Categories and rel canonical

[Barbio]

Hello everyone,

I have a doubt in how to approach this problem.

I have a local business website, and i want to rank this website for our main KW.

So the idea is to rank the main Keyword to the home page www.sitename.com

At the same time we blog every week and one of the categories is the same has the main Keyword. It makes sense because the majority of the blog posts are about it.

In a certain way the homepage and the category page are competing for the same keyword. How can i approach this problem?

Should i use rel canonical in the category page, pointing to the homepage?

Thanks for your help.

[BlueprintMarketing]

if you want to rank well of course you should use  rel canonical  all tips are right here http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization

if your local business register immediately with Google places. is 90% of search engine optimization for local.

Are you talking about that exact match domain? If I were to say I don't mean his example.com and my keyword is example?

In order to blog effectively in each blog 300 words or more at least 4 times a week or 20 times a month. It also must be engaging content that keeps people coming back.

I hope it helped you,

Thomas

[BlueprintMarketing]

I thought I should welcome you to SEOmoz as well this is the best place on the planet to get search engine advice. Try reading over some of the information here regardless of its title is always useful to anyone.

http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Sincerely,

Thomas

[Barbio]

It's a www.KeywordBrand.com type domain.

And the category is keyword

So we have www.KeywordBrand.com/Keyword

And in theory the Homepage is the same has the category but with an introduction.

In this case what's best ?

a 301 to the homepage, a rel=canonical or not doing nothing?

[BlueprintMarketing]

you definitely do not need to make the home page have a / with the keyword it is not necessary if you optimize site correctly. However if you were to do that and you want to know what the rel=canonical is it would be

 <code>however if you can keep from having to do this for your homepage I would do a 301 redirect</code>

<code>that way your site is set the way you want to be and you have a link that is clean. Then do a</code>

 <code>a 
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 <code>you want the rel=canonical to reflect the page that you want to be the homepage you want to tell Google this is the page I want.</code> 
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```
 So your best cases is www.KeywordBrand.com 
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```

Sincerely,
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Thomas
```</code> 
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[BlueprintMarketing]

Are you using WordPress?

[Barbio]

yes, with Wordpress SEO by YOAST

[BlueprintMarketing]

I apologize I did not have the opportunity to get back to last night.

Wordpress SEO by YOAST Is a great plug-in. With the plug-in you will not have to worry about

<code>rel="canonical"</code>

<code>The plug-in has all of the built-in so when you go to make </code>

<code>a page will not have to worry about ```
<code>rel="canonical"</code>
```
```
Might I ask what framework you're using and what host?
```</code> 

<code>Sincerely,</code>

 Thomas

[Dr-Pete]

While I think keyword cannibalization is a valid concern, it's natural for there to be some overlap when a site is clearly focused on a topic. I hate to over-generalize, but my gut reaction is that the home-page and a single category page aren't a big problem. Sure, they'll compete a little, but we're only talking about two pages, and the home-page is generally already stronger. I think the canonical might be artificial here (these aren't true duplicates, and it could look a bit odd to Google).

I'd think more about how the two pages can co-exist - are their certains aspects of the keyword that one more naturally fits than the other? Could you reflect those in the on-page content/tags (TITLE tag, especially)? If the topic merits an entire site, there almost definitely enough facets to it that two pages can live together perfectly well.

Again, don't to over-generalize, but I think you may be worrying too much about this one. If the pages compete in an undesirable way later, you can always add a canonical, but two pages shouldn't be a big issue.

Unless I'm misunderstanding, do NOT 301-redirect. That's going to kill your category page, as 301s impact human visitors as well as search bots.