Ranking a homepage for keywords
-
We recently found a handful of keywords we would like our homepage to rank for (for example - customer experience). On our homepage we have articles (4-5 posted daily) that feature the keywords we are targeting (one being customer experience). How do the keywords we are using in our daily articles that are posted to the homepage affect the overall keyword ranking for the homepage?
In other words do the keywords used in the articles (title, first 2-3 paragraphs, meta description, etc.) all roll up/build up to the homepage's keywords or how does that work?
-
Hi Carly,
if you want to know more or need further help: Bryan Dean's On-Page SEO Anatomy infographic serves as a good start.
You may also provide a more concrete example by a private message via my profile page. I can help you.
-
Wow, this is great, thank you! Do you have any advice for those looking to create or determine a "hub" page?
-
Hi, Joost De Valk wrote a great article on this subject in 2011:
“You see, sites don’t rank: pages rank. If you want to rank for a keyword, you’ll need to determine which page is going to be the page ranking for that keyword....Adding that keyword to the title of every page is not going to help. Nor is writing 200 articles about it without one central article to link all those articles to. You need one single page that is the center of the content about that topic. One “hub” page, if you will.”
Now that you understand that you should probably create a page in an url http://www.domain.com/keyword rather than trying to rank http://www.domain.com — here’s the answer as best as I can give easily since Google is secretive.
3 Basic Factors:
- relevancy signals
- internal and outbound linking
- content freshness
1. Relevancy Signals
Bryan Dean's article gives, among other ranking signals, a good overview of relevancy for a page (not a site), many of which you mentioned:
- Keyword density and latent semantic indexing
- Heading and meta tags. See: http://cbutterworth.com/do-h1-tags-still-help-seo/ and much more..
- Content length. See: http://blog.serpiq.com/how-important-is-content-length-why-data-driven-seo-trumps-guru-opinions/
It is reasonable to presume that when Google goes through your site (perhaps via an sitemap) it does make some minor conclusions about the general themes of your site and that may affect your homepage’s rank.
2. Internal and Outbound Linking
Now, this is the easiest way to affect the rank of your homepage with the help of the posts you are doing. Make sure to link to the latest news, categories and tag cloud on your homepage.
You may show posts from a specific category, where the category is the keyword for which you want to rank. Thus Google sees that your homepage displays keywords and links about that topic prominently.
Don’t go overboard obviously. 3 latest news items in the category defined by the keyword, a link to the keyword as category and as tag or two is plenty enough for the homepage.
3. Content Freshness
Cyrus Shepard’s 2011 post on the Moz Blog serves as a good introduction to how content freshness might impact your site:
“Websites that add new pages at a higher rate may earn a higher freshness score than sites that add content less frequently.Some SEOs insist you should add 20-30% new pages to your site every year. This provides the opportunity to create fresh, relevant content, although you shouldn’t neglect your old content if it needs attention.”
Google also measures how your users react to your content:
“As content becomes outdated, folks spend less time on your site. They press the back button to Google's results and choose another url. Google picks up on these user behavior metrics and scores your content accordingly.”
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
-
How to find low difficulty keywords
how to find informative low difficulty keywords. how can I get content ideas? I have lots of content ideas but it's not good search volume on google. I have a kitchen-related affiliate website called https://gloryspy.com
Keyword Research | | MalikJan0 -
Proper use of location in keywords
¿If I want to track keywords in a specific location, do I need to write the keyword with the location or only the keyword? For example: If I want to track the results of the keyword "hair salon" in a specific city, should I write "Hair salon in (city chosen) or only hair salon.
Keyword Research | | reginadelafuente0 -
How to stay organized for keyword research?
As most of you know keyword research can be quite taxing. I have been trying to get organized and do extensive keyword research. But trying to stay organized is proving to be more and more difficult. Can I get some expert views from experts in the community as to how you all go about organizing your research and how you track things over time. Thanks
Keyword Research | | EricMoore0 -
Reasonable price for Keyword Research
If I knew what to look for I would do it myself. But I want it done now. The words would relate to one broad category with possible gold that can be mined from 12 sub-categories categories. In my preliminary seat of the pants research I didn't find much in the sub-categories but there were around 10 key words in the broad categories. I am getting a lot of long tail words ranked but I don't believe there is hardly any traffic. Does anyone know what a reasonable estimate is for this degree of keyword research? Also if anyone would like to submit a bid for this work please personal email me. Utah Tiger.
Keyword Research | | Boodreaux0 -
What's the best keyword tool for discovering regional/metropolitan area keywords?
Generally I use the Google Keyword Tool for my keyword research, but given the fact that the data is either country specific or global, I was wondering what others use for regional/dma-specific keyword discovery. Regional traffic is very important to my site, so I'm hoping to find a tool that I can use to find keywords germane to my audience.
Keyword Research | | BostonWright0 -
How to find keywords getting significant traffic
How can we check with the Google Keyword Tool to figure out which keywords are getting significant traffic. Needs explanation for the bolded part. I am referring to the Q and A at - http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-there-a-report-in-seomoz-that-will-show-me-what-keywords-each-page-ranks-for-on-my-site The best way to see the information you're looking for is to take all keywords that sent you an organic search visit for a given time period in your analytics and run them through a rank checker. You can then cross-check this data with the Google Keyword Tool to figure out which keywords are getting significant traffic.
Keyword Research | | seoug_20050 -
How do you order similar keywords when writing content?
Let's say I sell widgets: plastic widgets, paper widgets, brass widgets and steel widgets. These are in order by how popular they are but none is so popular to really stand on it's own. When writing general content about widgets, lets say for the main Widgets page, would you write: 1. "We sell plastic, paper, brass and steel widgets." -or- 2. "We sell plastic widgets, paper widgets, brass widgets and steel widgets." I understand I can have specific pages for Plastic Widgets, Paper Widgets, etc., but like I said this would be for a main category page, maybe even for a quick "this is what we do" opening paragraph on the homepage. Is it better to be concise like in example 1? Or to individually call out each type like in example 2? I'm looking for SEO insight and the customer experience viewpoint as well.
Keyword Research | | rball10 -
Search Traffic down 50% but rankings same?
One of my client's sites is experiencing a major decrease in search traffic (by 50%) but the main terms she usually gets traffic for, she's ranking the same or even better over the period of time that the traffic has decreased. What could cause this?
Keyword Research | | bvrob0