What page should I link to?

[Elio]

Hello everyone,

I am working on a site, a local nutritionist, and I am about to list her site on a few directories. Her homepage is already ranking on the first page (bottom) for her main term; she offers a few and complementary services: she?s a nutritionist, a counselor, she works with flower therapy and so on? We decided to keep her homepage as a presentation of who she is and what she does in general and are creating specific pages for each one of her services.

Her main keyword for now is ?Nutritionist + Town? for which her homepage is ranking. So my question is: now that we have a specific page for that service, once I list her site on some directories, should I link to the homepage (which is already ranking) or to the service page (which is not ranking at all right now, but is more specific)? Also, if this can help:
- the homepage has really few links, so the present rankings come from on-page optimization
- her GMB is linked now to her service-specific page
Thank so much you for your opinions and suggestions
Elio

 

[djbaxter]

You may not have a choice. Many directories will only accept links to the home page.

 

[Elio]

Hey djbaxter,
thank you for your prompt reply! Yeah, I thought about that while I was writing my question actually. But, hypothetically, given the possibility, what could the best solution be?
Thanks again!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hey djbaxter,
thank you for your prompt reply! Yeah, I thought about that while I was writing my question actually. But, hypothetically, given the possibility, what could the best solution be?
Thanks again!

I would definitely use your homepage given the scenario that you described.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

[Elio]

Hey Colan,
thank you so much for your opinion

 

[JoyHawkins]

Yep, I agree with Colan. Always go with the one that ranks highest organically.

 

[Elio]

Hey Joy,
thank you! Well, I believe I'll go for the homepage then

 

[Scott Rawlins]

Yep, home page.

 

[djbaxter]

We really need to stop all this bickering about whether it should be the home page or the home page.

 

[Tim Colling]

You guys have it all wrong.

He should link to his "front page"

...as I sometimes see people describing their home pages...

ok, now you can throw rotten tomatoes at me!

 

[vivekrpatel]

Hello everyone,

Quite a similar situation, I have. The client wants to rank #1 for "Practice area + lawyer" right now he is shuffling between #3 and #4 on the first page.


While he is already ranking #1 for "Practice area + Attorneys" due to the on-page optimization (title/meta). So I decided to keep as it is.


My question is:

Should I start creating backlinks for "Practice area + lawyer" from the high quality niche sites?

What on-site changes should I do considering the ranking, which is shuffling between #3 and #4?


Also, I believe creating local content for the blog page and linking to this current ranking page on "Practice area + lawyer" will help.


They have only 6 backlinks for the current ranking page.


Please suggest.


Thanks in advance.

 

[vivekrpatel]

Hello everyone,

Quite a similar situation, I have. The client wants to rank #1 for "Practice area + lawyer" right now he is shuffling between #3 and #4 on the first page.

While he is already ranking #1 for "Practice area + Attorneys" due to the on-page optimization (title/meta). So I decided to keep as it is.

My question is:

Should I start creating backlinks for "Practice area + lawyer" from the high quality niche sites?

What on-site changes should I do considering the ranking, which is shuffling between #3 and #4?

Also, I believe creating local content for the blog page and linking to this current ranking page on "Practice area + lawyer" will help.

They have only 6 backlinks for the current ranking page.

Please suggest.

Thanks in advance.

 

[James Watt]

Hi vivekrpatel -

It's kind of hard to say what to change without taking a look at the site. If you're already #3 or #4 for a competitive industry like lawyers though, especially with a poor backlink spread, my guess is the site itself is set up reasonably well at least. If you haven't done any local backlink building before, there's a ton of good resources on where to start. Phil's got a great one to work through with the client here. Here's another list you can brainstorm with. Not all the ideas are still relevant, but it's a place to start at least.

Also, it's been shown that exact match anchor text significantly correlates with rankings, but it's ALSO been shown that an artificial looking anchor text spread can get you flagged for spam by Google. In other words, don't make all your links have the same anchor text, it'll look fishy. If you can, get a few of your most important links to have your keyword in the anchor text, but don't be over ambitious about 'optimizing' that side of things, it's asking for trouble.

Edit - Just wanted to point out too, #3~4 is pretty good, you might want to take a look at your statistics and see if you'd be better served by working on conversion instead of trying to claim the #1 spot.

 

[vivekrpatel]

Agree with you, James.

They are already ranking well so we should educate them and focus on more important KPI's.

Thank you for the great tips.