Client would like to 301 redirect the homepage to a category page

[accpar]

Hello MOZ Community!!!

I would like your expert opinions on a scenario, please!

My client is an ecommerce company, and currently has one of its category pages outranking its homepage for a few key phrases. The homepage, however, has a better conversion rate. So, the client is asking that we make the homepage the category URL, so http://www.theirsite.com/blue-clothes. The existing homepage URL - http://www.theirsite.com - would 301 REDIRECT to the category page - which would render the current version of the homepage.

Therefore, there would be nothing, ZERO content, on the MAIN URL: http://www.theirsite.com

Has anyone ever done this before? What are the pros and the cons of this practice?

Here is my same client, for reference: https://moz.com/community/q/issue-with-category-ranking-on-page-1-vs-homepage-ranking-on-page-2

[rjonesx. 0]

I have seen websites rank well using internal pages as their homepage, and have worked on quite a few. However, I wouldn't recommend it. Why not simply improve the conversion rate of the internal page by improving its layout?

[Alick300]

I'm completely agree with Russ Jones, also wouldn't recommend to redirect homepage to internal page.

Thanks

[accpar]

Hi Russ, I completely agree. Thank you!

[accpar]

Russ, would you be able to let me know why it is a bad idea to redirect to an internal page? I need to let the client know the cons of this practice.

[rjonesx. 0]

There are a lot of theoretical reasons...

1. In redirecting the homepage, you could potentially lose or dampen the results that the homepage currently enjoys (while not as much as the internal page, at least it has some)

2. The redirect might not successfully pass on all link juice (ie: perhaps some link decay rate is applied)

3. You lose the great potential opportunity of getting double listings for keywords!

[accpar]

Really appreciate this, thank you!