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Rank page with only backlinks and no on-site?

by startupjohn
3 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello,

I'm currently going through the process of running some SEO cycles
on my website, which is a small niche site that sells a product, so it's
not a content rich site.

I know that I can build backlinks using my main keywords and rank
just fine for those. However, I'm wondering if it's possible to rank the
home page of my site for many keywords, even if the keywords are
not mentioned a single time on my home page?

I'm hoping that I can do this by simply running my normal cycles
and building many backlinks from quality content I distribute out.
Of course, many of the backlinks I'd create would have anchor
text of the keyword(s) I want to rank for, even though my home
page is not optimized for the keywords.

Since my website is aimed at selling a product, I would much rather
have my home page getting #1 rankings in SERPs, instead of a blog
on my site, or random pages targeted to each keyword. I want to
funnel all traffic to my sales page, if possible.

Has anyone had any experience with this? Is this possible?

Thanks.
#backlinks #keywords #link building #off site seo #onsite #page #rank #seo
  • Profile picture of the author Carlton Johnson
    It's possible but if they are decent keywords the effort would most likely not be worth it. On top of that, since the keywords wouldn't actually be on your page it will possibly take you a lot more effort to keep them ranked, in comparison to someone elses page that was optimized for those keywords.

    I honestly wouldn't bother trying to do things this way. You will most likely be chasing your tail for ever. Plus, with all the changes in Google over the last few months I think the way you want to do things will become even less effective.

    Personally, when it comes to my sales pages I focus 100% on writing stuff that converts. Now, natrually, these types of pages will have lots of keywords on them because they will contain lots of words that my customers use.

    When it comes to SEO stuff I focus on other pages on my site or a total other site driving traffic to that sales page.

    Hope that makes sense?

    You don't want to diliute the effectiveness of your sales page because you are focused on SEO and you don't want to dilute the effectiveness of your link building campaigns because you are focused on ranking for to many keywords, many of which are not even on your page.

    Sales page = focus totally on conversions

    SEO = focus totally on other pages on your site or another site totally and then drive the traffic to your sales page from there.

    That is how I do things. Others might do something different, but the plan above works great for me...

    Hopefully, that gives you some more ideas...
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    • Profile picture of the author startupjohn
      Thank you for the detailed response, I appreciate it.

      I guess I should mention that my sales page is not the traditional
      internet marketing sales page, very long, etc. I'm trying a more
      web 2.0 approach, similar to a site like this:
      desk.c0m

      My home page focuses on showcasing a very high quality video
      that sells well and gets the buying emotions flowing, then funneling
      visitors to a tour page to learn more about the service, or pricing
      page to buy or signup to a free trial.

      Would it be much better to switch back to the traditional very
      long sales page style (I used to use that style on my sites), so
      that I can optimize for many keywords in the copy? But then
      again, in this day and age, do most human visitors even bother
      reading all of that copy, or is it more intended for the search
      engines?

      Lastly, one idea I've gathered from poking around is possibly
      creating various keyword optimized article pages on my site
      to target the many keywords, then using the "rel canonical"
      tag to tell search engines to index my sales page for the keyword.

      Could that work, given that the keywords would be optimized
      on my site somewhere, but not necessarily always on my home
      page?

      What do you think? Thanks.
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      • Profile picture of the author startupjohn
        bump! what does everyone think?
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