Easiest Way to Balance Links Across Site?

[zakkyg]

I'm struggling to reach the last few spots for my client's main keyword, hovering around mid-page on the first SERP.

I have continuously built more links to this page but have not seen a correlation in movement, until I finally realised that I have too high a ratio of links pointing to the home page relative to those pointing to other pages on the site, which doesn't look natural (stupidly, for the last year we have mainly only been trying to rank the home page).

I already have links on most UK directories - since the links I need are really just safe links (they don't need to have power), can anyone suggest the best/cheapest source of link-building that I could use to point more links to other pages on the site, to balance the site's overall profile? A press release, perhaps?

Thanks in advance!

[Mustansar]

In addition to Joe, I dont see any reason to buy cheap linkbuilding ( pardon me if misunderstood) However, i would stress on organic local citation as well as niche links must be earn by delivering such services. Moreover, try to avoid over optmisation of any keyword/page etc.

[Joe.Robison]

As far as the correlation in movement, as I'm sure you know it get's exponentially hard to move from 5th to 2nd place than it does to move from 12th to 9th place. In the post How Long Does Link Building Take to Influence Rankings?, Kristina points out:

"The pages that I observed that were already ranking on the first page of SERPs didn't show much of a rankings increase with one link, barely moving over one spot in 22 weeks. In contrast, pages ranking on the second or deeper pages of SERPs took off after 8–9 weeks."

If you can elaborate on what you mean by "since the links I need are really just safe links (they don't need to have power)" that would be helpful. If you actually want your rankings to improve, you're going to need links with power. Also on that article, Kristina notes:

"Unsurprisingly, a higher DA will have a bigger effect — in fact, you can see that the average rank change for a page that got a link from a site with a DA below 25 actually dropped after 13 weeks, then recovered to barely two ranks up.

I generally have a rule that I don’t want to spend any time or money on sites with DAs under 25. This chart shows that they’re not completely devoid of value, but be prepared for a very, very small change in rank with these guys."

Most people here will tell you that some directory links are worth having in place, but often they're not going to move the needle much, so I wouldn't spend much focus on more directories if you already have directory links. Some directory links may even be worthless.

As far as your home page link ratio, most sites actually have 90%+ of their backlinks pointing to the home page. So that's actually a pretty natural profile. What would be unnatural is if you only had 10% of your links pointing to your home page, and like 50% pointing to a product or lead gen page. That being said, yes if you want a page other than the home page to increase rankings, you will need a few high quality links pointing to that page.

There's not a ton of data out there on the link ratios, but here is a summary from Joe Hall on Internet Marketing Ninjas:

"If you have ever looked at, at least a couple backlink profiles, you should already be aware that organically most links point towards a domain’s homepage. This happens naturally because the home page is the most relevant place to link to when mentioning a site. The link distribution ratio is the ratio of total backlinks pointing towards the homepage; to the total backlinks pointing towards the rest of the site. The more balanced the ratio is, the more links are pointing to supporting content. Domains that have balanced Link Distribution Ratios tend to have engaging content. And also link equity is spread more evenly."

Also Brian from Backlinko mentioned this on 7 Ways to Protect Your Site Against Google Penalties:

"Deep links vs. homepage link ratio (you want at least 40% of your links to be deep links)"

As far as cheap and easy links, many will tell you links worth getting aren't cheap and are rarely easy. But a few ideas that are often recommended:

• Subscribe to HARO and look out for opportunities to contribute to articles and be quoted, you'll often get a link back
• Guest posting is not dead if you write for relevant related sites in your industry. These are fairly guaranteed and safe links, but you'll have to do the outreach (conv rate usually 10-20%) and write the post
• Linkable visual assets such as intstructographics, infographics, and helpful visual images are fairly scalable. These also take time to build and promote, but you'll see the best value over the lifetime of promoting these.

Hopefully that helps, let me know if you have any other questions!