No Content on home page + rankings
-
If a home page has no content will it hurt the sites ability to rank? The interior pages will have content but not the home page. (See attached image)
My client does not want content on the home page as he feels it will take away from the look and feel he wants to achieve.
This website is actually 10 sites or locations in one as we intend to market each location (a total of 10) separately.
In reality the home page is a doorway page to each separate location.
I'd like feedback if possible as to the necessity or not, of content on the Home Page of this or any website. Will the lack of content hurt on the Homer Page hurt with SEO?
Thanks
Gary Downey -
Oh this is why I was under the impression that every page is ranked individually. http://www.seomoz.org/q/pr-of-homepage-when-other-pages-have-more-lniks
-
My guess is that the homepage tends to rank best because this is the page that other websites will tend to link to.
It sounds like you want to build links to inner pages in the hopes that they will rank, which is fine. But, if I am a reporter, or a customer who wants to write about my experience at your restaurant, I'm most likely to link to the home page.
-
Keri,
We are in the process of building a mobile version of the website along side of building a whole new site.
Thanks for the response.
-
After you fix these problems they should be making a lot more money.
-
Not rankings, but consider user experience, especially with mobile. If someone is looking for somewhere to eat in the next two hours and they're using their phone, they're going to want a page and site that makes it easy to find information about the location, hours, etc. You might also bring that aspect to the customer and let them know the potential conversion issues (unless you're already planning something for mobile -- the existing site looked just like the desktop site on my iPhone right now).
-
The website has a lot of SEO issues. I just took the contract on two weeks ago and we are in the process of rebuilding the website.
For sure we don't want to loose any of the inbound links pointing to the home page or other pages for that fact.
I agree with you as far as taking advantage of the home page and placing content on it. I will be trying to convince them to do so.
The challenge will be in changing the url's for each page without disturbing the inbound links currently pointing to url's like this one. (This is a current live url)
http://bobbyvans.com/Bobby_Vans_Steakhouse/46th_%26_Park_Avenue.html
The site currently has serious canonical and duplicate page issues.
-
Thanks for the answer. I have the same mind set as you. I'm under the impression that you can rank deep pages higher than your home page. This is a somewhat unique situation as we are trying to rank 10 locations under one sub domain. It's not your typical one location SEO project.
With this all said I'm going to try and talk my client into adding some content on the home page.
-
Run the Bobby Vans site on Open Site Explorer....
Homepage has... highest page authority, most linking root domains, most inbound links. I would be taking full advantage of that.
Also, there is a gold mine of wasted links because the site has a lot of canonical and URL problems that could be solved by a good SEOing.
-
I was not aware that SE ranked home pages higher. There are pages on sites that have higher PR then the sites subdomian. How can this be?
IMO the reason we usually see a home page ranking higher in PR is because its the home page and people naturally link to it, or type it in when they look for you. Also the subdomain is included in every URL. For these reasons I can see how the home page can get some extra authoritative qualities.
But I was always under the impression that every page is ranked independently.
-
Absolutely, every page is ranked independently. I have heard of sites that have deep pages that have higher page rank, then the subdomain.
Are you only targeting local areas? if so the home page does not need to have any content. However the pages you want to rank are independent and should have a diverse keywords in H1,Title, and Body. When building these local pages be sure to get links from these regions. ie if you targeting "Cars in Florida" build links within Florida to the site.
-
The homepage is usually the most powerful page on a website and it is a waste of that resource not to use it to go after one of the most difficult queries.
You can compete with an interior page but it generally is less effective. NYC steak house queries are rather competitive and to go after them with an interior page will probably result in lower rankings.
If you keep the homepage an image the client will make less money.
If this was my site the homepage would have quite a bit of text that includes lots of steak and other restaurant keywords. We would be making a lot more money with that text than we would be making with an artsy image homepage.
The decision is artsy versus money. Simple.
-
Just a side note. This restaurant chain has locations outside of New York City so it wouldn't be practical to have the home page Rank for "new york steak house". Besides New York City they have locations in DC, Long Island and JFK. Isn't the proper SEO strategy to rank the individual pages/locations? If I'm correct in my assumption then why is the Home Page that important?
-
Donnie,
I agree it won't hurt. The home page is one of many pages. Can't you focus SEO efforts on the other pages? Won't search engines spider and index the other pages within the website.
-
I realize no content on a page is bad for SEO, do search engines give more importance to home pages than other pages in a site? Can you not focus your SEO efforts on other pages? Why does it have to be the home page?
After all, at the end of the day is it not pages that rank?
The Home Page is just one on many pages on a website. Can I not focus my SEO efforts on the other pages and get them to rank for chosen keywords?
-
This restaurant is a chain. The plan is to setup a separate Google Places page for each individual location/page and market the locations individually.
In other words the goal is to rank individual pages within the site. If someone does a search query for "best new york steak house" or "steak houses in new york city" why can't one or several of the interior pages rank for that term? Does it have to be the home page? The Home Page is just one page within the site. Isn't it true that pages rank not websites per say? Is the Home Page more important than any other page?
I guess my real question is does Google give more importance to the home page than other pages on a site?
Thanks
Gary Downey -
Photographers like image heavy home pages as well.
They are horrid for SEO.
You CAN rank with no text, but it is very difficult & might not be worth the extra effort...
-
The more words that appear on the homepage the more traffic it will pull. Every word on the page can combine with every other word on the page to match queries typed into search engines by people searching for something.
