Home Page Optimization

[PatrickGriffith]

I only discovered SEOmoz about a week ago and my knowledge in this area has grown 500% in that time, but I'm still a newbie.

I'm looking for whether I have the right general idea or not with my home page in regards to SEO.  The page is located at Line.com.

The top section with the images is 100% for humans.  The next section is where the SEO comes into play.  I have 5 different services [sports monitor, free sports betting, sports betting forum, sports handicapper websites, gambling affiliate program] that I offer on 5 different inner pages.  What I'm trying to do is have my home page rank decently for my desired terms and then pass link juice to the respective pages.  My goal is to eventually have my inner pages rank higher than my home page for my desired search terms.

Do I have the right general idea or am I way off?  Is this too much for the search engines with all of the links and bold text?

Design criticisms are also welcome, and anybody who wants to critique the inner pages would be forever thanked.  Feel free to be as harsh as you want as long as it's constructive.

Thanks!

[mediabase]

Hi Patrick, As you know that first impression is the last impression. So by building the home of our website attractive we can easily catch the audience.Simply by optimizing only the homepage is not important as well from SEO point of view but we have to optimize the most crucial pages which may bring the target audience & the conversion ration is also increased.

Mostly people don’t realize that the most common purpose of a website & the importance of their home page.Mostly people think that it helps to increase the interest, establish credibility & to promote their  company & the products. But we should always kept in mind that we never tried to sell everything on the first page(home page) but it helps to make awareness.

There are some tips for Home Page to get optimized which helps us a lot.

From the above it is clear that home page is optimized for the customer & how they get attracted to our products/organization.

I hope that your query had been solved

[CoreyEulas]

Just a few considerations:

• You are linking from the menu and body of content to internal pages with arguably aggressive anchor text.  There are plenty of articles that debate this practice and often would say the second link will not carry the anchor text.  There is a really cool article about this here and I know Rand wrote an earlier one ages ago.  I haven't tested it - so I can't 100% either way.  Just something to think about when doing this strategy.  Test it - and let me know what you come up with.

• I don't get the internal linking to your sports website page, with the anchor text "web design skills".  My best practice of internal linking is users first.  Make it so a user is reading the article and can jump to a page that they would want to click on.  (see what I did above - kind of similar approach).

• Seems odd your H1 is below the fold, and is the same exact font/color as the titles above it.

• I would say your a bit overagressive with your strategy, especially since I did a quick review of sites that do rank for these terms and yours stands out as the most aggressive.   I'd suggest writing copy for the users not the search engines, and re-visit your content afterwards to find creative ways to integrate phrases that you'd ideally like to rank for.

• Why not put some ALT tags on your page, especially your logo.  Seems like "home" is pretty weak.

Best of luck on your SEO journey.

[bradkrussell]

Hi,

I think the overall design is pretty good. My advice would be:

1. Your homepage title tag seems too long
2. You seem to be spreading your targeted terms on the homepage too thin. Based on title tags and bolded text, you seem to be targeting: Sports Monitor, Sports Betting Forum, Handicapper Websites, Sports Handicapping Monitor, sports betting social network, sports betting forums, sell sports picks, sports handicapping scams etc. I'd try to just focus on 2-3, start ranking well for those then go after some secondary terms
3. Your choice of anchor text for links to inner pages seems a little odd. E.g. for http://www.line.com/sports-handicapper-rankings I assume you'd want to rank for something like "Sports Monitor". Thus, you should link to that page with the term "Sports Monitor" on the homepage, not "Accurate Sports Handicapping Monitor". The link to the http://www.line.com/sports-handicapper-websites is worse - it's using anchor text "Web Design Skills" which is not what you want to be ranking for on that page.
4. Some of the inner pages don't seem to be finished (title tags, meta tags etc) - e.g. http://www.line.com/sports-handicapper-rankings. Also, for that page are you trying to rank for "Sports Monitor" or "Sports Handicapper Rankings"? (or both?) I'd double check the URLs you are using.

Hope that helps!

Edit: I'd also add a better footer with basic internal linking structure. Even something like what SEOmoz has on this page is better than what you have with just the copyright info.

[PatrickGriffith]

Thanks!

4: I'd prefer ranking for "sports monitor" but as I've only recently started thinking about SEO, I unfortunately didn't know that when I built the site.  Is it worth 301ing to "line.com/sports-monitor"?

[PatrickGriffith]

Wow, I had no idea about the link priority subject.  Thanks for the article.   I toned down the keywords a bit, but will have to look at that aspect separately.

You are right, I was being overaggressive.  I was focusing on just about every combination of words that I'd like to rank for rather than the 2-3 most important.  I will revisit my strategy.

Thanks!

[bradkrussell]

No problem

If you would prefer ranking for that term on that inner page, I'd suggest you first revisit your homepage ranking strategy. "Sports Monitor" is the very first word in your title tag - do you want to rank for that term for your homepage or for http://www.line.com/sports-handicapper-rankings?

[PatrickGriffith]

That's the tricky part.  Like I said, my site provides 5 basic services, each with their own page, so I want those 5 pages to rank well.  My home page doesn't provide a service (except gaining user interest) but I still have to put something in the title.

I wouldn't care if my home page were nowhere to be found in the SEs if the other pages all ranked well, but I also recognize that it will be far easier to get my home page to rank, and I don't want to just throw that away.

Edit: My preference for the inner page ranking ahead of the home page is only a small preference.  I'm okay with the home page ranking first if it happens.

[bradkrussell]

OK, well as I mentioned earlier, I'd just have a clearer indication of what terms you want to rank for on each page. Concentrate on 2-3 terms for each page first, then move on to the secondary terms.

I'd ultimately change the URL of that inner page to http://www.line.com/sports-monitor and do a 301. Clean it up a bit, don't bold too many random terms that you are not trying to rank for, add page title + meta tags, and link to it (and other pages) internally from other pages and the new footer I suggested.

[PatrickGriffith]

I use to have a footer like you mentioned, but took it away to reduce the total number of links on the page.  I only left the links that weren't already in the header.

Is my strategy bad?  I guess that question answer's itself if SEOmoz does it.