GUIDE to HOMEPAGE SEO ... or something like that x)

Hi guys,

just wanted to share you some advice - i dont know, nobody is really talking about that and about keywords on homepage and stuff. Look, i've tested now more than 10 Websites and killed some of them in the process, just trying things out what works and what doesnt (i wanted to kill them, to see what works and what doesnt) in the past 2 years and i haven't found anyone yet talking about homepage SEO. (Only on YOAST and they say it doesnt really exist, but that isn't true!)

So just my 2 cents for anyone interested in that, especially for countries where PMD's are more common. Your Homepage SEO should look like this, depending on what kind of Domain you have.

If you have an EMD: buyahouse.com then you DONT EVER make a post which is named buyahouse.com/buy-a-house or /how-to-buy-a-house. This will kill your SERPs especially, as you'd probably have an Internal Link with your keyword from your homepage to your sub-page.

If you have a PMD: same rules apply as for an EMD. Very important for countries with a lot of local businesses having PMD's: f.e. muller-engineering.com or paulson-groceries.com or shit like that.

If you have a branded domain: forget homepage seo, google won`t even care. Think about UX and Linking with the Keyword from your homepage to your post. F.e. housista.com/buy-a-house/ - everything else is secondary.

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Summary:
- emds' : homepage is keyword, no keyword post, keyword internal links always to homepage
- pmd's : homepage is keyword, no keyword post, keyword internal links always to homepage
- brand: homepage is not optimized for keywords, keyword post or sub-page / category-page and linking with keyword to that page from homepage

Just my 2 cents , maybe it helps somebody. Because i've noticed that sometimes the keyword is stuck at 11th or 12th place because the homepage AND a blog post are optimized for the same keyword.

Great points, however I'm curious about something. I've seen a lot of websites, specially ecommerce sites selling digital products ranking their homepage for very competitive keywords, even with low DA and no keyword post. Sites have just a few (<10) articles with less that 1500 words and most pages are just item pages with generic information.

How does google rank them in that case?

Does this apply if you don't have homepage post? That is, you have a blog format and your homepage displays different posts.

What you have to understand is, that Google is shifting MORE and MORE into Backlinks instead of homepage or post SEO. - At least that is my experience after those tests.

For example One of my test websites was ranking for the keyword "buy a dog" on page 8 or something like that even though we had 0 % anything to do with dogs. But why was that? That was because we had a blog comment on a website, which was about buying dogs. Now imagine, if someone wrote a REAL blog post about your website and how you could buy a dog on your website.

And I've seen that with more and more websites, which is why I think that "content marketing" is not really about content. It's about content that gets backlinks and you yourself have to market it to other people so that THEY write what your content is about. Google's logic is not we will rank good content, it's more like good content gets a lot of links so Backlinks > Content.

So let's say, you have an online shop which is about shoes. If you get links from shoe bloggers or influencer, who talk about how they bought a shoe from you, Google will know "aha, that website is about selling shoes" and you will eventually get a ranking for that. That's why a lot of online shops with literally ZERO on-page SEO can rank for difficult key-terms because they are all about UX & Backlinks from shoe bloggers.

The same with a blog type website - there is literally no homepage SEO and you shouldn't care about that, think about the places your website get your links from.

That's why you shouldn't use hard money keywords, use branded urls as anchor text and literally CONTEXT is what matters and I think a lot of people have it wrong. As in my example above. If you have an SEO Agency, you need a link from a blog post which is about some seo stuff and not just a general marketing blog. That link won't be bad for metrics like "trust" but it won't help you get "authority" in the seo niche.

EDIT: That's why I've changed my approach from buying pbn links, comment links or anything like that if i want rankings. i buy comment links or citations or things like that for diversity - but not for rankings. If i want rankings for "buy shoes" i'll write to 100 bloggers who are about shoes, ask them how much money they want, and buy like 4-8 posts per month from them. On average, they want something like 50€ - 100 € per link, but those links are more worth in my opinion, than 10 pbn links with "high metrics" - i'm not bashing them, those links still do work, but it's more like the "low quality, high volume" approach instead of "high quality, low volume" - and the last one is even more safe because you're buying from real webmasters..

Interesting, will setup some tests for myself.

