Should I optimize my home-page or a sub-page for my most important keyword

[Jacob_A]

Quick question:

When choosing the most important keyword set that I would like to rank for, would I be better off optimizing my homepage, or a sub page for this keyword.

My thinking goes as follows: The homepage (IE www.mysite.com) naturally has more backlinks and thus a better Google Page Rank.

However, there are certain things I could do to a subpage (IE www.mysite.com/green-widgets-los-angeles ) that I wouldn't want to do to the homepage, which might be more "optimal" overall.

Option C, I suppose, would be to optimize both the homepage, and a single sub-page, which is seeming like a pretty good solution, but I have been told that having multiple pages optimized for the same keywords might "confuse" search engines.

Would love any insight on this!

[GlobeRunner]

Generally speaking, if you think of the keyword set as part of a large "topic", then you should optimize your site's home page for the main topic in general--and then the sub-topic keyword(s) and the "sub-sub" topic keywords would also be pages, as well. The sub-topic keyword would be linked from the site's home page, and then the sub-sub topic would linked from the sub-topic's page.

I like to think of this as a theme pyramid approach

Main Topic
     Category
          Sub-Topic
     Category
          Sub-Topic

[MattAntonino]

I've seen many pages optimize both the homepage and an inner page. Think about how most SEO agency pages are organized. Homepage has some SEO content - and most pages that rank for "SEO" are homepages. But then you have the same sites also inevitably have an /seo/ page on them or /services/seo as well.

So doing both is sort of standard operating procedure for some businesses but it really depends.

• Best for ranking would be as Eric said. Optimize as if you're writing a book. Homepage should be optimized for the title / main topic.
• Best for conversions may be to have a dedicated landing page for each topic and use your homepage to tie them together.

[Ria_]

Not OP, but hypothetically what would be your solution to the homepage and subpage cannibalising each other in search and jumping up and down replacing each other if homepage isn't even optimised for the subpage's target keyword?

[MattAntonino]

Anchor text on backlinks will help Google sort it out, as will the content itself. Generally you won't want to rank two pages for any keyphrase but say in the SEO example - because you're pushing those pages so hard sometimes one falls. It's not that they replace each other in a bad way, it's because one is "sort of" being pushed too hard that it may fall and get replaced by your backup.

In a plumbing example, you'd target the homepage to say "Melbourne plumber" because of Google My Business but over time you may add services and swap it to another page.

[Ria_]

Yah, I was thinking it would be something along the lines of improving the subpage's authority with topic-relevant backlinks and anchor text. The homepage having the highest page authority of the domain, I figured Google was choosing it for that reason even without mention of the keywords on the page. Been getting a little frustrating when one month it's homepage on 1st page with subpage nowhere to be found, then the next month it's the subpage that's ranking and the homepage doesn't appear at all for the query.

Thank you for your advice!

(Sorry, Jacob, for hijacking your thread!)

[Jacob_A]

Thanks so much for the insight guys! This is super helpful, and definitely gives me a solid strategy going forward.