"keyword" - rank the home page or sub page domain.com/keyword?
-
One of my clients has a pretty decent website that ranks 1st place for most major keywords in their line of business.
EXCEPT one keyword that i've been struggling to get 1st position on Google (currently 2nd).
My problem is:
let's say "tennis shoes" as a keyword
the home page of course has several other shoes listed but I've seen that Google took my home page and made it 2nd position (on 1st page). Where the section domain.com/tennis-shoes is on 2nd page of Google.
My question is should i rel cannonical from the /tennis-shoes section to the home page so it focuses more on the specific keyword that i need to get the home 1st? Or should i leave the home page generic and focus more on /tennis-shoes to get that 1st position?
What do you Moz'ers Think?
-
Wouldn't the other pages get less value because the home page has a clear focus on a specific keyword?
Don't want the rest of the pages that are solid on 1st position to get affected because the home page doesn't relate as much to them.
-
I would do BOTH!
-
Hi ennovation
You say "other than building links" but it may be that is where you need to focus your efforts next. It sounds like the on-page stuff may already be done well and that your efforts so far have helped the product pages rank number 1 for their keywords. Perhaps the home page has multiple inbound links to it containing anchor text "tennis shoes" and that is why it is outperforming the product page?
As link related factors are belived to be such a large element of the algorithm it sounds like it would br prudent to spend time on this area next.
-
I'm thinking the same. The only problem is the rankings on page /tennis-shoes. The page is completely optimized so other than building links i don't know what to do. Wouldn't it be better to slightly optimize the home page so the home page is tennis shoes then the rest are related sections.
P.S. other pages ex: /golf-shoes rank 1st place so no need for targeting home page on those specific sub pages
-
I'd leave the homepage generic and focus on /tennis-shoes. You can't optimise your homepage for every keyword you want so splitting them up on their own dedicated page is your best option.
DD
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
-
Why is our website ranked lower but beats most competitors in full SERP report?
We are analysing why our website ranks so low (currently position 8 in serp). We beat our competitors in most areas. Also we produce by far the most useful content. Do not buy links or do any other malpractice. We have been for a long time ranked in top 3 (well mostly 1-2) positions. In the last year we have seen a decline to position 8-10 and we are not sure why this is the case. Can anyone suggest what we should be focusing on? We are clueless. All the practices we used to "know" now seem obsolete. m8qIeyC,Kf1LLei#0
Competitive Research | | urkeman0 -
Any Tool for Tracking Domain / Page Authority Growth?
Is there any tool available in the market where there is a ranking list of fastest growth in Domain and Page Authority? I launched a job site 8 months ago and I am curious to see what % of websites (not just job specific) have experienced faster growth in a similar time frame in Domain and Page Authority to get a sense of what may have been accomplished. thank you very much,
Competitive Research | | knielsen0 -
Keyword Research Tool Problem
Hi, I had been in SEO for around 2 to 3 years, I am looking for your suggestion if there is any best keyword research tool. I tried almost most of the keyword research tool (both paid or free) but I found the following problem: -Worktracker: I think it is too difficult to use and understand as a non technical person. I always wonder the data accuracy because when the same keyword appear in Google for few thousand traffic, it only appear in Wordtracker for few dozen or hundred of search. Also I don't think they suggest any long trail keywords in my view. The long trail keyword you can also find in free keyword search tool. -Google Keywords Tool- Good, but it can only show 100 results. I cannot get a better pictures of related or niches keywords. I always find some competitive keywords can rank easily but some non competitive keywords usually very difficult to rank in some case. It will depend on how you interpret the data results. -Keyword Discovery and Wordstream-Although I really want to subscribe, but they are a way too expensive (you have to subscribe for 12 months). I check with their free keywords tool but only shown very limited results. Although there are some other like spyfu.com or keywords spy...... Is there any one can suggest me which is the best tool to start with keyword search for the long trail and niche keywords ? or is there any way or trick to find the best keywords ? Thank you. Tom
Competitive Research | | Stevejobs20110 -
Find competitors based on keywords
Are there any tools where I can enter say 5 keywords and it will look at the top 10 sites for each of those keywords then return which sites show up the most.
Competitive Research | | eyeflow0 -
8500+ seomoz errors and still rank one for high traffic keywords
I plugged a competitor into the campaign manager that is ranking #1 for many target keywords like "sprinkler parts" (18k broad, 720 exact) and "sprinklers"(550k broad, 4400 exact) and #2 for "sprinkler"(1mil broad, 8100 exact). This site has over 8500 errors on SEOmoz - I have spent a good deal of time fixing errors on all of our client websites and have gotten them down to 0 errors. I am just wondering if I have been wasting my time and if the errors that SEOmoz reports on even make a difference. How can a site rank for such high traffic keywords when it has 4k duplicate content and 4k duplicate page title errors? The site has 75 linking root domains according to opensiteexplorer. any help on this would be greatly appreciated!
Competitive Research | | Splashme-1391910 -
Are there any tools to extract keywords and long tail keywords from a site and report keyword density by URL?
I need a tool that does the following: Find exact matches for keywords in content of sites and report keyword density by URL. Then identify the value generated by a particular keyword.
Competitive Research | | MotionPoint0 -
Why does website rank? PA-39 DA-24
This website is pretty nice, well done. The few links they do have are nice and clean, from his brothers website, very much white hat. However, it appears that they aren't doing much of anything from an SEO standpoint. This site, is PA31 DA21 is also doing unusually well. In both cases, these guy are outranking the best know, most famous, and most trusted company in the industry who is PA84 DA81. This is a HUGE company that wins the most awards and gets tons of media coverage both in print and on televisiton shows. I'm also noticing that the websites that are ranking well in my niche (every keyword) all have the name of their company at the beginning of the title tag, those with the name of the company at the end of the title tag are consistantly a few ranks lower. This seems to be consistant across all search terms. My niche is highly competitive for a very low amount of traffic. Adwords is crazy expensive for some of these keywords! That said, one valid sale generates a significant amount of money. Would love to hear your thoughts. I'm thinking the first company is being treated so well becase G considers them to be virgins, the purist of white?
Competitive Research | | dmac0 -
Alt image or allow /image in robot.txt
Howdy, Me and my co-workers had a discussion at lunch time. We wonder if we should allow /image in our robot.txt. We arent sure what rank best. Image whit keyword in it or simply had a Alt at each image and hide the /image in the robot.txt... or have a allow /image AND a alt source. P.S. At this point, we didnt work on any sitemap or link it anywhere. Ty.
Competitive Research | | Promoteam0