I want to share an SEO concept we call “secondary homepage” that we created 10+ years ago when Google first starting penalizing websites for bad backlink profiles.
This is a action item we recommend in 99% of our SEO audits and is a simple way of avoiding link building penalties and boosting your SEO.
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What is the “secondary homepage”?
The “secondary homepage” is another page on the site that essentially acts like a homepage that you send links to instead of hammering the Homepage of your with links.
One of the ways Google’s started penalizing sites was where there was a disproportionate amount of links hitting the homepage versus the inner pages on the site and this tactic was a way to work around this problem. We essentially build a page that acts similarly to the homepage and then send our anchor text heavy links there and leave the branded and other general links pointing to the homepage.
Once we started introducing the “secondary homepage” concept into our work and started deploying these secondary homepages to client sites we discovered another one of the fundamental SEO strategies we continue to use today, “no page, no rank and the homepage doesn’t count”
When we started building these pages we realized many of these sites were missing individual pages that matched the primary keywords the sites were trying to rank for. It was assumed by pointing the Homepage at the primary target terms that’d do the job but it seems that’s not the case. Even though the Homepage for a site may rank for a search query it seems that it’s the inner pages that still drive these rankings.
Sidenote: this secondary homepage concept also works extremely well with 301 domain redirect strategies too
“No page no rank” and your homepage doesn’t count
If you don’t have a page for something on your site you can’t rank for it, no page no rank.
You’d be surprised how often we see this issue in our SEO audits.
There are some weird technical and edge case examples where this rule isn’t 100% true but broadly speaking, if say you’re a dentist and want to rank for searches relating to teeth whitening, then you need to have a page on your site for teeth whitening.
Each page on your site can only rank for one theme or topic too – your teeth whitening page is not going to rank for “dental implants” and stuffing 15 services onto a single services page doesn’t work either.
A simple action step we try to have all customers do is to list out all the products and services they sell. along with all their physical locations and then make sure there is a page to match each one. Often, by simply adding a page for a product or service you’ll start to rank and get traffic.
How To Build Your Secondary Homepage
For ecommerce sites, the secondary homepage should almost always be the primary product category page. For content sites, the primary category page for the content and for sites selling services or local business sites, this should be the product or services page for the primary thing the business sells.
Secondary Homepage Examples – Ecommerce
Here’s an example of a secondary homepage for an ecommerce site, this is the first one of these pages we ever built and it’s still performing after 10 years: https://www.didgeridoobreath.com/didgeridoos/
You’ll note that this is similar-ish in nature to the homepage but it is a product category with detailed content at the top of the page.
As a sidenote, it’s important in ecommerce that you avoid the “price list problem” whereby your category pages are essentially a glorified price list. Having basic content on category pages about who you are, what you sell and why someone should buy from you will go a long way in engaging visitors who initially land on a category page.
Secondary Homepage Examples – Content Site
This example is a content and membership site owned by the guys at Didgeridoo Breath. The site itself is looking a bit dated but again the concept still stands. In this case a number of other small sites and domains were purchased over time and those links redirected to this page instead of the homepage: https://www.didgeridoodojo.com/beginner-didgeridoo-lessons/
When some searches terms like “learn to play didgeridoo” and similar, this is the page that ranks.
Secondary Homepage Examples – Local SEO
Here’s another example for a Plumber in Perth, Western Australia. The business operates in a number of capital cities in Australia like Canberra (on the opposite site of Australia) and regional areas like Gladstone but the primary city it serves is Perth – https://www.tapdoctor.com.au/plumbers-perth/
For this site this page acts as the secondary homepage and is also a key landing page for PPC traffic.
