Canoncial tag for homepage?
-
I have a site that gets most of it's traffic from one keyword combination, but I've noticed lately that instead of sending people to the homepage, it's sending people to an internal page.
This isn't a problem, except for the fact that all the best link juice and domain authority has been directed at the homepage.
There's not a lot of content on the homepage, so is it worth setting up a canonical tag on the homepage for this internal page to ensure that the page authority/link juice helps to boost this page that is already being indexed for the keyword?
-
Yeah I'd say that Google is just preferring the internal page over the homepage... the content is more relevant, the keyword is in the url, etc.
-
Yeah the internal page has the keyword in the url - and it actually has more relevant content. So perhaps it's ok that that page is being ranked, it's just a shame that the homepage has the better page rank, so we're not getting as strong of a ranking as I think we would if the homepage were getting more of the internal links.
Is it a good idea to point internal links from other pages to the homepage instead, when the internal page really has the most relevant content just to try to get a better ranking? I'd say no, right?
-
Yeah, I tend to agree with Michael. Make sure this isn't an issue with your home-page. Google does seem to be preferring more targeted pages these days, though, and it can happen for a lot of reasons. This is an older post by Rand, but it's still very relevant:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions
-
Oh, I think you're asking for trouble if you do that.
Unless your home page is really badly targeted for that keyword, or the internal page has the keyword in the URL and your domain doesn't, or somehow you've built a ton of links to the internal page and NOT the homepage, this is really suspicious, and makes me think that Google might be levying a penalty against your home page.
If that's the case, the canonical tag runs the risk of transferring the penalty
First off, install Chartelligence in your Chrome browser, and then take a look at your Google Analytics to see when the traffic dropped for your home page, and from that, if that lines up with a particular iteration of Panda or Penguin.
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
-
Can I use £ character in title tag?
Hi - Can you use something like "save £££s" in the title tag. Have looked but can't see an answer. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | StevieD0 -
Can bots crawl this homepage's content?
The website is https://ashleydouglas.com.au/ I tried using http://www.seo-browser.com/ to see if bots could see the content on the site, but the tool was unable to retrieve the page. I used mobile-friendly test and it just rendered some menu links - no content and images. I also used Fetch and Render on Search Console. The result for 'how google sees the page' and 'how a visitor sees the page' are the same and only showing the main header image. Anything below isn't shown. Does this mean that bots can't actually read all content on the page past the header image? I'm not well versed with what's going on with the code. Why are the elements below the header not rendering? Is it the theme? Plugins? Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | nhhernandez0 -
Can you use the canonical tag and rel=next and rel=prev on category pages.
We have a conflict of information between our web developers and our SEO company. We are an on-line retail company hence we have a fair number of different categories. Our site is set up with the rel=next and rel=prev tags. Our SEO company have asked us to implement canonical links on our category pages and leave the rel=next and rel=prev tags as they are. Our web developers are saying by doing this we are asking Google to ignore all of our products on all of the pages except page 1 which would mean Google would not index a lot of our products. I have looked at a few articles but I am struggling to understand which way to go. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne0 -
Contact Form On Homepage - Best Practices
How important is it to have a contact form on the homepage of a service-based business? I am trying to decide if having a form on front page will increase the number of people filling it out.
On-Page Optimization | | TheSEODR0 -
Meta tag "revisit after" - useful?
Hi everybody, I've rarely seen the "revisit after" meta tag during the last 1,5 years. As some of my current client websites are still using it and I'm not sure, if it's still usefull/has any effect, I'd like to hear from the community. Any advices/hints/experiences with the tag? Thanks in advance and cheers from Germany Sven
On-Page Optimization | | targi420 -
Tags in wordpress -Important?
Hello, I use the Wordpress plataform in my blog. What I want to ask is, how important is the tag field in the posts area. Since I have the title tag and meta description how important is that field? Its really a question that was in my mind since I start doing SEO 😛 Tks in advance guys 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | PedroM0 -
Re-write homepage url for non EMD for SEO
Hi, A lot of talk about EMD's lately not just here but all over SEO and affiliate forums. I've dabbled in emd's but have decided to go against the grain and use a non emd. I think I can optimise hard enough to rank and at the same time build a brand, which is where most emd's fail. But my question is this: If you are targeting lets say the term 'running trainers' and the domain is runyoursocksoff.com would it be more beneficial to rewrite the root domain to this: runyoursocksoff.com/running-trainers/ It does look messy to me and more then likely I would not use this but I have seen it a few times and was wondering if its a work around for non emd's.
On-Page Optimization | | activitysuper0