I was recently given the task of choosing which of our 10 category links to remove from our homepage. (We are replacing it with a new one.)
My question is: What statistics should I look at to determine which link to remove? I'm assuming that removing the link from our homepage nav may have a negative effect on that pages organic ranking. I want to play it safe and choose the least valuable page.
I could look purely at organic traffic volume of the category landing pages and see which was worst performing. But a fair share of the organic keywords driving traffic to the page were not correlated to the anchor text we used on the homepage - so another factor might be at play.
I could look at revenue from organic traffic to these landing pages. But category pages aren't always the best converting. The real value might be in the "broad match" organic keywords that are rising in google's ranks and driving revenue. Juice may be being passed onto these long tail terms (and their counter-part landing pages) but how do I measure if the link juice was passed from the broader category page - thank to a link on our homepage nav?
Revenue might not be the best indicator either, because these broad categories are primarily meant to drive traffic and build brand strength. They don't necessarily convert for first time visits.
How would you have gone about it if you were given the task?
I'm fairly new to SEO, so I'm mostly just want to hear your though processes to know how more experienced SEO's would have gone about solving this puzzle.
Thank in advance!
