How to optimize home page for several keywords

DrMcCoy

My issue is this. I'm getting a lot of "F" grades for certain keywords to my homepage using MOZ. the thing is I can't add to many keywords to title tag without going over 65 characters. It seems the title tag is most important and even though i have keywords in content and everything else, without title tag keyword its useless. can creating more than one title tag help or will that make things worse with search engines?

Matt-Williamson

Hi Robert,

I definitely wouldn't start creating multiple title tags as that is just going to cause the search engines confusion. For the pages that you want to rank have you considered moving them up the hierarchy/internal link structure. It would be great to have an example of the pages you mentioned in a previous question and your site address to get a better feel for exactly where you are and what you could do...

danwebman

Don't try too hard, write a good description of what your site is all about, add a Meta Description and Page Title to suit.

Google likes plain language and in depth detail. Look after the main Keyword on the front page and then as Matt says have filter pages direct from the front page. Either inline text links or from the main menu structure.

Golden Rule :- if your doing it just for Google Don't, follow W3C and make sure your structure is sound and then look again at Page Ranking.

Fuel

Hi Robert,

I agree that it would be helpful to know more about your site. The size and content of the site will have a major impact on this. In addition, how many keywords are "several"? Optimizing for 2-3 keywords is a lot different than attempting to optimize for 10-15 at a time. Also, you need to consider how broad or long-tail those keywords are and how competitive your market is. Perhaps do a little research and check out your competition for each keywords and evaluate what they are doing, why / how is it working for them, and what you can be doing better.

One thing that you DON'T want to do is keyword stuff your homepage, title tags, or meta descriptions. Each of those needs to be as relevant to the page as possible. Keyword stuffing will only hurt the site.

I also agree that, if you are going after a particular keyword, having content related to that moved up from lower level pages to higher level pages that are easily accessible via the homepage would be a good start in boosting the homepage rankings for those individual keywords.

DrMcCoy

Wow! Great answer Matt, Dave and Fuel. I have rarely ever used a forum for support. But you guys have changed my desire on that. These are the answers and information I've been seeking. To give you fellows a little more info. my site is www.bestfitbybrazil.com. Keywords that I'm getting Fs on are below

Sorry Long list. As you can see my home page holds most rank even for those keywords that i have A grade for dedicated to those keywords.

My menus have a few direct links to some of those optimized pages and if you click on ANY menu item the left side bar will eluminate and you can see other direct links. Now heres what i did to sorta stuff away the keyword pages. Once you can see the left sidebar menu under INFORMATION section, menu item SEXY WORKOUT CLOTHES has a sub link called Brazilian Fitness Fashion. Click on that and you will see the page reveal several links. These links then link to each page I've optimized for a particular keyword. All of these pages are GRADE A. NOW HEREs the tricky part. I renamed all of the links on the page you see once you click Brazilian Fitness Fashion to avoid competitors seeing a list of exact keywords I've optimized pages for. I know this set up may not be the best. Let me know of a better way and I'm on it. I think searh engines much like competitors will have trouble deciphering this. Any suggestions. Oh, and do you thing my content on home page which appears at bottom could benefit from a little enhancing to including these keywords and remove F grades?

ok F liist below:

Cyrus-Shepard

The good news is your homepage is ranking for a lot of words!

Unfortunately, you can't always optimize a page for more than a few key phrases, but often if the content and incoming links are rich in semantic hints, your content can rank for dozens, hundreds, or even 1000s of long-tail phrases that are outside your "top" keywords that you're actually trying to target.

(Just to be clear - adding more than one <title>tag is not a good idea.) One thing you might want to consider is if your homepage is ranking for search terms that it doesn't answer very well, and question if you should be creating other resources on your site to answer those queries. If so, it might be worth your time to do so and make sure you are linking to them appropriately with good site architecture.</title>

DrMcCoy

Makes perfect sense. thx. I was concerned that without title keyword it would be hopeless to get A grade. maybe it is, but if content helps rank push to first page, i'll take it.

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