How to optimise non-homepage to beat homepage in rankings? Are we on right path?

[vtmoz]

Hi all,

We have a page with "keyword" in slug like "website.com/keyword" where our homepage is "website.com". This "keyword" difficulty is very high, so every minor factor contributing here and we have noticed competitors' pages with "keyword" in URL ranking. Then we also planned to rank this page "website.com/keyword" and interlinked high, so it'll be favoured by Google which didn't happen. So may be we should reduce the interlinking to homepage and optimise this keyword page more to rank for this keyword. Still I doubt the chances of ranking this page is difficult and need much more. How to make this page ranked replacing homepage? If there are no options for this, we are planning to redirect our homepage to this page; so Google will slowly adopt it. Suggestions please.

Thank you.

[benesmartin]

Hey there,

I wouldn't redirect the homepage to the keyword page if it doesn't represent the same intent. If the _page _is just one fraction of the whole site, optimize it for your desired KW and get some quality back links to boost the rankings. Also you might add some CTA on the homepage to show visitors where to go next in connection with your KW / intent.

If you'll make some other products with different KWs in the future, it would be much harder to show Google which page is actually the one if you always keep redirecting it. From UX side, it wouldn't make much sense for the visitor.

Hope it helps. Cheers, Martin

[Alick300]

http://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-rank-your-internal-pages-higher-than-your-homepage/

[vtmoz]

Hi Alick,

In this article, he suggests to link lower level pages from homepage which has been stooped employing by many SEOs to preserve link juice. Will this works?

Thanks