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?
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
-
Keyword optimization when two keywords mean the same thing
How does one best go about optimizing a page, meta title, and meta description for two keyword when the two keywords mean the same thing (e.g. attorney vs. lawyer). It's awfully tedious, obnoxious, and spammy-looking to keep putting "attorney/lawyer," "attorney-lawyer," or "attorney or lawyer" into content, titles, and descriptions.
Web Design | | micromano1 -
Moz crawl showing up ?s=keyword pages as errors
Hi all, Hoping someone can she some light on a fix with ref to wordpress and the search function it uses as Moz is craling some pages which reference the search domain.com/?s=keyword Errors showing up are duplicate pages, descriptions and titles. The search function is not important on this site and I have tried to use a plugin which disables the search page which it does but these errors still show up. Can anyone assist as this is the final piece of the puzzle and then we're down to 0 issues on the site.
Web Design | | wtfi0 -
Ranking for competitive keywords
Hi Folks, I am relatively new to SEO and I was hoping folks here could give me some guidance/tips on ranking in a competitive keyword space. My client is a health care provider and they wish to rank for terms like 'heart attack' which I believe will be quite difficult due to it being a short tail keyword and it is a very competitive space. Any an all advice and input is greatly appreciated. Regards, Dave
Web Design | | icanseeu0 -
Re-designing a homepage
Hi all, Of those who've done it or have valuable advice to impart, what are the things to look out for when re-designing a homepage? In the same breath, what are vital considerations and elements to include/features to bear in mind when 'prettying up' a primary landing page as a homepage essentially serves as? UX fundamentals? Thanks folks
Web Design | | Martin_S0 -
Without Keyword Info From Google - How do we re-do a site not knowing what to keep?
Bit of a riddle I am trying to figure out here... I have a client that receives some visits via organic searches (around 700). Most of which are to the homepage. The client isn't actively targeting any keywords yet (on purpose) and the homepage doesn't have much on it. I've been hired to do keyword research and re-develop the site but this is the first site I've done since google really put the hurt on keyword information. My worry is that without knowing what keywords people are using currently to search and find the site, I will be potentially deleting information that is bringing in traffic. Looking at the traffic and other keywords I can view I think the keywords are branded which makes it a bit easier but again, it is a bit worrisome, not so much for this client but for future work. Anyone have any ideas other than looking at webmaster tools and landing pages?
Web Design | | JoshBowers20120 -
Keywords in url - specific case question
There are a bunch of questions about keywords in the url and so far what I've gathered is that it's good to have them but keep it simple so it doesn't look stuffed. I'm working on redesigning some sites that were originally setup by a group who had no understanding of SEO (or perhaps I should say a misunderstanding) and spent a lot of time stuffing keywords EVERYWHERE. In some cases they weren't too far off but in others I think they just went overboard. One of the areas I'm trying to fix are the paths which leads to the following concerns. One of the sites has a basketball section and through the use of the Adwords keyword tool they determined that most people are searching for "basketball hoops". My first question is, how reliable are the monthly search numbers in the Adwords keyword tool? Are they accurate enough to warrant forming keyword strategies based on the results? As it relates to the url issue, the current tree for the basketball section of the site looks like this: /basketball (the landing page for the whole section, there are other sport specific pages as well) /basketball/hoops (goes nowhere. not sure why they didn't just go to /basketball-hoops/x for other pages) /basketball/hoops/72in-backboards (the systems are split into three different backboard sizes, these pages group them onto one overview page per size) /basketball/hoops/72in-backboards/specific-basketball-goal (the actual basketball goal details page with options to buy and such) So what I'm wondering about this setup is: does having /basketball/hoops take care of having the "basketball hoops" search term or would it be more effective to switch to /basketball-hoops? If it's fine to leave it at /basketball/hoops, do you think it would be beneficial to create an actual page for that path? We found that actually more people search for "basketball basket" than "basketball hoops" so maybe that would be a good page to try to make use of that term and explain maybe why people think "basket" instead of "hoop" and why we call ours "goals" or something. I tend to navigate pages by deleting path arguments and I hate when I land on a nonexistent path so I'm leaning toward changing the paths but just don't know if it's worth it at this point. Additionally, on one of the other sites, we have a domain that is the main keyword we want to rank for: swingsets.com The other company I mentioned then decided to put all of the product pages under: swingsets.com/swing-sets/{category}/{set-height}-{'swing-set'|'playset'|'swingsets'|'play-set'|etc...}/combo{#} So that comes out to look something like this: swingsets.com/swing-sets/outback/5ft-playsets/combo2 I've never liked that path setup. It looks stuffed to me, especially once they start using '5ft-swing-sets' and '6ft-play-set' on other product pages. It's inconsistent which is another issue I have since I tend to surf by path. Another issue with that setup is the final argument of combo{#} but there's nothing I can really do about that because they call the products out as combinations. The only actual product name is the "outback" part. I've been trying to come up with a better path setup for a long time now but again I'm concerned that I may just be wasting my time. The only thing I did do was make the height section consistently {height}-playsets. Is that good enough or should these paths remove /swing-sets from the beginning? The actual /swing-sets page is a good and valuable landing page but then I'm not sure if it remains valuable to keep it in the paths for the product pages afterward. Any insight into this dilemma would be appreciated. I've been stewing over this for a long time and my reasoning always becomes circular since I can see plenty of reasons for keeping them the way they are and simplifying them.
Web Design | | EscaladeSports0 -
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 -
Keyword rich footer links negative effect
Based on bits and pieces of information I've read on SEOmoz, am I correct to state that:
Web Design | | Partouter
"Keyword-rich footer links effect pages negatively in terms of the keyword referenced in the anchor text?" This means footer links in Thanks in advance fellow Mozzers!0