Should your homepage target your most important keyword?

[KempRugeLawGroup]

I was looking at the title tags/keywords of the top ranking sites for my most important keyword phrase, and I noticed all the pages that were beating us were homepages. Our homepage is not optimized at all. It's very generic, because 1, my boss wanted it that way, (but she's not married to it) and 2, I built out landing pages for all our keywords. For the really, really competitive keywords, I can't get my landing pages high enough. My homepage however, according to OSE, is on par with the other sites, especially the page. I included the screenshots of it, just in case, my analysis was way off. But, those are the top 4 sites and I'm on page 3.

Here's my questions: Should I optimize my homepage for the keyword phrase, if it's our most important one? If I do that, what should I do with the landing pages? Lastly, if you look at the screenshots, is my analysis correct that we aren't woefully behind all four of these people (we're kempruge.com)?

I know I'm asking on a lot on this one, but it's a pretty big decision for us. I could really use the help making sure it's the right one.

Your time is much appreciated,

Ruben

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[KempRugeLawGroup]

Alright, thank you all for your time. I appreciate it!

• Ruben

[Silkstream]

I think you have got the site hierarchy down just fine. However, taking a look at [what I presume to be] your landing page, I think that you could improve your search position by providing more information on the page here.

Start with your company USP's, maybe include a short explainer video? Then work on your written content. Make your page better than your competitors page and you should be rewarded.

I have a site in a very competitive industry with a landing page that ranks within some huge business homepages, and our domain authority is about half of theirs! You just need to keep working on that page.

Dont be tempted to throw too many links at it either. Work on weeding out only the best links from your competitor profiles.

[Andy-Halliday]

Hi

I would say you have done it correctly, optimising the most useful pages for the best user experience.

This key phrase that you are considering putting on your home page - instead of that, why not simply spend more time building links to that page. Instead of focusing links to your home page, focus relevant links to the specific page.

Think of a customer, do they want to land on your homepage and then have to navigate to the correct page to find the information, or do they want to land on the correct page and don't need to navigate away.

There is a really good article (sorry I can't find it), but it talks about the more steps you make a customer make to find the product the less they are likely to buy - I know your not exactly selling a physical product, but you still want the person to sign up and get in contact. So the more difficult steps you make it the less chance you have.

I hope that helps.

[WilliamKammer]

Which niche you decide to target on your home page is up to you, but in general, the better user experience leans towards broader terms. You can focus deeper on internal pages, but be welcoming to a large crowd (an important, more general key phrase) on your homepage.

Why I say it's up to you, is because it's important to know the risk vs. reward, there is no definite answer. Going too broad will have you fighting against giants you can't yet compete with. Focusing too narrow will limit your demographic scope and traffic. As the SEO, it's up to you to do the research and discuss the levels of risk and reward with your client. What will take longer, what kind of results can they expect from each, etc.