Backlinks to internal pages help website to rank better or vice versa?
-
Hi Moz community,
We have our backlinks mostly pointed to our homepage. We are trying to rank better and not having minimum number of backlinks to our internal pages is one of the things I worry about. Backlinks to homepage alone help in ranking internal pages or backlinks to internal pages help in ranking homepage? Or both required?
Thanks
-
William is right your site structure helps Google and your visitor to understand your website better, and therefore it can push your site up in the rankings.
Structuring your website is crucial for both usability and findability. A lot of sites lack a decent structure to guide visitors to the product they’re looking for. Apart from that, having a clear site structure leads to better understanding of your site by Google, so it’s very important for your SEO.
Relationships between content
Google crawls websites by following links, internal and external, using a bot called Google bot. This bot arrives at the homepage of a website, starts to render the page and follows the first link. By following links Google determines the relationship between the various pages, posts and other content. This way Google finds out which pages on your site cover similar subject matter.
In the sidebar of this post, for example, you’ll see links to the category ‘Content SEO’ and to the ‘Internal linking’ and ‘Site structure’ tags. We make sure Google understands that the content on those pages is related to the content of this post by adding these links.
Setting up an internal linking strategy
It’s crucial for your SEO to evaluate and improve internal linking strategy on a regular basis. By adding the right internal links you make sure Google understands the relevance of pages, the relationship between pages and the value of pages.
Ideal site structure
The structure of your site should be like a pyramid. On the top of the pyramid is your homepage, and underneath the homepage a number of category pages. For larger sites, you should make subcategories or custom taxonomies (more on that later). Within the categories and subcategories, you will have a number of blog posts, pages or product pages.
Internal link structure
Your linking structure is of great importance. Each page in the top of a pyramid should link to its subpages. And vice versa, all the subpages should link back to the pages on top of the pyramid. There should be essential content (cornerstone articles) at the top of your pyramid, and these should be the articles you link to from all of your blog posts.
Because you’re linking from pages that are closely related to each other content-wise, you’re increasing your site’s possibility to rank. Linking this way will help search engines by showing them what’s related. In addition to that, with all subpages linking to that one main page at the very top of your pyramid, you are creating cornerstone pages. This will make it easy for search engines to determine what your main pages per subject are.
Taxonomies and tags
Your site will also benefit from adding tags. Tags and taxonomies will give your site more structure (or at least Google will understand it better).
Don’t create too many tags. If every post or article receives yet another new unique tag, you are not structuring anything. Make sure tags are used more than once or twice. They should group articles together that belong together.
Cornerstone content
Content pages of essential importance are called cornerstone content. Cornerstone articles are the most important articles on your website.
Cornerstone articles should be relatively high in your site structure, focusing on the most ‘head’ and competitive keywords. Think of four specific pages you would like someone to read in order to tell them about your site or company: these would need to be the cornerstone articles. In most cases, the homepage would link to these articles.
IF THIS ANSWER WERE USEFUL MARK IT AS A GOOD ANSWER
Source
The Ultimate Guide to Site Structure > Yoast
How to Create a Site Structure That Will Enhance SEO > Kissmetrics -
Hello,
Good internal link structure is very important. It help pass "PageRank" and the "Tags" used in the internal links also help to show Google which pages you think are important for the keywords used in your links.
Also getting good links to the internal pages from other sites is also very important to raise your "Trust" and "PageRank" scores for the various internal pages.
Best Regards
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
-
On page vs Off page vs Technical SEO: Priority, easy to handle, easy to measure.
Hi community, I am just trying to figure out which can be priority in on page, off page and technical SEO. Which one you prefer to go first? Which one is easy to handle? Which one is easy to measure? Your opinions and suggestions please. Expecting more realistic answers rather than usual check list. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Ecommerce: How does having fresh content affect rankings
Hello, For an Ecommerce site, how does fresh content affect rankings? Meaning, fresh vs old content on the home page, category pages, product pages, articles. Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | BobGW0 -
Home page rank for keyword
Hi Mozers I have traded from my website balloon.co.uk for over 10 years. For a long while the site ranked first for the word 'balloon' across the UK on google.co.uk (first out of 41 million). Around the time Penguin launched the site began to drop and currently sits on about page 5. What's confusing is that for a search on 'balloons' ('s' on the end of balloon) it ranks 2nd in the location of Birmingham where I'm based. That's 2nd in the real search rather than a map local search. But - if I search 'balloon' from the location of Birmingham my contact page ranks 5th: http://www.balloon.co.uk/contact.htm but the home page ranks nowhere. So - it's gone from ranking 1st nationally to ranking nowhere with my contact page ranking above the home page (which is a generic word domain). Any ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | balloon.co.uk0 -
Could Retail Price Be A Google Ranking Factor???
I have not done any detailed studies on this but it seems that Google might be using low retail prices for specific items as a ranking factor in their organic SERPs. Does anyone else suspect this? Just askin' to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | EGOL0 -
Ranking gcctld?
I am working on a new site that uses a .io TLD. I have just started working to get the domain to rank for its own name. What are some others experience with ranking and SEO for gcctlds?
Algorithm Updates | | JoshAM0 -
Website Penalised | Tips On Recovery?
Hi, I think my website http://rollerbannerscheap.co.uk has been penalised. There are too many over optimised anchor text links with our target keyword 'roller banners' in them. People have linked to our site using our company name 'roller banners cheap' (which also contains the keyword used in my anchor text link building) resulting in too many match links. For a couple months now I have; Added fresh content to the website on a weekly basis, alt tagging images, internal linking and generally making each post very useful. Built a few more external good quality links to try to dilute the over optimised anchor text links. Added more content to the home page. At the moment I am trying to rank for cheap roller banners because I am already on page 1 for that and it seems that keyword hasn't been penalised. Can anyone please advise or recommend what I can do to recover from being penalised or help rank the new key word? I am really stuck with this now and would really appreciate the help. Lewis
Algorithm Updates | | SO_UK0 -
Diluting your authority - adding pages diluting rankings of other pages?
I'm looking after a site that has around 400 pages. All of these pages rank pretty well for the KW they are targetting. My question is: if we add another 400 pages without doing any link building work, holding DA the same, 1) would the rankings of those 400 previously good pages diminish? and 2) Would the new pages, as more and more new ones are created, rank less and less well?
Algorithm Updates | | xoffie0 -
Ranking Tracking Tool Not Accurate?
Is google still updating the algo on a daily basis or for the most part are you other mozzers seeing your rankings stick? I ask because the rank tracking software I use locally on my laptop shows me inaccurate rankings, as well as the SEOMOZ tool (which was just updates yesterday). I am not sure why this is happening, but as of yesterday I lost four page one rankings, which I didn't deserve anyway, and was apparently a fluke until they did the PR update. So I dont mind, but I am curious if they are still tweaking on a daily basis or if its safe to continue link building. I dont want them to make another change and have it affect my rankings in a negative way.
Algorithm Updates | | getbigyadig0