Selecting keywords for homepage
-
Hello Forum ,
I am working with an online yoga equipment retailer and am trying to select keywords for their homepage <title>. Initially, I focused on 2 keywords: One is a high-level (i.e. not product-specific) keyword, "yoga equipment", that receives 5,400 monthly Google phrase searches per month. The other keyword is a more-specific keyword, "yoga mats", with 60,000 monthly Google searches. </span></p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e;">However, I'm noticing that Google is sending users who use other more-specific keywords to our homepage. For example, our search result for "yoga bolster" (1,900 monthly Google phrase searches) takes visitors to the homepage, not our page dedicated to yoga bolsters (this page is already optimized for the keywords "bolsters, yoga bolsters, etc") We have an optimized yoga mat page in our shop, but Google still sends visitors to the homepage instead.</p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e;">1. Should I add a keywords like "bolster" to the homepage title? Example: "Yoga Mats, Bolsters, Products, and Accessories." Or should I stick to high-level keywords? </p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e;">2. Would it be a good idea to add the word "yoga" to each term: "Yoga Mats, Yoga Bolsters, Yoga Gear and Yoga Accessories"</p> <p style="color: #5e5e5e;">I appreciate the insight and thanks for your time.</p></title>
-
On top of what everyone else has touched on, dont forget to look at the competition and see what they are doing. You should be able to pick up some ideas there.
-
Much appreciated. We will ensure that no keyword appears in more than one title. Thanks for the guidance on this scenario.
-
Thanks for your response.
We agree on strategy. Rather than dilute other page's future value by optimizing the homepage as a keyword catchall, we should focus on link-building to our category pages.
We will also not stuff our title section. We'll use something like "Yoga Gear and Accessories."
-
Google is going to choose the most relevant page for the search query. I would keep your pages as tightly themed as possible.You don't want them competing with each other. You don't want the same keywords in your title tags for two different pages. I believe the coined term is keyword cannibalization.
It's good that you have landing pages and the fact that you are not seeing them in the SERPS means that your new site is not fully indexed. A week isn't a lot of time. It can take several weeks for things to settle and your pages find their places.
I don't know what platform your site is on but it may speed the indexing process along if you use Google webmaster tools to submit a sitemap.
-
Thanks for the response. I should also mention we revamped our site about a week ago. Prior to this, its SEO was not considered.. In redoing the website, we implemented your suggested steps above. Now we have a top-down site layout that goes from broad categories to specific products. The optimization of each page matches this structure.
My hunch is that we're also still waiting for Google to completely re-index the new site, including our newly-optimized category pages. These pages also have few external links, but many internal links thanks the our new linking structure.
We will keep the title short and focus on the keywords that drive traffic to our site. Any other thoughts/suggestions are welcome, especially about get tin re-indexed.
-
I should also mention that we just redid the site. The previous website didn't have any SEO and it seems like Google indexed the homepage for nearly all keywords. Now that we've redone the site-- about a week ago--Google still takes people the homepage even though we have optimized specific pages for specific keywords.
So far, I have not seen indexed versions of our product category pages appear in the search results, so no flags have gone up for page competition. in fact, Google still has some of the old website URLs indexed (Don't worry, we're using 301 redirects).
What do you think? Does Google just need some more time to re-index our site and remap its keyword associations?
(I too was hesitant to put keywords in more than one location, but after seeing people were being channeled to our homepage, I thought it might make sense to add a few keywords there to keep its ranking up)
-
You need to avoid internal competition while selecting keywords for the internal pages.
It is unavoidable using the same word for the home page to give overall idea about the site to users and search engines.
I would suggest a couple of steps to rank your preferred page for a specific keyword:
-
checking anchor texts of internal and external links. "Yoga mat" page to get link for the anchor text "yoga mat".
-
usage of keyword in the URL and position of keyword in the title
-
checking usage of keywords in the headline, image alt tag and image title
Answers to your questions:
1. Identify the top traffic driving keywords to your site. You may use them in the home page title but don't acquire links for the home page using these keywords which may develop internal competition with your home page and internal pages.
