Home Page SEO

[ypl]

Hi!

We recently re-designed our home page in early March.  After Google panda, we re-tweaked it again, before we take it live, we really want to get some expert's opinions.  We would be grateful for any comments/suggestions/feedback, particularly in the following area (you will need to click a few times to get the page to real size):

1. is the bottom content ok? please scroll down all the way.

2)  We used semantic keywords for 5-6 anchor interlinks to the same page to promote core products from the home page.  Is this too much?

3. 80% links on the footer is a repetition of header navigation links, do these footer serve any SEO value or is it over - optimization?

Here is the URL:

https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/36547134/1/WebDesign?h=109d4a

Thanks a lot!

[NakulGoyal]

Please see answers in Bold.

1. is the bottom content ok? please scroll down all the way. --- **The content is good. It should help your homepage rank for a lot of long tail keywords, provided it's optimized for them. **

2)  We used semantic keywords for 5-6 anchor interlinks to the same page to promote core products from the home page.  Is this too much? - Anchor Texts to the same page won't help. If I were you, I would rather send 5-6 important links to the most important (different pages). Multiple links to the same page from your homepage won't help IMO.

3)  We repeated footer path the same as the header fly window (same link, same word), is this over-optimized?  If not, does it serve any SEO? -- I don't understand this part of your question.

[PracticeFusion]

1. If it were my site, then I would remove the bottom content. It's formatted in such a way that as a visitor of your site, I would never read it. It looks like legal text, or text that is just there for SEO. If it is there just for SEO, then I think you're better off targeting those keywords on different pages. For example, target "fairy costumes" on a fairy costumes page...rather than your homepage.

2. From my experience, internal anchor links don't correlate well with search rankings. For that reason, I think you should use the anchor text that is best for your user. If that also happens to help your SEO then great. If not, then I wouldn't worry about it.

3. The footer links serve no SEO value if you already link to those pages. If you link to the same page multiple times, then Google will generally just use your first anchor text.

[JustinTaylor88]

I would tend to agree with Phil.

The bottom content doesn't feel natural, at the end of the day a homepage cannot be all things to all men, use your internal pages and blogs (if you have them) to target some of your lesser keywords and let your homepage focus on your big hitters.

You should take a look at this Panda centric White Board Friday, it covers a lot of common SEO bad practices, i think a couple of these may be applicable to your proposed website.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-changes-every-seo-should-make-before-the-over-optimization-penalty-hits-whiteboard-friday

I hope this helps, as its a jungle out there right now!!