords in the top ten on Google that we're tracking. But every week it seems, the keywords bounce around quite a bit. This week, for example, we had at least 15 keywords out of the ~90 we're tracking jump between 30 to 40 spots. The most any keywords increased was 43, a few 42s and 41s, in one week. Next week, they'll go down a few, then bounce up again just like this. This has been happening for a while. I'm trying to figure out what the issue is.
Technical SEO | | Millermore0 -
Homepage dropping back to page 30 and being replaced by a random page?
Hi All Please accept my apologies if i have posted this in the wrong place, i am new to this. I have asked for help over and over again on Google Webmaster Forum but everytime i am faced with sarcastic, unhelpful answers and then moaned at for asking the same question again when i get no answers. Well, my website is http://www.hillfieldscampingandleisure.co.uk. The site is nearly 2 years old and is an ecommerce online camping equipment store. It is hosted on the EKMPOWERSHOP Platform. After a about a year of adding products and designing my site i decided to hire an SEO Company based in the UK, they were a good company with some big clients. Anyways to cut a really long story short....they completely ripped me off by £700 a month for 7 months for my site to keep going backwards, they wouldnt target the keywords i wanted and all they did was provide really spammy, non relevant, no page rank links...my site ended up on number 31 of Google. I managed to drop the company and try to do things myself. I optimized my sites content so it wasn't keyword stuffed I re-wrote all my alt tags to look more natural I optimized my meta and h1 tags I carried on with trying to build relevant, high page rank links Anyways i managed to get my homepage to page 3/4 of Google. It stayed there for a few weeks but over the past few weeks my Homepage is dropping back to page 28-30 and being replaced with a random page of my site on page 4-6. It corrects itself after a while and my homepage returns but then it happens all over again....today i have a random page on page 4 and my homepage is on page 29. Any ideas on what is causing this and how can i get my site up there? I have had some ideas come back that it is the EKM platform i am using but since the seo company took the p out of me, its the only one i can afford at the moment until i start selling. I am a small business with stock waiting to be sold but no matter how much i read and rules to follow my site just doesn't seem to move. Any help would be really really apreciated and be nice!
Technical SEO | | hillfields0 -
Domain authority and rankings?
I have a site that sits in #1 position for its keywords right now. But it only got there about 1mth ago. The site is only about 6mths old with lots of link building. I check the domain authority and its only 37/100 with the #2, #3 sites having domain authority of 57 and 82 respectively. This site has like 800+ backlinks. While the #2 and #3 sites have 20,000+ backlinks. Does it mean that my site will LIKELY drop in rankings very soon? I know there is no certainty but wld you say that it is highly probable my site will drop?
Technical SEO | | jl2550 -
Mass 404 pages
Hi Guys, If I were to have to take down the majority of my site, taking all content and links pointing to that content down. How would the search engines react? Would I get a penalty for the majority of the site all of the sudden missing? My only concern is the loss of traffic on the remanding pages. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DPASeo0 -
Not ranking well in Google
Hi, I am new to Seomoz,I have some little doubts regarding <title>tag.</p> <p>Can i target 3 words in the title tag. Currently i am on top for one keyword, and i cant get the rest two in top positions. Here is my website, can anyone review my site please.</p> <p>xxx(dot)ridpiles(dot)com with keyword hemorrhoids treatment</p> <p>I have good amount of backlinks, but still something i am missing. I have 100% unique content.</p> <p> </p> <p>Regards</p></title>
Technical SEO | | Dexter22387874870 -
Duplicate Pages Issue
I noticed a problem and I was wondering if anyone knows how to fix it. I was a sitemap for 1oxygen.com, a site that has around 50 pages. The sitemap generator come back with over a 2000 pages. Here is two of the results: http://www.1oxygen.com/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/services/rentals.htm
Technical SEO | | chuck-layton
http://www.1oxygen.com/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/1oxygen/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/oxusportableconcentrator.htm These are actaully pages somehow. In my FTP there in the first /portableconentrators/ folder there is about 12 html documents and no other folders. It looks like it is creating a page for every possible folder combination. I have no idea why you those pages above actually work, help please???0 -
301 lots of old pages to home page
Will it hurt me if i redirect a few hundred old pages to my home page? I currently have a mess on my hands with many 404's showing up after moving my site to a new ecommerce server. We have been at the new server for 2 years but still have 337 404s showing up in google webmaster tools. I don't think it would affect users as very few people woudl find those old links but I don't want to mess with google. Also, how much are those 404s hurting my rank?
Technical SEO | | bhsiao1