2. Title length is very limited. So use the space appropriately.
-
-
To your second question: . Would it be a good idea to add the word "yoga" to each term: "Yoga Mats, Yoga Bolsters, Yoga Gear and Yoga Accessories"
I just asked a similar question on whether a city name should be repeated in the title tag. You might want to review the responses: http://www.seomoz.org/q/effect-of-repeating-keyword-in-title-effective-or-diluting/.
FWIW.
My two cents on #1: I would rather work on optimizing your bolster page as a landing page by building internal and external links to that page than optimize the home page for bolster.
-
I would be curious to know if your website home page has some inbound links point to it using anchor text with those search terms...."yoga bolsters" or "yoga mats."
There is also the possibility that your pages have similar content and Google is dropping the the other pages. Are the "yoga bolster" and "yoga mat" page indexed and ranking well? Are they competing with your home page in the results?
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
-
Are there any hard rules about internal linking of homepage?
Hi all, Usually we link homepage from all pages. That's definitely a boost for homepage to rank well. Do we need to interlink homepage to the highest? Including links from subdomains or sub directories. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Do search engines see copy/keywords when it appears only at the bottom of a page?
My client is looking to improve their SEO, and to date I've written meta data and made some initial recommendations. Thing is, on some of their pages, the body copy appears at the bottom of the page, past links and big, splashy images. My question is, will search engines even see that copy to crawl it for keywords? Thanks!
Web Design | | MarcieHill0 -
Ranking of non-homepage leads to decrease in website ranking?
Hi all, Google picks up a non-homepage to rank for primary keyword where homepage is actually optimised to rank for same keyword. This means Google is ignoring the actual page and ranking other page. Does this scenario means that we are ranking lower as the homepage is not considered here? We may rank much better if homepage is preferred by Google? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Why is my homepage not indexed by Google or Bing
http://www.schoppnutritionclinic.com/ Home page is not indexed by Google or Bing but all other pages are indexed. I know that currently i am missing the robot.TXT file and the sitemap. This is something i am woking on as a possible solution. I would have thought Google/Bing would have still indexed this page regardless of the lack of sitemap/robot.txt files not being present. I attempted to run a fetch and render in Webmaster tools and received a Not Found status.
Web Design | | ChrisSams0 -
Traffic flow going through homepage, /default.aspx, and /index.htm - How do I fix this?
In the Google Analytics visitor flow section, most of my traffic is starting off on the homepage, but a significant portion somehow is being directed to /default.aspx, as well as a minor fraction at /index.htm - see the attached image for what this looks like. My questions are, why is this happening, is it negatively affecting the site, and should I just fix it through a filter in Analytics or consult IT? Navigating to the /default.aspx page in the address bar simply returns a blank screen. Any idea of what's going on here? The logo in the top left corner of the site directs to /index.htm, so I think I have that issue solved, but /default.aspx is definitely stumping me. The server currently runs on Apache, though I don't know if it always did. My standard method of simply Googling the problem didn't give me any definitive answers, so any help would be greatly appreciated. Q12QqpC.jpg
Web Design | | BD690 -
Does a loading homepage animation effect rankings?
Our website ( panphoenix dot com) has a Javascript animation when you load it for the first time which takes just over 2 seconds to load. Does having this animation effect rankings negatively? Would appreciate your thoughts!Thanks Rob
Web Design | | roberthseo0 -
What happens if I 301 Redirect my homepage to a different page on site
If i were to 301 redirect the index page of my website to a page in a different subdirectory of my site would that adversely affect SEO? Does your home page need to be in the root of your site? I'm asking because a developer has told me that it would be best to do that since he needs to install OpenCart on the root of our domain...
Web Design | | SheffieldMarketing0 -
Is there SEO penalties for having .htm homepage?
In the past, I have had very good SEO rankings but have recently slipped. I am trying everything I can. Only my home page has domain/index.htm while all other pages have .html suffixes. I have been reluctant to change the home page worrying that it could further hurt my SEO. QUESTION Does it even matter? If so, will changing home page to .html have any adverse effects for SEO?
Web Design | | Kurtyj0