Should your homepage target your most important keyword?
-
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
-
Alright, thank you all for your time. I appreciate it!
- Ruben
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
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
-
Google+ SERP Visibility For Non Branded Keywords
Hi, I've noticed that a competitors Google+ box is appearing on the right hand side of the Google UK SERPs for a non-branded keyword (open air balustrade). Please see attached image. I've always thought that the Google+ box would only be displayed in the SERPS for branded keywords. How is this Google+ box appearing for non-branded keywords? How can we improve our chances of our Google+ box being shown instead? Many thanks in advance, Lee. vDm914D
Branding | | Webpresence0 -
How to rank #1 for brand name when its 2 competitive keywords?
Hi Mozzers, I have recently began the SEO on a website which is a few years old, with little SEO done beforehand.
Branding | | Silkstream
I really want to get this domain ranking #1 for its brand name, however the brand name also happens to be a combination of two highly competitive keywords - one of them being "hire". I have done everything I can think of as a recommended step to signal Google, but it still sits between position #20 and position #15 (on a good day). So far I have:
Set up G+
Linked the website
Added Rel=publisher
Submitted site to Yell.com and a couple of other business directories
Added branded links from every the bio of each article on the blog pointing to the homepage.
Built a handful of branded links from related niche websites.
Set up social pages. Question:
What else can I do to improve on its position in the SERPS? More info:
The site ranks number 2 in Bing for the brand name. The domain is an exact match of two keywords without a hyphen between them - the site ranks position #1 for that search on Google. Question:
Would a hyphenated domain make any difference at all? Thanks everyone!0 -
Changing My Home Page Focus Keyword
Hello, We recently launched a new home page design on our company website, but we still have the same focus keyword in the title, H1, and in parts of the page copy. However, this focus keyword no longer represents our entire brand. We want to change the focus keyword and have done some research on the keyword difficulty and local searches in Google, but are still uncertain on the potential effects. Let me explain our situation more in depth. Instabill provides business owners with merchant accounts and other services. Our current focus keyword is offshore merchant accounts. However, over the past three months, we have been helping businesses establish US merchant accounts (retail, mobile, and online--but retail and mobile to US only while online to merchants everywhere) and intend to continue to increase our US merchant base. We are also still able to provide offshore merchant accounts. Our fear is that when a US merchant comes to our website (http://www.instabill.com), they will see Offshore Merchant Accounts in big H1 letters and leave our site since they want a local US merchant account. However, we still want to make sure our international merchants know we can still work with them. Thus said, we would like to change our focus keyword to something more broad, but still descriptive of our brand: merchant services. To elaborate, we want our H1 heading to read Merchant Services for Retail and Online Businesses. Merchant services is more descriptive since we provide more than just merchant accounts. We also provide the payment gateway, free shopping cart modules, help registering businesses, help obtaining an SSL certificate, and a discounted PCI Certification Service through McAfee. We have more than one page on our website that ranks for the term online merchant accounts, but none that rank for merchant services. However, we are willing to put in the work to ensure we optimize our website properly and put in the effort to make the change successful. Merchant services is also a keyword we would like to optimize on our website, so making the change on the home page will only help the steps in the process. Statistics:
Branding | | Instabill
Offshore Merchant Accounts has a 35% difficulty level and we consistently rank for SERPs #1 and #2. This term, according to the Google Keyword Tool, only receives 70 monthly searches in the US, 50 in the UK, 10 in Canada, and 10 in Australia. These are the four countries of most importance to our website. Merchant Services has a 57% difficulty level and we do not rank for it in Google at all since we have never tried to optimize for this term in the past. Also according to the Google Keyword Tool, this term receives 14,800 monthly searches in the US, 1,600 in the UK, 590 in Canada, and 260 in Australia. Clearly, merchant services could potentially get us much more traffic than offshore merchant accounts if transitioned correctly. I suppose my bottom line question is this: Would it be a bad idea to change my primary focus keyword on my home page? What type of results should I expect to see if searching Google for my company name? Thank you for all of your help. Meghan
Senior Copywriter of Instabill0 -
How hard is it for a national brand to win for Superlative qualified non-brand keywords?
Is it worth trying to target non-brand keywords with qualifiers like: best, top, good? Naturally review or comparison sites are built to target these keywords/searches, but can big brands compete in this landscape? Does anyone have any good examples?
Branding | | GSI0 -
Organic Traffic from irrelevant keywords in GA?
Hi, I am doing SEO for a website that deals in 4-wheeler tyres. While reviewing the organic traffic in Google Analytics, i noticed some keywords that are completely irrelevant to the theme of the website. Some are porn related terms while some are like google, yahoo, laptops, youtube etc. It seems someone is doing negative SEO for my website, as a result of which a decent number of searches are coming from these irrelevant terms. What should i do to block traffic from such terms as this may harm my website's performance in search engines. Please suggest a solution as soon as possible.
Branding | | PFX1110 -
SEOMoz homepage - the lack of img alt tags
This might be a stupid question but the homepage of SEOMoz doesn't have img alt tags on the three feature screenshots. I've hovered my mouse and looked at the code, the images just have the link to www.seomoz.org/features Everyone goes adding image tags is key, any reason why SEOMoz don't?
Branding | | Bio-RadAbs1 -
How to balance International and Local Search targeting?
Hi guys, A local company provides tourism services in Spain but its potential clients reside abroad in USA mostly. This means we have 2 search potentials:
Branding | | emerald
1. For reaching international clients via international search in advance before they arrive (preferred).
2. Last minute booking potential for local serach when they have already arrived and seek a service while already here. So far we have targeted USA and international searches solely and ignored local search. We have tried to target our website to USA in GoogleWebmasterTools and link building location mostly. But what about local search? Would establishing ourselves in Local Search (google places and maps etc) be a confusion for Google and mess with our good rankings in US? Or would it add to our potential of additional last minute local seaches? What's the best approach in a situation like this? Is a happy medium possible? Thanks in advance.0 -
Do you buy keyword strong domains around your brand?
Do you buy keyword domains around your brand? If so do you do this for future use or for redirecting to a sub domain off your core site or for other reasons?
Branding | | charlesgrimm0