Hi All, I am new to SEO and I am trying to get an answer to this question. I have been putting links to this keyword to a specific category page that is rich with the targeted keyword. My problem is my homepage is now ranking for this specific keyword while the category page I have been putting the links to has not shown up at all in the search engine. Is my best bet to switch now to the home page for this keyword since it is the one ranking or should I keep putting the links to the category page. Any help in this question of mine is most appreciated! Thanks
Is it the primary keyword you are trying to rank for? If it is, you should target it on the home page as its considered the most important page of your site.
This is not the primary, but it is one I would like to rank for. If I keep putting to category will it show up eventually? Or do you think it is more effective to shift gears for this keyword to the homepage since it is in the search engine?
I wouldn't change my strategy based on fluctuations in the search engines which happen all the time. What you have to ask is yourself is why you would want a category page to rank? I am assuming it doesn't have much if any content on the page and is just a list of links? You can convert visitors a lot easier when you have good copy on the page (think about conversions not just traffic). If you all have is a bunch of links they will land on the page and leave straight away because its probably not what they were searching for.
I have structured my site to be homepage(main keyword)>Category Page(other focused keywords)>Posts(longtails related to keyword) I am doing this in an effort to focus on the easier keywords first before going after the big one as this will take much more time. I have just never been able to get my category pages to rank yet, only the posts in them and or homepage. I am not sure if I am doing something wrong or not.
You don't really want the category pages to rank (for reasons I stated above). Although you want to use a good site structure to transfer PR to all the important pages.
So do you think or would suggest to shift gears to point the links to the homepage instead to rank on the specific keyword quicker? I am just curious as I have never attempted this structure before and think it would be cool if it worked. I am just not sure if I have been spinning my wheels here with the category pages.
You should be paying me for this advice .... BUT Forget link building to category pages. Just make sure you have a good internal link structure for the search engines and more importantly USERS. Get links to the home page and post pages. The links to the inner pages will help you rank for the primary keyword you are trying to rank for.
Thanks so much for the advice dcristo, I really appreciate it! I just wish I could have found this out about 3 months ago =) But no matter, I do appreciate the help and will do a course correction for these links. Thanks, ~Jimmy