Is it Possible for an Internal Page to Rank for Various Terms Based ONLY on Blogging Anchor Text?

[SmallBizSmarts]

Hi everyone,

Our company provides about 6 different services, each with a specific page on our website:

1. Accept ACH Payments (/accept_ach_payments.html)

2. Client Management & Billing Software (/customer_management.html)

3. Small Business Merchant Accounts (/small_business_merchant_account.html)

etc etc

Now, here's the question.

One of our blogging strategies is to write content about how our online platform can help various types of businesses manage and grow their business.

"5 Ways Fitness Business Can...."

"How Law Firms Can Benefit...."

etc

In these blog posts, we don't specify our product, but we do link back into one of those main service pages, so I might link fitness management software to the Client Management & Billing Software (/customer_management.html) page as well as legal billing software to the same client management page

Since there are so many different companies that could use our software, we don't want to include them on the Cl_i_ent Management & Billing Software page. That page is just about the benefits of the system and how it works as a great CRM.

So....to make a long question short, are we able to rank the Client Management page for "fitness management software" and "legal billing software" if we don't use those terms on the "client management" page itself, and only use it as the anchor text when linking?

Instead of making a separate page about how we can be used as a fitness management platform, we'd like our "client management" page to rank for various terms like "fitness management software" "legal billing software" "online church donation software" etc BUT, we don't want to bloat the client management page will all those other topics and content.

Hope that makes sense,

Patrick

[JCurrier]

Glad to help! I'd love to discuss further if you have more questions.

[SmallBizSmarts]

Thanks Crusader. Really appreciate the insight. I had some time to think about this issue over the last couple hours and your response makes total sense. I guess we'll keep bringing in traffic with highly relevant blog posts and then funnel them into our main product pages.

I should have just asked myself the most common Google question, "What is most relevant?"

Thanks guys!

[jesse-landry]

Yeah Crusader is right on. I think the answer to your question, in a nutshell, is "no probably not and why would you want to?"

The thing is, the ranking for the unrelated page won't beat out the blog post where your link juice is originating from for multiple reasons, but mainly because it isn't as relevant. The blog post is more relevant. But it accomplishes what you want just the same. In the blog post, you explain why they need this CRM tool for fitness management and that's where your conversion takes place. The fitness management crowd isn't clicking your CRM link no matter where it's ranked, most likely. If they were searching for a CRM tool they would probably google "CRM tool." See?

So I think that you actually WANT your blog post to rank better and be the page the user lands on regardless. In this scenario, Google's functionality exists a certain way because they have figured out the best way to get the end user to their desired content. In this case, it will always view your blog post as more desirable content for that search string.

Hope we were helpful. I think you'll do just fine.

[JCurrier]

So, my question here then revolves around relevancy to the user. If someone is searching for "fitness management software" and sees your site in the results but your page's title is "Client Management Software" and your competitor's title is "Fitness Management Software", which do you think they are more likely to click on? Furthermore, lets say they do click on your page, your reader will not be sold as well as they would if the landing page addressed their specific need. If they then decide to compare your solution to a more targeted solution, who do you think they will pick?

You could use your blog post as a means of explaining how your product solves their specific problems. Or, you could create a whole new page dedicated to fitness management software, which would have a much higher chance of ranking well in the search engines and would probably convert better than a generic page.

[SmallBizSmarts]

Thanks for the quick reply Jesse. Our blog is on our domain so we're definitely generating lots of direct traffic.

We already have a pretty robust blog that ranks for many small business related phrases and keywords. Almost all of those blog posts send links to those 6 main internal business-segment internal pages.

If "Client_Management_Software.html" gets linked to 100 times from our blog, 25 using anchor text "fitness management software" 25 for "legal management software" 25 for "landscaping billing software" and 25 for "church donation software" could "client_management_software.html" start ranking for those keywords phrases instead of the blog posts?

Ideally, we're hoping that eventually someone will type "fitness management software" into Google, the first page will be our "client management" page, instead of the blog post about fitness management software.

Make sense? It is worth the effort?

[jesse-landry]

Yes, you probably could. Depending on many variables. DA, link number, frequency, etc.. But more likely you will notice your blog page rank for those terms.

Why not target those blogs for those keywords and try to rank the specific blog's page for your target? In this scenario, it is vital that your blog is housed on your subdomain and not on some other platform. I contend you should be doing this with your primary blog regardless. This way that blog page will rank for said keyword, and it will land on your domain which will then allow users to browse your site as needed.  Your domain picks up keyword ranking and the user finds what they want. Win - win.