Redirecting www.example.com to www.example.com/directory/

[JamieCottle28]

Hi All,

There's been some internal debate going back and forth about redirecting the homepage of a site to a directory. There are a few different POVs circulating, one of which is that it's no different than redirecting to a /index page. Basically, the homepage is ranking for the keyword that we want the directory to rank for but I can't seem to justify placing this type of redirect. The content on both pages is different, but for the term both the homepage and the directory make sense to rank.

Has anyone ever done anything like this before? Can anyone see any reason to do something like this? I believe this move would dilute the link value we currently have going to the homepage and potentially cause us to lose our #2 slot with the homepage in favor of a lower spot with the directory. I'd love to hear any thoughts on this/learn if anyone has experimented with this tactic.

Thanks in advance!

[RyanKent]

Hi Jamie.

It is common for internal pages and home pages to share some content which can lead to competition for keywords or phrases. A typical example might be the home page of a web design company may have an internal page /web-design.

The suggestion I would offer is to choose one keyword or phrase for your home page and stick to it. All other keywords and phrases will be focused on internal pages. The keyword for your home page is often your brand name. If you owned AcmeWebDesign.com then your home page would focus phrases such as "Acme Web" and "Acme Web Design" whereas the phrase "website design" and "web design" would be focused upon your /web-design page.

To help support this direction, all the SEO signals for your home page and inner pages would need to be in alignment:

Home page: Title "Acme Web Design", H1 tag "Acme Website Design", etc.

Inner page: Title: "Web Design", H1 tag "Website Design", etc.

The last piece is internal linking. From your home page you can offer some content such as "Acme web specializes is high quality web design...." where "web design" would be anchor text linking to the /web-design page. This link sends a strong signal to Google that your /web-design page should be listed in search results for that term. Combined with the other signals sent by your header and H1 tags the correct page should be listed in search results.

[JamieCottle28]

Hi Ryan,

Thank you so much for your help. This makes perfect sense and I believe this would be a much better strategy and was honestly something I hadn't considered. Really appreciate it!