Build links to home page or internal to rank internal pages?
-
I understand that naturally people link to the home page and internal pages - probably the home page more often than not. In order to build a natural looking link profile I also understand that I need a variety of anchor text, brand and url links. Should I be building links mainly to the home page with only a few to internal pages? Ultimately I want my internal pages to rank for specific terms so in my head it makes sense to concentrate my link building effort to internal pages but that would seem unnatural to google I'm sure.
For arguments sake if I only built links to the home page with a mix of the anchor texts described above would these internal pages rank eventually anyway as 'link juice' flows throughout the site? Or is it an absolute must to build some links to internal pages. Could a page rank for a keyword without having any links to the site with the keyword anchor text (simply url links) based on the page title/content?
Also what is a good ratio of home page to internal links? I would assume around 10:1?
A lot of questions I know but I'm confused as to what will be the best strategy.
-
MOST of your links should be internal pages...especially if you run a site with a lot of pages.
Take a blog with 150 posts. What are the odds that 90% of his links point to his (or her) homepage?
There's no hard and fast rule about what percentage of homepage vs. internal links you should have...but I try to have less than 50% of my links pointing to my homepage.
-
I agree - I think it's important to do more than just the home page. I don't agree there's a specific science / ratio to it for a few reasons: if it was that specific, everyone would do it and we know Google wouldn't let it be that obvious because people would game the system.
There's relative factors to consider: some pages on your site may be way more competitive to rank for than others. If your overall domain authority is a little lower, you have to compensate for that. On my site, I can get some pages to rank well pretty much just with on page optimization because it's not a competitive term. There's others that are taking tons of links, strong keyword hierarchy and such to even get into the top 20.
The best strategy for you will (I'd assume) be based on evaluating how competitive your field is and what pages you want to rank for the best user experience to drive conversions. Will just your homepage do that? Do you need other pages w/in your site to offer a better experience?
-
I happen to think that your link profile needs to be robust to your internal pages. Think about user experience here. If someone is on another blog and writing about red apples, would the person want to go to the home page of a farmers website about red apples or a sub-page about red apples. I just think that is natural. If they go to the homepage of your site then they will have to find the page on red apples. I can image that your bounce rate would be pretty high if that was the case. I don't worry to much about percentages on any sort of link building campaign. I don't know if 10:1 or 15:1 or 1:1 is correct. I can tell you from just about everything the search engines do that percentages don't matter. It's about quality. As a general rule of thumb, its going to depend on your type of website you are building. If you have an e-commerce site and the link is from some where talking about sites as a whole, the link to your home page is fine. But, if the source of the link is talking about a particular product, then I think that link needs to be to a particular sub-page talking about that product. Again, don't get caught up in percentages. If you have high quality link prospects then you will naturally be varying your link profile. If you are using automated links then you won't. Hope that helps a little.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Linkbuilding: Relevancy and Internal Linking
Hello, For linkbuilding, how important is relevancy and how is it calculated by Google? For specific context, we are interested in putting a scholarship campaign on our reference page (www.spanishdict.com/traductor), and were wondering how that will impact relevancy. Additionally, we were wondering the value of internal linking from one page to another. We want to get more links to our hubpage – Page A (www.spanishdict.com/traductor) but much of this interesting, relevant content lives on our blog page – Page B (ex: www.spanishdict.com/blog/traductor/el-gh-en-ingles/). What is the best way to handle this? Would it suffice to internal link from the blog page (Page B) to the page we actually want to get links to (Page A)? Or should we try to house this content on Page A? Thanks for your help!
Link Building | | CuriosityMedia0 -
Is there an extra SEO benefit for linking to pages that link to you?
Currently working on a link-building strategy and have gotten a few mentions. Just curious if there is any SEO benefits of linking back to the pages my site was mentioned and linked on? Would love to hear your thoughts, thanks!
Link Building | | Derrald0 -
Ideal number of internal links
Hi everyone,
Link Building | | KBB_Digital
I've been trying to find discussions on this topic, but I've only been able to find a couple of posts and they're a couple of years old now, so I'm looking for a more up to date answer. I've been doing some research lately & I'm trying to get a gauge on how many internal links I should have ideally on my website before Google suggests that I'm trying to do the wrong thing. I know previously it was suggested to keep it under 100, but, I did see Matt mention it on this video (http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-we-dropped-the-100-links-per-page-guideline-but-we-may-take-action-if-it-is-too-spammy-178197) that it's no longer 100 links, but his answer is vague (which is what it might come down to). We're a digital marketing agency & ideally going to try write pages for our services targeted to each of the main cities around Australia & ideally they would all be linked in the footer of the website (with a nice layout, dropdowns, etc...). Looking for other peoples thoughts & opinions.0 -
Question about ranking and links
Hi, Some back ground info first: My DA/PA is 42, the competitors who show up in the search engines for the term I am after have DA/PA 55/60. I have been creating anchor text links which target the term im after through guest blogging usually blogs with DA/PA 40+, I did this consistently with a guest post every 3 days for about a month so that's around 10 guest posts. And I also did some brand name blog comments, but these were no-follow and added sig to some forums. This moved me from page 5 to page 1, position 4. I then stopped and over the last 3 weeks it slipped to position 6 then to position 8. The competition doesn't look to actively target this term looking at the data from opensite explorer there main anchor text is there brand names. Why would I be slipping through the results? Not moaning just want to understand why so I can counter it. I was thinking about going for social signals through a blog to help.
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Reputable Link Building Company
We are looking for a company who can build high quality links, from high quality domains to specific pages of our website. We are not looking for companies who create content or add to directories or post on blog rolls. Has anyone had any experience and can anyone recommend a link building company who can build high quality links to specific pages of a website? Thanks!
Link Building | | torontojon0 -
International link directories
Where can I find a list of free international directories that worth submitting?
Link Building | | sesertin0 -
Ranking Inner Pages or the Main Page?
Hello Guys, I am relatively new to the SEO world. So I am just wondering what would be more helpful. Getting the homepage ranked for a list of targeted keywords or creating a separate page for each keyword and then getting those pages ranked? Look forward to hear back, Thanks! Naimath
Link Building | | Sizmic0