Should my backlinks point to my home page or to internal article pages?
-
Hi,
I run a fitness blog and I get the majority of my backlinks through guest posts that I write on high quality sites. Sometimes they allow me to put a backlink within the article, and I'll link it to a relevant article of mine. However, in the "author bio" section my backlink anchor text is usually just my brand name. I was wondering if this backlink should point towards my home page or is it more beneficial to point it towards an important article of mine?
Thanks
-
I would view this a a usability matter. Where would someone expect to land after clicking on a link in an author bio? I would likely expect to land on your home page, or a good About me page.
Chances are, if it's a well set up bio section, it will be a nofollow link. So there won't be any benefits other than to the user who clicks on it.
~Caro
-
Jeremy,
The correct answer to your question is that it needs to look natural. I wouldn't necessarily optimize the anchor text and the link so that it's pointing to one particular page or even your home page with certain anchor text.
If it's your author bio, then naturally it should point to your site's home page. An alternative would be to create/write a page specifically for your author bio (where you list your articles that you've written).
-
Hi Jeremy,
There isn't really a "correct" answer to this one.
Links help with your rankings regardless of where they are sent. The fact that these links are coming from high-authority sites is probably the biggest benefit, regardless of anchor text or link pathway.
On the flipside, you probably want to try to create relevancy between the page you are linking from and the page you are linking to. For example, as a fitness expert, if you are providing information on proper stretch technique or diet, then you may want to target pages on your website that feature stretching or diet respectively. Your author bio links might link to an "About" page on your website since people who click on your author bio might be looking to learn more about you (creates UX as well as website traffic since they are finding what they are looking for with 1 click). The Home Page is also an option since it provides greater link juice throughout the site, but your referral traffic drop-off might increase as a result.
As for sites that allow links within the content itself, you can go the Home Page linking route if you want since that helps with general rankings across your site. That being said, Home Pages don't convert people, landing pages do.
My personal opinion is you choose link pages on your site according to keywords you want to rank for and based on their relevancy to your guest post topics. It's better to drive targeted traffic to relevant pages rather than bring general traffic to your home page.
There are a lot of different ways to look at this, but technical SEO is giving way more and more to user experience and relevant link channels, so I would be less worried about pounding your home page with links and more about ensuring your users have a good experience on your site - that's how you get returning traffic and repeat visitors.
Good luck moving forward!
Cheers,
Rob
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
-
Website Getting Huge no. of backlink?
Hey support teams suddenly, my website Portable Power Station getting a Huge no of backlinks with same domain, but i did not created, is it look spamming or not, What is impact on ranking in Google SERP, does it increase my website Spam Score?
Link Building | | ali-ahmed20 -
Does iframe itself count as a backlink?
Our situation is similar to YouTube. We have an original content on every subpage that is genuinely useful when embedded as a widget on 3r party websites. That is why we offer an embeddable widget that shows slightly simplified version of the content - exactly like a YouTube video embedded on your blog. The embed code is simply an iframe sourcing from our subpage: <iframe src="wikibudgets.org/subpage"></p> </blockquote> <p>1/ Does the iframe itself pass any link value at all to the subpage?</p> <p>2/ If yes, what would be the equivalent of anchor text in iframe?</p> <p>3/ If not, will any link in the subpage pass link value from the 3rd party website to my domain/subpage?</p> <p>4/ If not, will I be punished/rewarded if I ask users to put a visible, unobfuscated link to the subpage below the iframe?</p> <blockquote style="background: #f7f7f7; padding-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-bottom: 5px; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: auto; font-family: monospace;"> <p><iframe src="wikibudgets.org/subpage" /><a href="wikibudgets.org/subpage">rich anchor text</a></p> </blockquote></iframe>
Link Building | | wikiBudgets0 -
Self linking article
Every article on SearchEngineLand is self linked by it's title on H1 tag. I want to ask you if there is a SEO ranking benefit from it. I saw another sites that practice this tactic. Ex: http://searchengineland.com/forecast-google-lose-1-4-billion-pc-revenue-search-shifts-mobile-186504
Link Building | | fin0 -
Do Local Listings like Yellow Pages and yelp count for backlinks??
I am wondering if adding your company with url on a local listing like yellowpages.com, yelp.com, merchantCircle.com, etc. actually counts as a "backlink"? I'm thinking it is not considered a link because I have never seen one listing in Open site explorer, either that, or it is considered a backlink, just not one important enough for open site explorer to show it. Does anyone know for sure??
Link Building | | DTOSI0 -
Why does my site only have 4 internal followed links/internal links?
When using Open Site Explorer my site is winning in many categories but lacking in others as compared to competitors. I intend to improve on this but am a little confused by the extremely low number of "internal followed links" and "internal links" at just 4. My competitors have much more than that. Does this mean links to the root domain? Total internal links? I have many internal links so I'm having a hard time figuring this one out. What four internal links are getting noticed? I just went through and changed all the links that went to index.html to link to the root domain at www.njlimocarservice.com as I just found a Q&A that indicates this was better. So as of Wed at 5:45 PM all my links to the homepage went to index.html and not the root which is no longer the case. Not sure if this matters. At the same time I also just put a 301 from index.html to redirect to www.njlimocarservice.com. Any help appreciated! h9QuF.png
Link Building | | kabledesigns0 -
Why my page is not in top 50 already?
I started building links about a month ago for a new, 48% difficulty (according to Keyword analysis) keyword. The on-site optimisation is OK I think, the URL is an A grade (with maximum points, only 1-2 low importance factors missing). I trust my team I work with as they already ranked my site for several keywords in the top 5 positions (only manual linkbuilding). I do not expect top 10 results, but my page did not show up even in the top 50. Furthermore, there are a lot of tiny and weak pages in the top 50. I started campaigns for some other keywords at the same time with this and those are already around 15-20. So is there anything I should check? I am worried I am doing something wrong.
Link Building | | DiamondLINE0 -
Should I use Article Submitter software?
I've downloaded Article Demon a while ago and have been trying to use it all though it hasn't been as easy to use as I would have liked. I was just wondering what you guys feel about Article Submitting software, if it's useful or if it's a waste of time? Regards
Link Building | | HeadStud0 -
What is the best way to manage backlinks?
What back link management software do you guys use or recommend? Need to manage types of links on each page. Thanks
Link Building | | joemas990