• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. On-Page Optimization
        4. Target keywords on homepage or sub page?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        Target keywords on homepage or sub page?

        On-Page Optimization
        4
        12
        3826
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • timscullin
          timscullin last edited by

          Is it better to target main keywords on a site's homepage, or in a sub page.

          I would usually assume the homepage, but if the domain for the homepage doesn't include the keyword is it better to have a sub page with an exact match URL?

          For example we target the keyword "abc123"

          Is it better to optimise the homepage:

          brandname.com

          Or create a page to target it:

          brandname.com/abc123/

          And leave the homepage to target brand keywords, but link to the "abc123" page.

          Whats the best option?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • timscullin
            timscullin @timscullin last edited by

            Haha well done 🙂

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Francisco_Meza
              Francisco_Meza @timscullin last edited by

              I get enough search traffic from it to support 10 people. I guess the phrase "lot of traffic" is a  matter of perspective.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • timscullin
                timscullin @timscullin last edited by

                Yep this is very helpful. I see you have lots of good rankings too. Do you get a lot of search traffic from them?

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Francisco_Meza
                  Francisco_Meza @timscullin last edited by

                  This is my landing page's rel canonical.

                  | rel="canonical" href="http://www.shipoverseas.com/us/ship-car/africa/shipping-car-to-nigeria.html"/> |
                  |   |

                  I don't point it to a category page.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • xtopher66
                    xtopher66 @timscullin last edited by

                    Fransisco, are you using canononical tag to any effect on pointing the sub pages to the head category page?

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Francisco_Meza
                      Francisco_Meza @timscullin last edited by

                      Use my site as an example. www.shipoverseas.com

                      The homepage is about "international car shipping".

                      All the landing pages are about "shipping cars to xyz country".

                      When I 1st started this site, I didn't know that my home page was going to be about "international car shipping". I thought I was going to try to have it rank for "ship car to Europe", "ship car to au", "ship car to africa". Instead I made categories + landing pages.

                      I hope that helps you organize your site.

                      Tim, my marketing strategy is based off what people are looking for, not what I think is best. Look into your GA to find these clues.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • xtopher66
                        xtopher66 last edited by

                        I think theres a lot to be said good about exact match domains.........visitors see the words in the domain name and thats not a bad thing. Everybody got a little weighting from EMD`s, now they dont, so your not losing anything over the domain naming, just a levelling. Its not a penalty.

                        Whether to brand or not is another question and of course if you do then brand domain will be best. (Google now loves brands more than life itself, so worth considering.)

                        Consider this scenario. You are New York Lawnmowers, you have domain newyorklandmowers.com and when you place your brand links...they are in fact possibly coincide with anchor text, Over oprimisation penalty? Else you can only use URL or varying forms of anchor text.

                        If you are Lehman of New york and sell Lawnmowers you can be lehman.com and use Lehman as branding links, the URL, a small percentage of New York Lawnmowers anchor texts and other variations. (Dont forget blank images too)

                        Google will find the brand name without even fitting it in the title, its that smart, from the content and geolocation. Leave the title for the main target money keywords. Your subpages will not carry the same weight as the index page, but of course build links to them. You might find your subpage is against keywords on another site index page. Thats unavoidable.

                        PS. I changed my brand to the name Google but all i got was webmasters complaining about dropped rankings 🙂

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • timscullin
                          timscullin @Francisco_Meza last edited by

                          Hey Francisco,

                          Yeah I agree with you on the exact match domain, and I think you're right about opting for the memorable brandable domain.

                          But what do you mean about using the homepage as a representation of all the landing pages?

                          How do you avoid the homepage competing with the sub pages?

                          Thanks man!

                          Francisco_Meza xtopher66 timscullin 6 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • timscullin
                            timscullin @MoosaHemani last edited by

                            Hey Moosa,

                            Thanks for your response.

