This is what confuses me. Please read carefully. Lets say that I have a site that is about Cat Food. My main page is optimized for Cat Food and Cat Chow, and ranks well for these terms. But then I have many articles on my site. The articles are on a page called Articles. This page is available on my main page. FROM the article page there are links to on-site articles (on separate pages) called: How to Make Cat Food What is the Best Cat Food for Your Feline Organic Cat Food Pros and Cons These article are written around long tail search terms that match their titles. My question is this: 1) Since these articles contain info related to my main pages terms, do they help my MAIN page rank for its MAIN TERMS? In other words, does Google respect my site because of its content? 2.) OR -- do the articles HURT my rankings for my main pages main terms because they may COMPETE with my main pages terms? Lastly, if someone types in How to Make Cat Food, is there a way I can get them to land on my main page instead of my sub page? Is it all about inbound links? TO SUM IT ALL UP: Is it ok that my articles are very closely related to my main page's keywords? Or does conflict occur?
SE's look at the site hierarchy and ranks your site as a whole. So, it's good to have different cat food articles targeting their own keyword strings, individually. All of your pages will rank on an individual basis, but they all act like the foundation for the home page, since all of them probably point back to the home page (and not the other way around). Also, keep in mind that SE's (especially Google) know all about synonyms and related words/topics, so it all contributes to helping you rank. Always be sure to use breadcrumb trails if your interlinking has been neglected, it helps a lot when trying to build up good internal links.
Ok good -- so they'll help with very specific longtails, but google will also respect my sites structure and send people to the main page as much as it can?
So do you think the way I have it organized is optimal? Main Site > Articles > Article 1, Article 2, Article 3 With each article linking back to main page ?
Lastly -- Is it wise to have anchor text the relates to the article and have the anchor point to the Main page? Like lets say I want the site's main page to rank for Organic Cat Food, yet my main page was ranking for Cat Food. If I had "Organic Cat Food" at the bottom of an Organic Cat Food article on a page, and Organic Cat Food ranked to the main page, would it help the main page rank for Organic Cat Food?
It can definitely help to have plenty of related articles on your website. Those articles help tell Google what your website is about. It also provides relevant internal links for your other pages. The more links you can get on pages related to cat food the better. Sometimes you will have pages on your website competing for rankings on the same keyword. To combat this, it helps to work at getting backlinks to each page with its specific targeted keywords. The more competitive the phrase, the more backlinks you will need. Those extra backlinks will help the search engines choose between ranking your homepage and your article. Google is not going to automatically try to send people to your homepage though. They will try to send users to what they think is the most relevant page. It is up to you help Google determine which is more relevant. For good internal linking you should have a link to your homepage from each of your website's pages. You should also link to other important pages throughout your site too.
Yes...even if you wanted to, the 1st link in your breadcrumb trail could be the word you want your entire site to rank for most (such as "Cat Food") rather than simply calling it "Home". It's good to mix direct keyword hyperlinks "cat food" with descriptive hyperlinks "site about cat food comparisons and suggestions" when pointing to your home page.
Hmmm. So content always comes first to google -- even in front of site structure. That bothers me -- but ... I guess its how it goes.