One-product site - should external links go to homepage or product page for seo?

Marketing
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Hello there,

I’m launching a new single product ecommerce site next month, and for the past 9 months I’ve have been building a decent amount of links to the current “coming soon” page, on the root domain (i.e. home page) using the main product keyword. This is all very well, and I’m ranking pretty well for the main keyword I need to rank for. However, when the site launches, I will have to make a decision about whether or not to continue building these links to the home page or to start building links pointing at the main product page instead. Either way, I’m going to end up with two pages that are pretty much both competing for the same keyword.

Is it common for this sort of situation, where the homepage of a site ends up competing with another page which should really be the one ranking for a specific keyword? And how do people generally deal with this?

I’m assuming that the conversion rate will be higher if people are taken straight to the product page from google instead of the home page, which is why I’d prefer to have the product page optimised for the main keyword - but the homepage is already ranking high (hovering between #1 and #3 in the rankings) for this keyword.

Any help is most appreciated.

Thanks,
Dan

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Hi Dan,

I suggest to optimize the product page rather than the home page for the product keyword. One reason is because as your site grows, your home page may consists of many other products and it may not be easy to locate the product people wants if they come to your home page upon first landing. That being said, I don’t suggest you to spend the time optimizing the product page now but rather spend time in promoting the products. Your product page will naturally rank higher in time to come.

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Hi KCgame

Thanks for the response, what you’re saying makes a lot of sense.

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I guess you should optimize your home page first and then later think of optimizing the product page. The reason why i think you should optimize your home page is because you need to build a brand of your website and then later on concentrate on your products.

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You should link to the most relevant page for that keyword - Google likes deep links too so they don’t all go to your home page. Either way it’s better to have your site competing with your site as opposed to a competitor!

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