How do I increase rankings when the indexed page is the homepage?

[pano]

Hi Forum,

This is a two-part question. The first is: "what may be the cause of some rank declines?" and the second is "how do I bring them back up when the indexed page is the homepage?"

Over the last week I noticed some declines in several of my top keywords, many of which point to the site's homepage. The site itself is an eCommerce site, which had less visits last week than normal (holidays it seems, since the data jibes with key dates). Can a decline in traffic cause ranking declines? Any other ideas of where to look?

Secondly, for those keywords that link to the homepage, how do we bring these back up since a homepage can't be optimized for every single keyword? We sell yoga products and can't have a homepage that is optimized for keywords like "yoga mat," "yoga blocks," "yoga pilates clothing," and several others, as these are our category pages' keywords.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[Ben-HPB]

Has you eCommerce provider changed anything within this time? If you send me a link through my profile I will take a quick look and see what I can find.

[SimonCullum]

Hi Pano

1)  what may be the cause of some rank declines?  ~  there are literally so many possibilities as to why your rankings have dropped, impossible to have any realistic idea without a site history brief and a full analysis.

Have a think as to what changes, if any, have been made recently, such as new content, content removal, lost links, new competition, site restructure, redirects...  the possibilities are (almost) endless.

A 'decline in traffic' can be attributed to a decline in rankings, there is often a correlation that exists, however that's just one factor out of so many, so is likely to be a more heavily weighted factor or even more likely, a combination of different factors that have caused a drop in rankings.  More to the point, it's the drop in rankings that will likely cause the drop in traffic, though not always.

2)  how do I bring them back up when the indexed page is the homepage?  ~  there are a few changes you could make, the first one I'd suggest is looking at your site structure and perform some Housekeeping.

From what you've described, you are correct, it's (usually) not at all feasible or realistic to target 1 page (the homepage in your case) for a variety of different keywords.  It's lately been deemed a Frankenpage when that does happen, as in one page trying to be the jack of all trades, ends up in an ugly mess and can be detrimental.  Check out a Whiteboard Friday Video entitled "Mapping Keywords to Content for Maximum Impact".

So the answer to this question is above;  figure out what page is supposed to serve what purpose, do some housekeeping to ensure that the navigation is easy and logical so that users can find the right page for what they are looking for.  Focus on your Category Pages for those important Yoga keywords that can't be catered for on the homepage yet are still very important to be found for.

I hope that helps,

Regards

Simon