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 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
-
Web 2.0 Backlinks
Hi Normal Web 2.0 websites like Wordpress.com, blogger.com have very High DA and PA. But when we create a subdomain, DA and PA falls to 1 as Google treats subdomain as new websites. Does it make any sense then to get backlinks from web 2.0 websites? will it help in Google rankings?
Link Building | | aliasgarbabat1234567890 -
Backlinks from translated content
Hello, We have quite a few articles "out there" that give us backlinks. We were thinking of also translating the content and submitting it to local content websites, so it can provide us with more backlinks. The main questions here, will this content be recognized as the same content as the English version? Also, being in another language, some of the anchor text might not hit the English keyword. Not sure how Google sees it. Any advise on the matter? thx!!
Link Building | | PangeaLangs0 -
Best Way to Filter Backlinks
When analyzing backlinks and trying to get the same one for another site there are a ton of backlinks to go through. I know that if the DA of the link is then pages on the site might be a good choice like adding an article or something of the sort to the site but as far a the same page goes you can typically only do this with a comment on the page. My question is, given a huge list of backlinks from multiple sites, is there an easy way to analyze the links and determine which ones I can copy without manually checking hundreds of links?
Link Building | | spyke010 -
Backlinks from newpapers that requires subscription
Don't know if this has been answered in another post, but what happens to backlinks that requires users to subscribe and/or pay to view the content with the backlink on it?
Link Building | | helgeolaussen
Some newspaper sites has subscription requirement to view certain content.
Does the backlink drop in value? Or is there any negative effect from this?0 -
Backlinks embedded in posts or backlinks in sidebar?
What's better? A backlink to my site, embedded into a blog post/article? Or a hardlink in the sidebar? The problem with links embedded inside articles, is that when the blog linking to me, gets updated, the articles disappear from first page and I lose the link from home page. How do you deal with this? I also read this: "The best link you can get is from a site ranking #1 for the keyword you want to rank for. It would be great to have the #1 site for a desired keyword linking me even if they are a PR 0 site." Is this right? Thx in advance.
Link Building | | BloggerGuy0 -
Why do we need proxy to so Backlinks?
Does Google knows the IP addresses that the backlinks are created from? if i create 200 backlinks for my site without proxies will google ban my site because it will look like i a the one who create all the backlinks? May i ask how many proxies do you guys need to create around 200 backlinks per day? If i already use the proxies today Can i use the same set of proxies to create backlinks tomorrow? THanks
Link Building | | locoto00071 -
How important are edu and gov backlinks?
I have heard that edu and gov backlinks are important but how so in a niche area like mine - real estate? Perhaps I am missing the point but I do not see how either type of site would ever backlink to a commercial real estate entity. If these are that important in theory, are they obtainable in practice?
Link Building | | casper4340