Are you Optimising Deep Pages for the Wrong Terms?
Newcomers to SEO often make the mistake of blanketing their website with a specific keyword. This is mistakenly seen as a way of improving the site’s overall position within the search engines; but of course the truth is very different.
Each individual page needs to be viewed as its own mini-website within the wider network of your sitemap. You aren’t optimising a website, you are optimising a web page; therefore the terms that you optimise the page for need to be specific to it.
In a sprawling ecommerce website with thousands of products you may be forgiven for not wanting to spend hours creating word perfect Meta, keyword rich text and building its ranking profile (including links with embedded phrases). Whilst this might not be possible in most cases, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t make some effort in creating a unique identity.
As I explored in yesterday’s post, Targeting Relevant Traffic Rather than Hits, you need to identify keywords that won’t just attract large volumes of traffic, but encourage your target audience to take a look. Each page has its own individual identity and will be more useful for some searchers than others. Therefore when someone is searching for a product or service with any associated phrases, you want to ensure that your site is visible.
So whilst your home page might be optimised for ‘Furniture Supplier’, that same phrase shouldn’t be used as a keyword elsewhere. Lower level phrases might include ‘Antique Oak Furniture’ or ‘Teak Cabinets’, terms that are intrinsically linked to what that page has to offer.
Think about it this way, if you searched for ‘Teak Cabinets’ you wouldn’t want to just land on a general furniture store’s homepage; the same is true in reverse. You want the landing page to be as directly linked to the main theme of what you are offering; this means researching the search volumes and competition rates to see exactly what you’re up against.
Avoid generic phrases where possible. In terms of products, you should of course push for the name of the item in question, but elsewhere you need to be a little more cunning about what exactly you’re optimising for. You also need to carry out your usual SEO processes, including building strength for your page through linking. A lot will be transferred through the internal links, with the home page invariably possessing most individual authority, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t improve your deep linking profile with your all-important subsidiary pages.
So in essence this very much carries on from what I’ve previously said about optimising pages rather than websites. It is extremely important that your landing pages match their search terms; if you’re attracting a fair amount of traffic but experiencing an equally high bounce rate, then something is probably a little wrong. Your site’s pages are an opportunity for you to attract additional targeted traffic, diversify your ranking terms and of course earn more conversions.