                            Wouldn't there be an issue of diluting my onpage optimisation if I tried to target multiple keywords on my homepage? (especially in this case where the keywords aren't very complimentary)

                            And with the sub pages wouldn't that then be competing with the homepage, somewhat cannibalising our SEO efforts across 2 pages?

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • MoosaHemani
                              MoosaHemani Banned last edited by

                              One can have a different opinion from me so I am advising you something I would do if I would be at your place.

                              I would list down all the keywords I want to target on the website and divide them in to 2 parts Primary keywords and Secondary keywords keeping their importance ad competition in mind. I will then target the secondary keywords to sub pages and try to target primary keywords on the home page.

                              Also, I will create sub pages for exact match keyword (for primary keywords) to give support to the home page!

                              timscullin 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                              • Francisco_Meza
                                Francisco_Meza last edited by

                                I use the home page as a representation of all the landing pages.

                                regarding your Exact Match vs Brand domain, Matt Cutts already announced that he was going to lower the weight of Exact Match domains. I guess it all depends on what you are looking for. I'm in it for the long term so I always opt to get a memorable domain (brandable).

                                This is the approach I use: brandname.com/abc123/

                                timscullin 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                • 1 / 1
                                • First post
                                  Last post

                                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.

                                • See all categories

                                Related Questions

                                • moz12pro

                                  Targeting Home page is better for local seo

                                  Hey guys i need know whether targeting homepage for local SEO is good or creating separate page for locatin

                                  On-Page Optimization | | moz12pro
                                  0
                                • cinzia09

                                  How many keywords should I optimize a page for?

                                  Hi, There is a lot of debate going on on whether to use a single keyword per page or multiple keywords per page. What I know for sure is that it is not advisable to repeat the same exact keyword in different pages. I need to optimize product pages, categories and pages for an online store and still do not know if it is better to: 1-work with one main keyword per page plus latent semantic keywords, 2-to optimize a page for multiple different keywords (2 to 4 keywords) which are strongly related to the main topic or to the product sold in a particular product page 3- use single keyword for each page (and no more than one keyword per page). Some seo gurus argue this is the best way to get higher ranking for that particular page in the serps. My personal opinion would be 1 or 2, but I would like to hear what you suggest and think about it. Any suggestion or opinion is welcome and appreciated. Thanks in advance

                                  On-Page Optimization | | cinzia09
                                  0
                                • Matthew_smart

                                  Home page keyword in url

                                  I have been looking into SEO for a few weeks now trying to perfect a homepage. Going through various sources on MOZ, and other examples out there on the internet, I keep seeing that you should have your keyword in the URL of the page. The homepage is the page most people want to rank the highest in google searches, however, you cannot put the keyword in the URL as most home page URLs are simply /. Should I actually make the home like this: www.example.com/key-word-example? I would imagine this would not be the normal for many users and would seem like it's not the home page.

                                  On-Page Optimization | | Matthew_smart
                                  0
                                • mblsolutions

                                  Why is my contact us page ranking higher than my home page?

                                  Hello, It doesn't matter what keyword I put into Google (when I'm not signed in and have cleaned down my browsing history) the contact us page ranks higher than the home page. I'm not sure why this is, the home page has a higher page authority, more links and more social media shares, the website is an established one. When I have checked Google Analytics my home page gets more people landing on it than the contact us page. It looks like people are ignoring the contact us page and scrolling down until they find the home page. I'd appreciate any help or advice you might have. Thank you.

                                  On-Page Optimization | | mblsolutions
                                  2
                                • HrishikeshKarov

                                  Home page or landing page?

                                  Hello, I want to ask a question related to that - Should we put keywords in the home page title if we wish to position another landing page better for particular keywords? I have read in one website about SEO that it's good the main keywords of your website to be positioned in homepage title also. f.e. Let's say we have website about web-design and our company is named Company Ltd. The title of the home page is "Company Ltd.  - Web design, SEO, etc" We have also another inner page named "Web design | Company Ltd.". So should we leave the first page name only "Company Ltd." and the landing page's name "Web design | Company Ltd." . I don't know if they both have the same keyword in their title they won't compete with each other.

