SEO - What Should We Do...

[ScottBaxter]

Hi Guys,

Hope your all OK.

Were having major problems with our homepage ranking for our main keyword - we were originally 4 but over the Christmas period our SEO company reported a fault with one of there servers that they were using for links, because of this fault these links were de-indexed from the search engine and in turn we have plummeted to 10th...

At the time we had a landing page with an exact match keyword in it, e.g: www.ourdomainname.co.uk/key-word/ we were told to 301 this to our main page in Google but when we have looked today its now showing this page instead of our homepage.

We also have another domain that we are using for a forum at the moment, now this domain name is an exact match doming e.g www.keyword.co.uk.

The question is do we gamble and 301 our whole site to www.keyword.co.uk and see if we can get this ranking better?

Thanks,

Scott

[DougRoberts]

When was the landing page redirected? I take it if you click on the SERPS result  it takes you to the home page?

[ScottBaxter]

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the reply.

Our landing pages are useful to our visitors as they can get a quote from each landing page but because this landing page was a broad keyword of our main keyword sometimes in google we would see this landing page ranking instead of our homepage.

We asked the question and they said the best way to eliminate this problem is to 301 the landing page to the home page...

The landing page is still 301ing to our main site but this landing page is still showing in the SERPS as our main page...

[DougRoberts]

" reported a fault with one of there servers that they were using for links" - Eek!

You already know that it was your links that were keeping you at the #1 position, so I would suggest that you need to rebuild these links. I wouldn't put all of my eggs in one basket though. I would rebuild links in a more natural way, not just from a server hosted by your SEO company. (What happens if you terminate your relationship with them!?)

Is your keywords specific page still being redirected? I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to do here.

Do your visitors need to land on your home page in order to get them engaged and converted? You don't need to worry that people aren't coming in through the front door as long as your landing pages are working as they should.

IS your home page the best page for your visitors searching for your keyword? What's going to provide the best experience for your visitors, and how can you best get them into your conversion funnel?

What is the user intent, what are their goals, their needs. Does the content on your keyword specific page answer their questions and lead them on to find out more about how you can help them achieve their goals? The page shouldn't be there just for the ranking!

It's difficult to be more specific without looking at your particular site. What I would say is that making a rash decision to change your domain and 301 your entire site is likely to make things worse in the short-term. Any change like this carries some risk!

Don't Panic!