It is possible to rank without content on the homepage and it is possible to get in trouble for hiding content on the homepage.
If client's goal is to rank for his name that will probably be easy with no content. If client wants to rank for "new york steakhouse" then he will need to accomplish that by anchor text links, the power of an interior pages or a strong effort on local search (which I see has already been done).
I would never have a zero text content homepage because I know that I would lose a lot of traffic and as a result a lot of sales. If client values the "artsy" look of his homepage he will pay for it with lost revenue.
-
It wont hurt. However, it wont help.
Google looks at the content in your title, H1, and body. I would recommend having some text on the home page.
SEO is 200 factors. I do as many as possible. In this case this may be one of those factors you wont be able to touch up on.
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
-
Ecommerce product page duplicate content
Hi, I know this topic has been covered in the past but I haven't been able to find the answers to this specific thing. So let's say on a website, all the product pages contain partial duplicate content - i.e. this could be delivery options or returning policy etc. Would this be classed as duplicate content? Or is this something that you would not get concerned about if it's let's say 5-10% of the content on the page? Or if you think this is something you'd take into consideration, how would you fix it? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | MH-UK0 -
Duplicate Page Content
Hey Moz Community, Newbie here. On my second week of Moz and I love it but have a couple questions regarding crawl errors. I have two questions: 1. I have a few pages with duplicate content but it say 0 duplicate URL's. How do I know what is duplicated in this instance? 2. I'm not sure if anyone here is familiar with an IDX for a real estate website. But I have this setup on my site and it seems as though all the links it generates for different homes for sale show up as duplicate pages. For instance, http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78258 is listed as having duplicate page content compared with 7 duplicate URLS: http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78247
On-Page Optimization | | HandyRealtySA
http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78253
http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78245
http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78261
http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78258
http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78260
http://www.handyrealtysa.com/idx/mls...tonio_tx_78260 I've attached a screenshot that shows 2 of the pages that state duplicate page content but have 0 duplicate URLs. Also you can see somewhat about the idx duplicate pages. rel="canonical" is functioning on these pages, or so it seems when I view the source code from the page. Any help is greatly appreciated. skitch.png0 -
Old landing page modifications - should I change the content?
One of our most popular landing page is starting to be a little bit out dated, should I keep the old content and update with newer text or is it safe to completely replace the old content with the new content without losing our organic traffic on this page?
On-Page Optimization | | rusted880 -
Should I consolidate pages to prevent "thin content"
I have a site based on downloadable images which tend to slow a site. In order to increase speed I divided certain pages up so that there will be less images on each page such as here: http://www.kindergartenteacherresources.com/2011/09/23/spongebob-alphabet-worksheets-uppercase-letters-a-h/ http://www.kindergartenteacherresources.com/2011/09/23/spongebob-alphabet-worksheets-uppercase-letters-i-q/ http://www.kindergartenteacherresources.com/2011/09/23/spongebob-alphabet-worksheets-uppercase-letters-r-z/ The problem is that I now have potential duplicate content and thin content. Should I consolidate them and put all of the content from the 3 pages on one page? or maybe keep them as they are but add a rel previous / next tag? or any other suggestion to prevent a duplicate/thin content penalty while not slowing down the site too much?
On-Page Optimization | | JillB20130 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Content
For duplicate page content, how different should pages be? For example, I have seven locations and on each location page, we offer a discount. The discounts are the same currently and open into a pop-up window. So it looks something like this: mysite.com/locationA/dicount mysite.com/locationB/discount mysite.com/locationX/discount The pages are identical. Should I change the verbiage on each page or let it be? I noticed that our organic search rankings have dropped since our site upgrade and this is one item that SEOMOZ has noted. Thanks! DHO
On-Page Optimization | | DougHoltOnline0 -
Dynamic pages on a static html pages websiite
Good evening everybody. I am new on SeoMoz that I find very helpful in my work. I am not a web developer so please excuse me if my technical language is poor.I have an issue that maybe you can help me to solve. I work for a company who has a website, which is old and very well positioned on google for the most important keywords for the field of the company I work for (dentistry). It is a website made some years ago and it's made of static html pages.I would like to add a section in my website where I can post articles, like a blog (I think of a wordpress-style website) with daily posts (so with a dynamic page). Is there a way to do this without modifying the structure of the website and without losing pages, urls and ranking? We're on the first google page for many keywords of interests in our city and it would be a great damage for us to lose those positions.Thank you very much!
On-Page Optimization | | adec0 -
Exstinguishing Page Rank?
Hi Guys, Here is a thought. Google gives more weight to links in content, less to navigation etc.. Therefore if they say give 50% of a pages rank to a link within content and 50% to the the other elements. What happens to the total pagerank from a page if you have not utilized in page content links? (is it lost) If this is the case, and you have a site that does not use content links on every page, are you loosing value (and hard earned) pagerank. Google did mention sometime back about pagerank being exstinguished with the nofollow tag. I would be interested to hear what others think? Cheers Scott
On-Page Optimization | | Jurnii0 -
Home page duplicated content issue
Hi there! The home page of my site can be seen under www.mysitename.com and www.mysitename.com/EN/ or www.mysitename.com/ES/ (depending on your language). I understand that this is duplicated content because they show the same content under different URLs. To solve this we've done (depending on your language) a 301 redirect from www.mysitename.com to www.mysitename.com/EN/ or www.mysitename.com/ES/ Is this correct? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Xopie0