I`m having a difficult time understanding the best way to tag my home page.

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  David Mason: Hey, All. Thanks for the community. The question I am dealing with is related to my home page. Since I can't #keyword tag my home page title (file name), I'm having  ;a difficult time understanding the best way to tag it. My competitors seem to be beating me out in the #SERPs because they have my keywords in in their page names, and I don't--even though my domain contains all of the keywords. For example, my site home page is: www.kw1kw2kw3.com/  ;My competitors have www.somedomain/kw1-kw2-kw3  ;What strategy can I use to enrich my keywords on that homepage, since I can't "title" it other than "home" (or can I)?  ;Perhaps I should mention that I'm using WordPress on a hosted server. Thanks!
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  Greg Kristan: Search engines are pretty smart so you don't need to have the keywords all over the URL to tell the search engine this page is about this keyword. ;Moz just came out with this ;http://moz.com/blog/4-lessons-from-a-year-of-mozcast-data ;
  
  I would suggest small clues like a title tag, an image ALT tag, and the keyword in the written text is all you need. Then if you write blogs you can internally hyperlink the keyword (and variations of that keyword) back to the target page you want the search engine and more importantly ;the user to go to. Also you will need to build external links to those target pages that ;are relevant to the topic.
  
  I would rather the homepage just be a welcome page and have my deeper pages actually rank in the SERPS because that increases the likelihood of a landing page conversion in an organic search. If a user searches a term and lands on a homepage they might get lost as to where to go to find what they were really looking for and leave your site.
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  Honey Tree Media: Hi David, Greg has made some great points! First and foremost, you should optimize your home page for your brand name. I think it is smart to focus it on a secondary keyword as well.
  
  The most important on-page element for keyword rankings is your title tag. Second to that is your H1 tag. What Wordpress theme are you using?
  
  You can use a free plugin like Yoast SEO to help you optimize your page title tags and meta descriptions, and use WP's built-in editor to format your H1 tags.
  
  Hope that helps!
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  David Mason: +Greg Kristan ;thanks for the advice; it's all sound and helpful. My home page and URL are the keywords I'm using. When users land there, they'll expect to see (and will find) exactly what they searched for. I'm targeting three keywords, and those keywords are the actual business name, as well as the descriptors of the service I provide. I totally agree that if they searched for a term and landed on a home page that didn't clearly fit what they searched for, that could end up with a lost conversion. My clients won't be looking for a specific "product;" they're looking for a general service. I hope that makes sense. I'll certainly keep your advice in mind as I proceed. Thanks for the tips on the link building protocols.
  
  +Honey Tree Media ;Thanks for your input. The home page matches the brand name clearly, and I'm focusing on three keywords, which is the business name (and the domain). I'm using "The 7" by Dream Theme, off of Themeforest.net. I will absolutely utilize the Yoast plugin. Thank your for pointing out the importance of the title and H1 tags.
  
  I get confused a bit by my theme's shortcodes and understanding what H tag is being utilized. I don't understand what H tags are being used for each shortcode, but that might be another question, though. I'm not sure how to vocalize my confusion...
  
  Thank you both very much for your time, advice, and input!
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  Honey Tree Media: Happy to help, +David Mason! Do you know how to tag an H1 header using your visual editor in Wordpress? If you look at the text editor, the your H1 header should be enclosed like this: <h1>Your Attention-Grabbing Headline</h1>. Feel free to post screen shots or start a new thread here or at +Honey Tree Media :)
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  David Mason: Awesome and thanks, +Honey Tree Media ;Will do!
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  W.E. Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 01:19:14 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/im_having_a_difficult_time_understanding_the_best_way_to_tag_my_home_page
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  David Mason: +W.E. Jonk ;I followed the link, and was surprised, and impressed, to see this whole thread set up as a "blog" post on your site. Do you mind sharing how you achieved this effect? Pretty slick. I tried accessing thd video but it "times out" I'll try again. Thanks!
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  W.E. Jonk: That format is thanks to +Jim Munro ;and +Andy Wigglesworth ;. For me the YouTube video does play. ;
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  Jim Munro: We are adding a link to report errors on individual question pages, David, and hope to have it in place before the weekend. Please be the first to check it out for us. :)
  
  The "blog" post is nothing special, we just scrape the individual questions just prior to the recording to create a runlist. The aim is to make it easier for our Panelists to see where we are going and to provide a permanently retrievable file for each question.
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  David Mason: Thanks, +Jim Munro ;. It makes great sense, and you have a really useful service. I'll make sure to check out the error reporting system. Let me know when you get it up and running. The video loaded fine, once I chose to "View on YouTube," but I'm sure you want to keep visitors on your site. Thanks again!
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  Jim Munro: Check it out please, David.
  
  https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/im_having_a_difficult_time_understanding_the_best_way_to_tag_my_home_page
  
  I'd be interested to know if you are required to "view on Youtube" this time too. :)
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  David Mason: Perfect on Android mobile using Chrome. Nice work!
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  Jim Munro: Thanks mate. I appreciate that you would take the trouble. Thanks again. :)
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  David Mason: Heck, yes! Thanks for the SEO resources. Cheers.