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You can definitely mention it, just don't make the homepage all about gastric band hypnotherapy. The trouble comes when both pages are targeting the same phrase.

No, Google likes unique anchor text, since it seems more organic, and supports tracking codes as well. My only hesitation is that adding those tracking codes is going to identify your links as marketing efforts rather than completely organic links. But I think you should be okay.

The problem with tagging is that mysite.com/seo-text?utm_campaign=guest-blogs could technically be indexed by Google and become a duplicate of mysite.com/seo-text. Make sure that Google knows that you only want it to index mysite.com/seo-text by:

1. Adding a cannonical tag on the page to link to the non-parameter version:
2. Tell Google to disregard the utm_campaign parameter in Google Webmaster Tools.

Best,

Kristina

On the Overview page in the Crawl Diagnostics box, click on Duplicate Page Title on the Y axis. It will send you to a page that lists the duplicate page titles.

Hi Liam,

I think that the same premise applies to meta title tags and keywords in general, so, yes, a good formula for a homepage title tag is: Brand - Core Business(es), even if the core business(es) have their own category pages.

You're right, if you turn a word on a page into an internal link, it shows the search engines that the destination page is targeted for that keyword. But again, I wouldn't worry about self competition unless you're actively targeting a keyword on two pages.

Best,

Kristina

Hi WMA,

Before I start, there are a couple of things you should keep in mind when looking at other websites for SEO tips:

1. Many websites aren't optimized for SEO (or, they're trying, but not 100% there)
2. Big companies have more leeway in SEO, because they have so many backlinks.

To answer your first question, is it self competition to include target keywords from other pages on the home page, the answer is no, it's fine to have a target keyword on multiple pages on your site. But you shouldn't target two pages for the same keyword. For example, if all you sell is books, don't target your home page for the word "books" and have a category page for books. Then, if someone searches for "books," search engines don't know which page to display, and both of your pages will rank lower.

The bigger question, how do you optimize a home page, is trickier to answer. SEO isn't an exact science, and there are tons of ways that you can effectively optimize your homepage. Generally, I would say that your homepage should be targeting your brand name as a keyword, and include text about all of your types of products, and links to category pages. But your homepage is a representation of your company, so I can't really answer that question over Q&A.

Hope this helps!

Kristina