Website URL Structure - keyword targeting on homepage vs internal pages

[BGu]

I have developed a few websites before where the homepage contains the content for the keywords I was targeting. This has been reasonably successful as I have found it easy enough to get links to the homepage.

I am considering a new site in a totally different industry that I am thinking about structuring like this:

mybrand.com (not necessarily targeting any keywords)

mybrand.com/important-keyword-1/ (definitely want to target)

mybrand.com/important-keyword-2 (equally important as 1st keyword)

There will be several (30-ish) other pages targeting keywords but they are not as significant as the two mentioned above, more so they are about publishing informative information. The two important keywords are quite different but industry related.

My questions are: should I be careful targeting keywords away from the homepage when the homepage gets the most links? Would I be better off building 2 different websites where the keyword content is captured in the homepage?

Thanks,

[MattAntonino]

I think this depends on how much different the focus KWs are.  For a wedding & portrait photographer, I would target the harder KW (wedding) to the homepage and "portrait" to a "services" page (along with a backup "wedding" page - that was optimised differently.  Having both on one site would be fine since they're related.

However, if you sell tents and do tours of Africa, well ... I'd probably have two sites for that.  If you sell tents and you're a personal trainer, two sites for sure.

Hope that helps!

[BGu]

Thanks for responding.

Yes, the keywords are somewhat related like your example of the wedding and portrait photographer. Can I ask, why would you put the harder keyword on the home page and not on an internal page eg. http://mybrand.com/keyword-1/?

[MattAntonino]

The majority of your inbound links will likely be to the homepage. If one set of keywords describes what you do but are shorter tail than the rest, those are good homepage keywords.  You will naturally attract more homepage links though - so the authority should be much higher overall.