SEO strategy for conversion-optimised home page
-
I'm working on a very conventional-type site with a home page (why come to us), methods we use, pricing, reviews, FAQs and contact us.
After reading the Moz case study at (http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/seomoz-case-study/), I have been working on a conversion-optimised home page that consolidates much of content in all these pages.
At the bottom of the home page, I then plan to add a list of blog posts "Want to read more? We have a lot of useful information on our blog. Here are the most popular articles:" with articles that explain more about the methods we use for example (content that was formerly on our methods page). Obviously this new blog will also have more interesting information (but a lot that could actually be converted into pages)
This radically changes the site into just a home page full of selling points and calls-to-action and a blog.
I have some questions about this strategy:
- How do we keep our search engine ranking for keywords such as "[our service] prices" or "[a particular method] London". We rank quite well on Google for these and it goes straight to the relevant page. Shall we keep the pages active somewhere even though the information is also on the home page?
- Is a blog actually necessary here (SEO wise)? The things I'm planning to write could easily be made into more pages.
- Am I going about this completely wrong by trying using the CRO guide? Should this sort of page be reserved for landing pages? The reason why I'm considering making a conversion-generating home page is because we only sell one service pretty much (although there are differences in how we do it on children vs. adults) and because we are quite niche so most of our traffic comes from organic sources.
Thank you
-
My first suggestion after reading your question, is to create a plan before making any changes to the website architecture. I have seen on numerous occasions, websites lose up to 90% of their organic traffic after a website redesign due to poor planning. Every page holds value, and each link on that page passes value to the page being linked to. For instance, if you are planning on removing links from the navigation menu on the home page, that page is in jeopardy of losing rank.
Look at Your Top Pages in Webmaster Tools
You will see a link in the left menu, "Search Traffic." That will expand, then click on the first item below it, "Search Queries." Once you have clicked on it, you will see a tab over the graph labeled "Top Pages." Once you have clicked on that, you can view your most popular organic landing pages. If the page is receiving enough traffic, there will be a toggle arrow next to it. By clicking on the page link, it will expand with a list of search queries used to find that page. Take a look at each page's keyword list and look for semantic patterns or correlations they have to that page. You may not think that every keyword you see is relevant for that page, but that doesn't mean that keyword shouldn't be there. The keyword in question may pass semantic value to the primary keyword your page is ranking for.
Take a look at one of Rand's slide decks he posted, Cracking the SEO Code for 2015. Focus more on topic association rather than keyword matching. You may also find a blog I posted on Semantic Search useful. It covers some evaluation techniques you could use.
Check Your Backlinks Using Open Site Explorer
If you plan on removing pages that are ranking well for high converting keywords (which I would not advise), you may be losing important backlinks to that page. Remember, even though those backlinks are directed toward that specific page, doesn't mean that it won't affect the rankings for your entire website. Any link on that page is passing authority to the pages they're linking to.
If you decide for sure that you have to remove a page, make sure you at least create a 301 redirect pointed to the page taking its place. If that page happens to be the home page, then direct it to the home page.
Think about every SEO factor and content asset
When it comes to Organic Search, there are many variables that come into play. Here are just a few that come to mind:
- Semantic Structure of each page
- Number of pages indexed by Google
- Backlinks passing juice to each page (even nofollow links should be considered as a factor)
- Internal Link Structure of the Website
- Keyword Specific Anchor Text
- Structured data
- Indexed PDF files
- Self-Hosted Video assets
- Images and alt text (consider universal search)
- Keyword Specific URL aliases
Conclusion
One of the reason's Moz did so well was because they told a great story about the brand and it was easy to digest. I would keep your blog as well. Moz definitely didn't get rid of their blog. Instead, I would think of some new ideas to make your blog interesting and engaging.
As far as the pages are concerned, I would keep them where they are at, and I wouldn't remove any links that are currently directed toward them. Instead, since they are already ranking well and garnering traffic, leverage them as an asset you can build into your conversion strategy. Somehow funnel them to your landing page. Set up Google analytics events and goal funnels to evaluate what works and what doesn't.
I'm not sure if that answers your question, but at the very least, I hope it helps guide you in the right direction.
-
I think one of the best takeaways from Rand's work with Conversion Rate Experts is the understanding Rand got from talking about his services in person and how well such conversations "converted" versus how Moz was talking about what it did and offered on the site. For your specific case the solution is probably somewhat similar, how would you first describe and introduce your product (home page, very well crafted) and then how you would address specific examples and use cases (blog post, referencing your core service) or other pages.
