Wordpress Homepage SEO for Google

[crowly]

Hi guys,

My first post here and I need your help.

Lets say I have a website called " www greenlizards com " . I also have few categories on it like " green lizards food " , " green lizards habitats " etc..Now my main homepage is intended to rank for my root keyword " green lizards ", so which is better:

a) have a static homepage with one article based on the root keyword
b) have a dynamic homepage page, featuring a number of my latest posts
c) have a " sticky " post based on the root keyword and latest posts after that from other categories

Alright guys, this is the issue. I use wordpress if that helps to get a better idea. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Martin

[tedster]

If you're actually blogging, I think the expectation is that your home page will list recent articles - it's not a good idea to break with conventions that users expect. But if you're using Wordpress as a CMS for a collection of content, then I'd go with a more stable home page.

Are you sure you are locked into an "either/or" situation? I'm pretty sure you can find a Wordpress theme that allow for a static opening blurb, followed by a list of recent articles.

[crowly]

Hi tedster,

Think Ill go with static opening followed by recent articles. Its not going to be a " blog " obviously , but was wondering whether adding new content to the home page will help ranking ? Also can you give me your view of how will this reflect the siloing of the page as a whole ?

Thanks
Martin

[tedster]

You're still going to have a main menu, right? That will create the main siloing. However, when your individual articles cross-link to pages in other topic areas, that undoes the silo effect a bit.

Having new articles featured on the home page is a second way of sending link equity directly to them, as long as they are on the home page. (Eventually they should be pushed off by more recent content.) That effect can unbalance the distribution of link equity across your silos a bit if you don't introduce new content into each one on an even basis.

[crowly]

Yes , there will be a menu - cat menu at least..Was thinking of Dan Raine's WP Silo Plugin. Have you heard about it tedster ?

[goodroi]

there are countless plugins and dont forget about the many themes. i prefer a combination of static opening with dynamic content. the static opening ensures i always have certain keywords on the homepage. the dynamic content ensures my homepage exposes different pages to google and helps with crawling my site.

be careful about wordpress plugins and themes. you need to make sure all of your items are compatible with each other. its hard to recommend a single plugin or theme without knowing about all the toehr stuff going on with a wordpress site. a plugin that is great for my situation may not be good for you.

[RP_Joe]

The home page is different than others. Google uses it for clues about the sites content. Make sure your title tag has what it needs to clue google. It should have lizard or lizards. I have found, there should be plenty of text on the homepage. Text about the overall content of the site. You can place it further down the page if you want.