                                  On-Page Optimization | | HrishikeshKarov
                                  0
                                • jemindesai

                                  Can I use Same Keyword for Multi pages Title Tags?

                                  Hello All, I am working on client website and currently they are targeting One Keywords for multi pages. As I have search with Allintitle: Search query and Google display around 37 pages of website which carry same keyword in "Title Tags". I have told to client to change the "Title Tags" but they want that keyword for all relevant pages. So I want to know is that harm in Search Engine Ranking? Note: They have not done the link building activities for multi pages with same Keyword, they are using only in "Title Tags" only

                                  On-Page Optimization | | jemindesai
                                  0
                                • MarieA

                                  301 redirects from several sub-pages to one sub-page

                                  Hi! I have 14 sub-pages i deleted earlier today. But ofcourse Google can still find them, and gives everyone that gives them a go a 404 error. I have come to the understading that this wil hurt the rest of my site, at least as long as Google have them indexed. These sub-pages lies in 3 different folders, and i want to redirect them to a sub-page in a folder number 4. I have already an htaccess file, but i just simply cant get it to work! It is the same file as i use for redirecting trafic from mydomain.no to www.mydomain.no, and i have tried every kind of variation i can think of with the sub-pages. Has anyone perhaps had the same problem before, or for any other reason has the solution, and can help me with how to compose the htaccess file? 🙂 You have to excuse me if i'm using the wrong terms, missing something i should have seen under water while wearing a blindfold, or i am misspelling anything. I am neither very experienced with anything surrounding seo or anything else that has with internet to do, nor am i from an englishspeaking country. Hope someone here can light up my path 🙂 Thats at least something you can say in norwegian...

                                  On-Page Optimization | | MarieA
                                  1
                                • MikeDelaCruz77

                                  E-Commerce product pages that have multiple skus with unique pages.

                                  Hey Guys, With the recent farm/panda update from google i'm at a cross roads as to how I should optimize product pages for a project i'm working on for a client. My client sells tires and one particular tire brand can have up to 15 models and each model can have up to 30 sizes. IE: 'Michelin Pilot Sport Cup' comes in 15 different sizes. Each size will have it's unique product page and description bringing me to my question. Should I use the same description on every size? I do plan on writting unique content for each tire model however i'm not sure if I should do it for every size. After all the tire model description is the same for every size, each size doesn't carry any unique characteristics that I can describe. Thanks in advance!

                                  On-Page Optimization | | MikeDelaCruz77
                                  0

                                Get started with Moz Pro!

                                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                Start my free trial
                                Products
                                • Moz Pro
                                • Moz Local
                                • Moz API
                                • Moz Data
                                • STAT
                                • Product Updates
                                Moz Solutions
                                • SMB Solutions
                                • Agency Solutions
                                • Enterprise Solutions
                                • Digital Marketers
                                Free SEO Tools
                                • Domain Authority Checker
                                • Link Explorer
                                • Keyword Explorer
                                • Competitive Research
                                • Brand Authority Checker
                                • Local Citation Checker
                                • MozBar Extension
                                • MozCast
                                Resources
                                • Blog
                                • SEO Learning Center
                                • Help Hub
                                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                • How-to Guides
                                • Moz Academy
                                • API Docs
                                About Moz
                                • About
                                • Team
                                • Careers
                                • Contact
                                Why Moz
                                • Case Studies
                                • Testimonials
                                Get Involved
                                • Become an Affiliate
                                • MozCon
                                • Webinars
                                • Practical Marketer Series
                                • MozPod
                                Connect with us

                                Contact the Help team

                                Join our newsletter
                                Moz logo
                                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                • Accessibility
                                • Terms of Use
                                • Privacy

                                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.