To get homepage to rank highly for a given term, do you only add the term(and variations) to the homepage?

[kennysmith]

If adding the term on all pages then won't the pages start competing with each other in the SERP?

I'm building a site for a client who wants to rank highly for 'Southern California general contractors' and its not clear to me whether to fit these keywords (and variations) only into the homepage or if I should try to fit them into all pages.

[bradkrussell]

That's right Kenny - create unique content for each landing page (whether it's based on location, type of service offered etc).

Unless your brand name is 'California Personal Injury Attorney' (99.99% sure it wouldn't be) - then don't add the term to each and every one of your title tags. Add terms/keywords related to that page.

E.g. homepage might be 'California Personal Injury Attorney | ABC Lawyers'

A landing page based on injuries related to traffic accidents might be 'California Auto Accident Attorney | ABC Lawyers' or something similar.

[kennysmith]

I'm with you and I think Brad would agree that duplicate (or even largely duplicate) content would not be the end result behind landing pages dedicated to specific cities.  If I were going to use this technique I would include city-specific content for each page.

Also, when you say 'duplicate title tags' do you mean MOSTLY duplicate title tags (ie Home | California Personal Injury Attorney, and About Us | California Personal Injury Attorney)?   If so, are these really harmful to rankings?

[stevefidelity]

You don't want to create duplicate title tags. It sends a bad signal to search engines, and you ultimately then create multiple pages that compete with each other for the same keywords.

When  you're targeting various cities, you also need to exercise some caution. Brad mentioned 'breaking up landing pages depending on locations'. I'm not going to say that's wrong because I'm not sure exactly what he's getting at, but you don't want to create multiple pages with the the same, or largely the same content, where the only difference is the name of the city because this presents a duplicate content issue. And this isn't a 'technical' (honest mistake) duplicate content issue. This is a 'I think I can outsmart the search engines' kind of duplicate content issue.

[kennysmith]

That makes sense Brad, thanks!

So say one of my other clients wants to rank highly for 'California Personal Injury Attorney'.  Should I not add 'California Personal Injury Attorney' to the title tag of every page (eg 'Contact Us | California Personal Injury Attorney', 'Home | California Personal Injury Attorney')?

If I did add this keyword to every title tag, would it damage my client's ranking in the SERP?

[bradkrussell]

Hi Kenny,

You need to decide which terms you want to rank for which specific pages. E.g. if they are targeting 'Southern California general contractors' on the homepage, then you'll want to use that keyword a few times in the text on the page, title etc. The focus should be on that keyword, without making it look spammy.

However, you wouldn't want to try and target that term on every page on the site, it just doesn't make sense. E.g. you might have other landing pages that target 'welding', 'structural steel', 'maintenance and repairs' etc (I'm not exactly sure what you mean by 'general contractor' or what they do). On these pages, the focus should be on different keywords to 'Southern California general contractors'.

You could even break up the landing pages depending on locations. So have 1 for Los Angeles General Contractors, San Diego General Contractors and so on.

This might be a good start point - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization. Just don't try and over optimise in light of Google's recent algorithm changes. Create content that is useful to the consumer and you'll be fine.

Thanks,

Brad