I think this is what a lot of experienced members here have been saying too - Relevancy. The sites that are linking to you must be writing about the topics on your website.

Or, am I getting you wrong?

topakins said:

I think this is what a lot of experienced members here have been saying too - Relevancy. The sites that are linking to you must be writing about the topics on your website.

Or, am I getting you wrong?

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No you dont the only thing i want to say is, that this is like the single most important ranking factor as to why your website doesn't rank. Forget On-Page, forget all those backlinks you get from random sites. If i'd tell you to do SEO in 2018, i'd tell you to spend 95% of your time on getting backlinks from relevant websites - and if they want 100$ for that backlink, then you better pay them.

Edit: What i want to say is, that most people think in 50% on-page, 50% off-page seo, and they just think in terms of "a link is a link". But it's not. I'd say on-page is maybe 10-20%, the rest is links...because why should google know how to valuate good content? it's a robot - they have to use "other people's" opinion on what good content is. And if you get backlinks, it should be good content, right?

Hell, one of our websites, just to test had only a URL. Yes, only a URL with the keywords in there - not one written word on that page. But we asked some people we know to link to that website with relevant links and content and that page was ranking for a 240 searches per month term on 5th place - WITHOUT content. I know thats a low search term, but that's just an example.

EDIT2: It is like the question what was there first , the chicken or the egg? in google terms it doesnt matter. Good content should get links, so why should we analyze the content, let the users do it, and that's what a backlink and User experience is. They let OTHERs decide what should rank.

How do you get the links from niche relevant sites? Do you buy a service here?

I wouldn't buy services here anymore as they are often spun content or pbn's or just shitty links with no value. And the second problem i have is that most use "nich relevant" but what the hell is "technology" or "business" (as used by most pbn sellers). What you have to do is go deeper business / online marketing / seo something like that.

In my case i use 2 things: you can use an outreach service (just go to google and type in "outreach blog posts") or something like that OR you go to google or bing and search for blogs on your topic. Then you write those webmasters some lines and ask them, if they are selling posts (sure a lot do). There are even "blogger communities" or job websites for bloggers. Be creative.

As i said, those links will cost you anything between 25 - 200 € per link but they sure will be worth it.

zodiamc said:

What you have to understand is, that Google is shifting MORE and MORE into Backlinks instead of homepage or post SEO. - At least that is my experience after those tests.

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Awesome post Zodiac, I've personally been scratching my head over this matter for days. Now the puzzle is partly solved.

To Godknowseverything, another approach if you don't have the money to buy blog posts is to scrape your competitors' websites to find dead links from expired domains. Aim for high DA and PA posts. You can get pretty good results with this technique and if you're lucky the registration would cost you $12 or even .99 with godaddy's coupon.

BenitoB said:

Awesome post Zodiac, I've personally been scratching my head over this matter for days. Now the puzzle is partly solved.

To Godknowseverything, another approach if you don't have the money to buy blog posts is to scrape your competitors' websites to find dead links from expired domains. Aim for high DA and PA posts. You can get pretty good results with this technique and if you're lucky the registration would cost you $12 or even .99 with godaddy's coupon.

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I`m glad i could help! Wish you all the best with this knowledge.

zodiamc said:

Summary:
- emds' : homepage is keyword, no keyword post, keyword internal links always to homepage
- pmd's : homepage is keyword, no keyword post, keyword internal links always to homepage
- brand: homepage is not optimized for keywords, keyword post or sub-page / category-page and linking with keyword to that page from homepage

Just my 2 cents , maybe it helps somebody. Because i've noticed that sometimes the keyword is stuck at 11th or 12th place because the homepage AND a blog post are optimized for the same keyword.

Click to expand...

So basically, having a branded domain. I'm safe not putting anything on my home page at all except a list/excerpts of all posts that exsit on the website. Or simply highlight a few of the posts that I want to again with small excerpts and links.

Or did your results return anything different?

RogueAgent said:

So basically, having a branded domain. I'm safe not putting anything on my home page at all except a list/excerpts of all posts that exsit on the website. Or simply highlight a few of the posts that I want to again with small excerpts and links.

Or did your results return anything different?

Click to expand...

Nope, they didn`t. You're safe.