Optimization of home page

[Morch]

Hi there

I have an issue which, despite searching hard, I simply cannot find the right solution for. We have an index page that used to rank pretty well for a main industry keyword. However following a revamp of the site last year the kw slipped and no longer brings in decent traffic levels.

The problem seems to be  that the old static site had a sprinkling of variable anchor text links that brought value to the home page. Instead of the main anchor being "home" we would revert to "main keyword" and variations across the site sometimes in t he content but mainly on the nav bars. However the new CMS design structure restricts us considerably with anchor distribution and so instead we opted for the site logo on the masthead to have an ALT tag for "main keyword" but so as not to game google too much we added .."home" to the tag.

Probably pointless but we figured it could do no harm. This ALT text is site wide Problem now is that we have lost the spread of internal nav bar anchors and variety etc. We have slipped in the serps for "main keyword" and I cant help thinking we are not maximising the anchors as we should.

So what Im coming to is this....

How can we tell if Google is picking up the ALT tage anchor as the main anchor to rank the site at the expense of all internal text anchors. Despite retaining lots of embedded anchors - according to the Moz metrics these are not being picked up because OSE suggests the ALT tag anchor is taking precedence. The serps probably support this view as well.

Should we:

a) Vary the masthead ALT if there is no way of avoiding this being the most important link / anchor on the page

b) Remove the ALT anchor and instead opt for content links high on the page (we do have nav bar links saying "Home" site wide as well which may overrid the embedded links?)

c) Leave the ALT alone and still push for content anchors as described in b) What is the best way to handle this..?

Best wishes and thanks

Morch

[Nemek]

Don't rely on the ALT tag too much. Normal text and standard anchor text in links have more influence than ALT text does. If you've deleted the keywords and substituted them with images with ALT text, it's never going to be as good.

[DanDeceuster]

If your rankings slipped significantly after a redesign and never came back, I would be a whole heck of a lot more concerned at other issues instead of your internal link anchors. To answer your question though, just make the alt tag of that masthead match your keyword. Keywords in alt tags is not spammy to Google; keyword stuffed alt tags are. Just put the main keyword and not a bunch of other crap.

Other issues to consider might be number of indexed pages, duplicate content potential, presence and submission of a sitemap, keywords across the whole site, etc. Chances are very strong that your rankings slipped because of a lot bigger issues than just internal anchors.

[Morch]

Hi there

We didnt see a significant drop just a modest one but when you slip from posn 2 to posn 7 you feel the difference.

Main worry is that we have removed some varied text anchors and supplanted these with the masthead main keyword anchor in the ALT tag of the logo.

My feeling is that ALT tag anchors wont carry the weight of contextual high up the page content anchors which is what Nemek seems to suggest.

Thanks for your feedback chaps

Morch

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Morch, I'm wondering what you decided to do, and if you've seen any more changes in your rankings. Do you have any advice to pass along to someone else who may be in the same situation, or any other questions to ask?

[askshopper]

Have you checked on the competition for the keyword, just maybe they got stronger?.

[NainaGola]

Why is this question still featured even after one year and after so many apt answers?

[KeriMorgret]

It's the way the system is configured right now in that the original poster didn't mark any good answers. We're working on improving what's considered a featured question in the next couple of months.