Home pages can often rank for a robust set of terms so you might be alright in ranking with the smaller site format, still spend the time going through your Analytics carefully to see what pages you should keep and redesign versus what pages you could most likely redirect to the higher converting new ones. Also, test test test. Make sure you're making improvements with the changes you're making. Optimizely should be able to help you in that regard: https://www.optimizely.com/statistics
If you're very local, spending time seeing how your referrals and leads arrive via sites like Yelp, Google Local and others would be good too. It sounds like you're on the right track though and just need to tie things together with Analytics.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Local SEO - ranking the same page for multiple locations
Hi everyone, I am aware that issue of local SEO has been approached numerous times, but the situation that I'm dealing with is slightly different, so I'd love to receive your expert advice. I'm running the website of a property management company which services multiple locations (www.homevault.com). From our local offices in the city center, we also service neighboring towns and communities ( ex: we have an office in Charlotte NC, from which we service Charlotte plus a dozen other towns nearby). We wanted to avoid creating dozens of extra local service pages, particularly since our offers are identical per metropolitan area and we're talking of 20-30 additional local pages for each area. Instead, we decided to create local service pages only for the main locations. Needless to say, we're now ranking for the main locations, but we're missing on all searches for property management in neighboring towns (we're doing good on searches such as 'charlotte property management', but we're practically invisible for 'davidson property management', although we're searvicing that area as well). What we've done so far to try and fix the situation: 1. The current location pages do include descriptions of areas that we serve. 2. We've included 1-2 keywords for the sattelite locations in the main location pages, but we're nowhere near the optimization needed to rank for local searches in neighboring towns (ie, some main local service pages rank on pages 2-4 for sattelite towns, so not good enough). 3. We've included the searviced areas in our local GMBs, directories, social media profiles etc. None of these solutions appear to work great. Should I go ahead and create the classic local pages for each and every town and optimize them on those particular keywords, even if the offer is practically the same, and the number of pages risks going out of control? Any other better ideas? Many thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HomeVaultPM0 -
Why is my home page ranking much higher than my collection page?
Hi everyone, Why is my client's home page ranking high for a certain keyword phrase rather than a collection page I have which is well optimised for this keyword? The collection page is on the 10th SERPs page. I did see there were keywords used in the footer of page and the keyword was also used in some intro text on the home page so I removed the keyword from these two places nearly 2 weeks ago and requested google to reindex both the collection page and home page and I've not seen any improvement of the collection page's ranking in SERPs. I also changed the meta description and meta title as the ctr was poor but there wasn''t that many impressions either. It is a competitive keyword organically so maybe the collection page's authority is just not good enough compared to the competitors hence why they are choosing the home page as it has higher page authority however this still is not helpful to searchers who land on home page. Does anyone have any ideas of what else I can do to get google to rank the ocllection page higher for the keyword instead of home page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TZ19820 -
Need references to a company that can transition our 1000 page website from Http to Https without breaking our SEO backlinks and site structure
Hi Ya'll I'm looking for a company or independent who can transition our website from http to https. I want to make sure they know what they're doing with a Wordpress website. More importantly, i want to make sure they don't break any seo juice from external sources while internally nothing gets broken. Anyone have any good recommendations? You can reply back or DM me. Best, Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
After adding a ssl certificate to my site I encountered problems with duplicate pages and page titles
Hey everyone! After adding a ssl certificate to my site it seems that every page on my site has duplicated it's self. I think that is because it has combined the www.domainname.com and domainname.com. I would really hate to add a rel canonical to every page to solve this issue. I am sure there is another way but I am not sure how to do it. Has anyone else ran into this problem and if so how did you solve it? Thanks and any and all ideas are very appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LovingatYourBest0 -
Why does my home page show up in search results instead of my target page for a specific keyword?
I am using Wordpress and am targeting a specific keyword..and am using Yoast SEO if that question comes up.. and I am at 100% as far as what they recommend for on page optimization. The target html page is a "POST" and not a "Page" using Wordpress definitions. Also, I am using this Pinterest style theme here http://pinclone.net/demo/ - which makes the post a sort of "pop-up" - but I started with a different theme and the results below were always the case..so I don't know if that is a factor or not. (I promise .. this is not a clever spammy attempt to promote their theme - in fact parts of it don't even work for me yet so I would not recommend it just yet...) I DO show up on the first page for my keyword.. however.. instead of Google showing the page www.mywebsite.com/this-is-my-targeted-keyword-page.htm Google shows www.mywebsite.com in the results instead. The problem being - if the traffic goes only to my home page.. they will be less likely to stay if they dont find what they want immediately and have to search for it.. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chunkyvittles0 -
How Bad is it to Not Have a Home Page?
