Do you guys internally link to your homepage using main keywords?
I've had trouble ranking for my main term for a while (homepage only). Currently 7/6th, previously 1st-3rd. I suspect google doesn't like something we're doing as we still strongly rank for our internal pages (similar terms).
After doing a crawl, I noticed we only had 4-5 internal links pointing to our homepage with the main term.
I decided to completely remove these and replaced the with 'home' or 'homepage' and include our main term in the surrounding text. I thought that perhaps google see's these keyword rich internal links as attempted manipulation. So, now I currently have ZERO internal links to my homepage with keywords in the anchor. All are simply 'Home' / 'Homepage'. A day or two after this change, we bumped to 5th position.
Now, it's impossible for me to know if the jump in position is a result of the change. Of course there are many other factors at play and we're actively building links too. But it's safe to say that the change hasn't harmed us much, if at all. Thoughts on this? Do any of you guys have keyword rich internal links to your homepage? How many and where have you put them? If I have 10 level 2 pages that are related to my homepage, is it considered spammy to link to my homepage at the bottom of those pages with keyword rich anchors? Is it considered spammy to link to my homepage from the footer with our main keywords...?
Another observation:
For arguments sake, say our main keyword is 'KEYWRD' (this is what our homepage is optimised for.)
We then have a bunch or country specific pages which rank for 'KEYWRD + Destination'. So, KEYWRD USA, KEYWRD Australia etc.
These country pages all rank 1st position for those terms locally, outperforming all of our competitors, yet for just the KEYWRD term on it's own, our homepage ranks 5th/6th and our competitors are above us.
Has anyone else ever experienced something like this? What could this imply?
Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions.
I've had trouble ranking for my main term for a while (homepage only). Currently 7/6th, previously 1st-3rd. I suspect google doesn't like something we're doing as we still strongly rank for our internal pages (similar terms).
After doing a crawl, I noticed we only had 4-5 internal links pointing to our homepage with the main term.
I decided to completely remove these and replaced the with 'home' or 'homepage' and include our main term in the surrounding text. I thought that perhaps google see's these keyword rich internal links as attempted manipulation. So, now I currently have ZERO internal links to my homepage with keywords in the anchor. All are simply 'Home' / 'Homepage'. A day or two after this change, we bumped to 5th position.
Now, it's impossible for me to know if the jump in position is a result of the change. Of course there are many other factors at play and we're actively building links too. But it's safe to say that the change hasn't harmed us much, if at all. Thoughts on this? Do any of you guys have keyword rich internal links to your homepage? How many and where have you put them? If I have 10 level 2 pages that are related to my homepage, is it considered spammy to link to my homepage at the bottom of those pages with keyword rich anchors? Is it considered spammy to link to my homepage from the footer with our main keywords...?
Another observation:
For arguments sake, say our main keyword is 'KEYWRD' (this is what our homepage is optimised for.)
We then have a bunch or country specific pages which rank for 'KEYWRD + Destination'. So, KEYWRD USA, KEYWRD Australia etc.
These country pages all rank 1st position for those terms locally, outperforming all of our competitors, yet for just the KEYWRD term on it's own, our homepage ranks 5th/6th and our competitors are above us.
Has anyone else ever experienced something like this? What could this imply?
Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions.