9 replies to this topic

[advcomputer]

Hello all,

This is a newbie question, so please bear with me. Let me use a fictional example to attempt to make my point.

I have a 3 page website which consists of;

a: a home page (which has link to contacts and sitemap)
b: contact us page (whcih has links to home and site map)
c: site map page (which has links to home and contact us)

The home page has been very optimized for "ultra widgets" and ranks very well on google. After doing so research in wordtracker I see that I would also like to optimize for "super widgets"

So the questions are as follows;

1: Can I optimize the same homepage for both
2: If I need a 2nd page (almost like a 2nd home page) optimized for "superwidgets" I'm going to assume that I need to put it into the sitemap.

3: How in essence would a "2nd home page work" I mean the copy would by 80% similar to that of the existing homepage. And what about the links for the new page? Shoukd it also include a link to home or just contactus and site map.

I hope this make some sense.

Thanks for the time and patience.

--J

[qwerty]

Hi advcomputer. Welcome

If you don't have enough material to create a second page, you can certainly optimize the first page for both terms. It's even easier since they're pretty closely associated (assuming that element of your hypothetical example is accurate). It would be a bad idea to create a "second home page" if it didn't have content of its own.

The thing is, I don't know how hypothetical all this is, but a three-page site may as well be a two-page site -- there's not much need for a sitemap unless your home page doesn't link to the contact page. What you need is lots more content out there.

[advcomputer]

Hello QWERTY,

Thank you for the quick feedback. I guess the point is simple. I have a website with 5 - 10 closely related keywords that I would like to integrate into my website to get more traffic (and sales )

So keywords such as:

Super Widgets
Dynamic Widgets
The Best Widgets
Master Widgets

are all related to the content of widgets and they are all applicable to the content on the home page. None of these other keyword phrases has enough "meat" to stand on their own page.

So the question is how can I include, optimize, etc to capture the additional traffic the keyword can generate?

--J

[qwerty]

Well, I definitely don't recommend optimizing a single page for five keywords. I'm personally not crazy about doing two or three, but I can understand the logic behind doing that. Five is not a good situation, though.

Are you sure you don't have enough material to create a couple more pages?

[Jill]

Welcome, Advcomputer!

Yes, you can optimize for 5 different phrases on the home page they're all related such as the ones you said. Assuming they're not highly competitive, of course.

I have pages that rank highly for even more than 5 phrases, it's really not that hard if you have a good seo copywriter and understand the nitty-gritty of writing for the search engines.

Jill

[RayGonzalez]

Hi advcomputer,

You can target 5 or so keywords per page in most cases.

However if the keyword you are targeting is highly competitve, I would stick with only targeting 1-3 keyword phrases per page.

It really boils down to how much competition for the keyword there is.

Adding additional pages with relevant content will definitely help in the overall campaign.

At this point with the homepage already ranking well for "ultra widgets" I would just add "superwidgets" to the mix.

If in the next few days you don't see the results you want then move forward with adding an additional page for "superwidgets".

Quick note - for highly competitive keywords I usually optimize 2-5 pages, each containing a enough relevant content, for a particular keyword. Once I get one of the pages ranking where I want it, I change the other pages around to target similar phrases.

Ray Gonzalez

Edited by Haystack, 19 October 2003 - 09:52 PM.

[Haystack]

Hi Ray. Welcome to the forum. I edited out the hyperlink in below your name. You can post that, but please use the signature file to do so.

Click on My Controls > Edit Signature
and stick it in there.

[qwerty]

If in the next few days you don't see the results you want then move forward with adding an additional page for "superwidgets".

I'd say that it takes more than a few days to see the results of your work -- more like 4-6 weeks. But it's always a good idea to add a new page, whether the improvements you've made to an existing page have shown results yet or not.

[RayGonzalez]

Qwerty,

Our homepage is refreshed just about everyday in Google.
If I add a new page to the site I add the link to the homepage.

Google will typically pick up the new page the with 24-48 hours.
Typically the new page ranks well from the start unless it is a highly competitive keyword.

It may take 4-6 weeks to move into the 5 positions, but usually I can get a page to rank in the top 20 with in a few days.

Again, if it is a highly competitive keyword like search engine optimization you will need more time, usually because it takes a lot more tweaking.

But for search engine optimization tampa, it took 24 hours to be #2.

However if I don't add a link to the homepage and just add the page to the site index, it can take 3-4 weeks for the Google Dance to pick up the new pages or changes that have been made.

Also I would never tell the client it can be done in a couple of days, we always tell them it will take 4-6 weeks to see the initial results and up to 6 months for all of the results to kick in.

I do agree with you that adding additional pages is always a good idea.
We have 167 pages indexed by Google and we are always adding additional pages. Not just for the engines but also for the users.

Ray Gonzalez

[samt]

I'm pretty new myself, but I have a thought here. First off, I'm guessing that you sell widgets, and your home page is all about widgets, and then your other pages are mostly just lists of widgets and their pricing? If that's the case, I had a similar situation. I can't figure out how to explain this in widgets, so I'll just tell you I sell plural component spray pumps. Some people call them just that, other people call them a proportioner, or a spray foam machine, a sprayer, etc. I had a main page, which led to a few pages with a couple pictures and lists of pricing. I used a sprinkling of all of these different terms on my main page. Then, I picked one of these terms for each of my next pages, and used that one term strongly on each page, figuring that all the pages link together, so even if all traffic doesn't start on my main page, my extension pages will each be really strong for their given term. In my case, I ended up coming up with some really good text for my price pages after a while. But before I came up with it, I already saw an improvement just from working the keyword into the page without text. For example, I'd put some brief notes about terms at the bottom of the page that read like "proportioners ship within 5 business days. Sales tax will be added to proportioners delivered within AZ" etc... and then just change the keyword in those terms as assigned to each page. Give each page a heading that includes it's keyword. Make sure that the link from your main page includes the keyword for the page it goes to. This kind of thing helped me to begin with, and eventually led me to finding real text that I could add to each page. Good luck