The site I'm currently developing is far different than any other project I've every worked on in that search traffic is likely to represent only a very small percentage of the total traffic. Because of this, I want to make sure I optimize the site for the people clicking from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc more so than the BIG G. I can't for the life of me think of a reason to have a home page other than for SEO purposes. I'd much rather throw the user directly into the experience than have him be distracted by a home page. At the same time, I'd like to salvage any search engine traffic that I can. My plan is to 301 redirect chucklebot.com/ to /funny-memes/SOME_RANDOM_IMAGE and then put the content of the current home page at /about. Does that kill any possibility of the site ranking well? Or can the subpages (eg /meme-generator) still rank well if they are properly optimized? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PatrickGriffith0 -
Home page deindexed by goole, How to determine why and how to fix
On Wednesday I noticed our domain was no longer ranking for our key word and our product Isolator Fitness, http://isolatorfitness.com, I have been researching and not finding answers to why it happened and what to do to fix it. We have about 800 other pages still listed. I am new to all this seo stuff, can anyone guide me in the right direction.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | David75
History about 10 days a go I went google web master tools and noticed that there were a large number of errors due to the fact the robots could not crawl our site. Looked at the site and found that Privacy button on WP was turned to block robots. I turned it on and had google re crawl the site, looked like google was not able to crawl the site for about 3 months, on Monday I did a 301 redirect to on of our other sites for another product we sell, to http://isolatorfitness.com/6-pack-bags. This site had a good bit of back links would doing all this at one time cause this How do I determine if we did anything wrong Thanks0 -
Need help/insights. Site SEO = OK, Authority BLs = OK, Rank page #1\. How to reach pos #1?
Hi there! Some doubts are confusing my head and need some assistence from you to get on the right track. I'll explain my situation and want to hear from you what do you really recommend for med/long term permanent results. 1 - I have a PR2 (.com.br) domain; 2 - I'm talking about little/med competition micro-niche keywords; 3 - I got all pages I want to, indexed (I have a well SEO constructed website with internal link building); 4 - If a keyword has average competition, I'll already start ranking in page #3 on the SERP's; For a few low competition keywords I start on page #1; 5 - I do a little whitehat link building, 1 or 2 backlinks on authority sites and then like 15 days later I came to page #1, generally on position 9/10; And then I got stucked 🙂 No more authority sites where I can get backlinks... I do some posts on the company twitter/facebook page's, but they are no follow, so I don't really now if this can help. (never see a SERP result). I did some "blackhat" stuff to see if it really work: I can say for sure the "profile backlinks" that we can buy from some sites doesn't work (maybe it's just for me). I can't see it on webmaster tool and neither my ranks changed since I bought a pack of 100 links (the links are working, I see it one by one) to test. Maybe the problem is about the domains, cause my site is .com.br and I'm buying .com profile links. I guess google understand backlinks from .com.br more valuable for my sites. Back to whitehat: I wrote some articles and posted it the right way, of course on .com.br articles sites, got it indexed and can see the backlink on webmaster tool, but no change on SERP's. (maybe this can be a long term result and I'm not seeing it yet). I'm really "scratching my hand" to do some blackhat stuff, but I don't want to lose what I already have done... I heard a lot about scrapebox but doesn't fell confortable to spam as hell a lot of blogs. I really want long term permanent results (my sites are totally whitehat/corporate sites). Can you expert guys give me some point to where I need to "walk" now to improve the SERP's? I never reached top #1 and want to try to rank at least one time to understand how this can be made... I'm thinking now to pay someone to rewrite 20 copies of an article and up it on some sites, to see if 20 can improve something. But still no confident, because it will cost like $100 for a good writer do it for me on my language. Maybe I can do better things with 100 bucks. I guess I did the path right: Internal SEO -> got indexed -> backlinking from authorities -> new articles backlinks to me (is it ok at this position or no?) -> (what next ?) I know SEO is a hard/never ending work, but what I'm trying to get cleaned on my head is the path of the work (if a right path really exists). Every word will be apreciated. What do you can suggest to me to try now? (please give me a hint to see SERP's results 🙂 if I feel that something worked, no matter how it can cost to me, but I'll pay for the work happily) Sorry if I'm a little confusing, english isnt' my first language. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | azaiats20