Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should my back links go to home page or internal pages
-
Right now we rank on page 2 for many KWs, so should i now focus my attention on getting links to my home page to build domain authority or continue to direct links to the internal pages for specific KWs?
I am about to write some articles for several good ranking sites and want to know whether to link my company name (same as domain name) or KW to the home page or use individual KWs to the internal pages - I am only allowed one link per article to my site.
Thanks
Ash
-
Always link by page and subject matter. If you have an article about red widgets, you should link back to the page you have about red widgets. True you can build up your home page with a lot of links, but this hurts your user experience by making them have to go through the entire site to find what they came there for.
When you send all your links to the homepage, you are suggesting what page is the most important to search engines. This can often be seen where you have sites that never have any subpages ranking or showing up in search results, only the home page over and over. Sounds great doesnt it? But you can limit the exposure of your site in the long run. By directing links at your subpages, not only do you increase the chance that they will eventually rank higher, you also can get more specific with your linking text.
Direct keyword linking to the home page is more risky. With your subpage links, you can get closer or even use exact keyword phrase links because the content is more specific. In reality, use whatever link phrase that a user will click on. A bunch of keywords might not do that job as well as a conversion statement. If you are worried about getting people to your home page, change the way the subpages are set up on your site, so that users can go to the other relevant areas of your site with ease. It should be easy and simple to direct them where you want them to go using graphics or styled text.
-
I agree with SilverDoor & donford!
Relevancy! Relevancy! Relevancy!
Don't get too caught up in your domain authority or page rank. Build naturally (for the users of your site)... and it all shall come
-
Completely agree with SilverDoor (thumbs up). Backlinks should always point to the most relevant page.
The way I always approach it by not driving myself nuts over pushing up Domain Authority or a certain page's Page Rank rather focus on the unique content that will drive itself to get links. Once you have the content in place, you of course have to do some work getting yourself noticed, but once that happens you'll find backlinks coming from multiple places with no additional work required.
-
Hi Ash,
The best way to work out where you should point the backlink to is by asking yourself this question:
What is the most related and useful page on my website for the article I have written?
Take it from a readers perspective. Would they prefer to go to your homepage or a more specific internal page?
Once you can answer that question then you know where to link to.
Make sure to not over-optimise the keywords you use for your anchor text.Just put them on the most natural, relevant word in your article.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Is a page with links to all posts okay?
Hi folks. Instead of an archive page template in my theme (I have my reasons), I am thinking of simply typing the post title as and when I publish a post, and linking to the post from there. Any SEO issues that you can think of? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16165422281340 -
Home Page Disappears From Google - But Rest of Site Still Ranked
As title suggests we are running into a serious issue of the home page disapearing from Google search results whilst the rest of the site still remains. We search for it naturally cannot find a trace, then use a "site:" command in Google and still the home page does not come up. We go into web masters and inspect the home page and even Google states that the page is indexable. We then run the "Request Indexing" and the site comes back on Google. This is having a damaging affect and we would like to understand why this issue is happening. Please note this is not happening on just one of our sites but has happened to three which are all located on the same server. One of our brand which has the issue is: www.henweekends.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JH_OffLimits0 -
Breadcrumbs and internal links
Hello, I use to move up my site structure with links in content. I have now installed breadcrumbs, is it is useful to still keep the links in content or isn't there a need to duplicate those links ? and are the breadcrumbs links enough. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Is a 404, then a meta refresh 301 to the home page OK for SEO?
Hi Mozzers I have a client that had a lot of soft 404s that we wanted to tidy up. Basically everything was going to the homepage. I recommended they implement proper 404s with a custom 404 page, and 301 any that really should be redirected to another page. What they have actually done is implemented a 404 (without the custom 404 page) and then after a short delay 301 redirected to the homepage. I understand why they want to do this as they don't want to lose the traffic, but is this a problem with SEO and the index? Or will Google treat as a hard 404 anyway? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy0 -
Home Page Copy Ideal Length
Hi Guys, I'm currently trying to turn around the organic performance of a website I have been working on. I have been reading that content for home pages should be particularly long. What is the ideal length of the copy on a home page? 500 words, 1000 words, 1500 words? The current work is kind of short in my opinion, and I would like to know if it would be a worth while effort to make it longer since this thing is getting clobbered organically. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oomdomarketing1 -
Link Juice + multiple links pointing to the same page
Scenario
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
The website has a menu consisting of 4 links Home | Shoes | About Us | Contact Us Additionally within the body content we write about various shoe types. We create a link with the anchor text "Shoes" pointing to www.mydomain.co.uk/shoes In this simple example, we have 2 instances of the same link pointing to the same url location.
We have 4 unique links.
In total we have 5 on page links. Question
How many links would Google count as part of the link juice model?
How would the link juice be weighted in terms of percentages?
If changing the anchor text in the body content to say "fashion shoes" have a different impact? Any other advise or best practice would be appreciated. Thanks Mark0 -
Are duplicate links on same page alright?
If I have a homepage with category links, is it alright for those category links to appear in the footer as well, or should you never have duplicate links on one page? Can you please give a reason why as well? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dkamen0