Keep ranking homepage for target keyword, or switch to another page?

[TheatreSolutionsInc]

Hi Moz Community!

I've researched Moz to find the answer to this question but nothing for my situation. I'm hoping some experienced SEOs can help me out.

Here's the situation:

I'm up against some fairly stiff competition for my main keyword - the front page is dominated by major manufacturers with high brand recognition and loads of money, where as my client is a much smaller manufacturer trying to compete. However, their DA is only 37-53 so not impossible to outrank... just many links and a significant advantage.

We've honed in on a keyword that still drives good traffic, that's a great term to drive paying customers, and that we can get competitive with. My strategy was to attempt to rank my client's _homepage _for this term, rather than a specific product page, as I knew that they'd have many more links and social shares of their main site. (I've been successful with this strategy before).

We've risen 60+ positions for the keyword in the past 3 months, to position 12, but we seem to have plateaued for the past month. We're ranking in top 5 positions for a number of our other keywords, so I know we're trending well.

However, I'm concerned that despite our quick rise to #12, I may have made a seemingly fatal decision to rank their homepage for our target keyword term. After we had plateaued for a while, I did a more thorough side by side comparison and found that 8 out of 10 competitors on the front page have 2 main things we don't (and can't, because we're ranking the homepage)...

1-  The keyword in the url (they're ranking for product pages, i.e. homepage.com/keyword-here/)

2- Their keyword comes first, or early in the meta title. Ours is _supposed to _, but as you know- Google can do what it likes with your homepage title as it's your brand, so they've put our company name- _then _the keyword we added in the title. e.g. Our Company | The Term We're Ranking For

We've done a lot of work, and gained many reputable, high quality links, and we did see a significant rank increase across all our pages. My question is- did I shoot myself in the foot? Or is ranking the homepage still viable in this situation?

If ultimately this is going to be impossible to get in the top #5 spots, what can I do to fix it? We've already gained a PA of 38 on the homepage from our work. Or would you let it go and just keep working at it, expecting that eventually we'll break onto the front page?

Thanks in advance! Let me know if you need more info. I tried to be general with terms/site for my client's sake.

[SurgeStream]

Hi TheatreSolutionsInc,

What you have mentioned is kind of difficult to answer in a definitive way.  If you are dealing with some heavy competition in the top 10 and rose from 60+ to 12 in just 3 months, that is a very good accomplishment.  It depends on how long you have been stuck at this position.   Usually when you get into the top 10 for a competitive keywords and everything listed is big brands, it can take a very long time to edge up even one ranking at a time.  It really depends if you want to exert that much effort.

Have you experimented with any CTR keywords in order to increase rankings?  See what AdWords advertisers are using and try replicating that.  For example, adding in emotional keywords like "Free Shipping", "Best", etc.

Or, perhaps you could create another page, like what your competitors have, i.e. homepage.com/keyword-here/, and perhaps work on that in conjunction to the home page.  That way all of your proverbial seo eggs are not all in one basket, so to speak.

I hope this helps.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Regards,

Kevin

[TheatreSolutionsInc]

Hi Kevin!

Thanks for the response, especially the insight that in my situation, I might be "inching up" one spot at a time slowly and painfully, with a lot of work.

I actually had started with a huge focus on CTR - where everyone else was just listing products, or that they were a manufacturer, I had tried a couple titles like "auditorium seating your clients will love" or "lifetimei warranty" (things no one else was doing).

I made a pivot to try and target a few other keywords with the homepage that ended up ranking well- but dropping us for our main one. I think if we continue to rank high for those, but drop for our main one- I'll just do the homepage.com/keyword-here/ thing.

You're right - there's just no definitive answer! I really appreciate your feedback.

[SurgeStream]

Glad I was able to help.

Keep me posted on your progress, especially with the homepage.com/keyword-here/ page.