Build links to homepage or subpages?

Hi,

I've read that having a domain where the vast majority of links are built to the homepage makes it "thin" in the eyes of Google, thus recommending that we build natural looking links to many of our inner pages. Someone told me the proportion should actually be 75% of links to inner pages, 25% of links to the homepage.

1. Does that proportion sound about right?

2. With the concept of Domain Authority, does it matter as much if a link is to this page or that?

Thanks!

Absolutely build links to your inner urls as well as your homepage. You can bookmark 50/50 homepage/inner, and then concentrate higher quality links on the homepage and every now and again hit inner pages.

If you want to create authority and long lasting rankings for your site..... rank your inner pages for the longtails, you will gain authority and traffic which will sky rocket your overall site rankings for your main keywords. It's more work, but that's how it's done.

Question on keywords for inner pages: I know we need to rotate anchor text while mixing in the website URL, brand name and other generic words like "click here" to make it look more natural. What are some tools to find prospective longtail keywords for those inner pages? Thank you!

I'd actually promote your homepage a bit less than your innerpages. You can target long-tail phrases pretty effectively with blog posts and innerpages and that can generate a lot of traffic.

What are some tools to find prospective longtail keywords for those inner pages?

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Perhaps a misunderstanding of the terms here.

If your main keyword is "losing weight in 30 days"
long tails would be
"quick dieting plan for men"
"learn how to lose fat in 5 days"
"best advise for cutting weight"

anything that consists of several words and still gets some (usually quite small) amounts of traffic.
adwords keyword tool, or any dedicated keyword research tool (Market Samurai) will show you traffic and competition for such terms. Just use your imagination to come up with some basics, and the toools will show you the rest.

By creating inner pages targeting these keywords, and optimizing for them, you can easily rank them (there's barely any competition) having these pages will do wonders for your site's authority on the larger subject (weight loss) plus you will get traffic (conversions) with low bounce rate (great for all around SEO)

Like I said, it takes more work, but that's how you rank sites. And that's how you give your site's authority.

I do agree with the fact "there should be linking to both inner pages & home page. Specially focusing on inner pages linking will make links more natural to Google"

It is your way to get authority sites. Variations in anchor texts in links will do it more easy & useful.

We also have to make linking from inner pages to main page?

SEO_Alchemy said:

Absolutely build links to your inner urls as well as your homepage. You can bookmark 50/50 homepage/inner, and then concentrate higher quality links on the homepage and every now and again hit inner pages.

If you want to create authority and long lasting rankings for your site..... rank your inner pages for the longtails, you will gain authority and traffic which will sky rocket your overall site rankings for your main keywords. It's more work, but that's how it's done.

Click to expand...

Excellent Advice, great to see people helping others.

Answer this: Would you prefer 1 link from your site to be indexed, or 1000?

Thinking of a site as a single unit is an old paradigm; sites get ranked by individual pages, and those individual pages have different PR.

Just think of it if you're as linking to hundreds of homepages if you're unsure about the difference of priority when choosing to link to the homepage or innerpages.

Try out different ratios. I don't have a set number, but 25-75 doesn't seem off by too much. 25 might be a tad high.

In regards to what a link should be linking to, so far blind linking has worked well for SEO. Not targeting traffic, I said SEO (serp, PR, indexed backlinks). I say go the extra mile and make all links relevant.

This makes sense, i hope? You increase anchor diversity, so why not link diversity?

See? SEO stuff isn't all crazy-talk.

I have back link to every page but never think about ratio back link between home page and inner page. Back link to inner page just want to tell google that my every page is quality.

In my case, my site has one target keyword and my inner pages are about relevant keyword. I point only quality and high pr back link to my root domain, and normal quality back link to inner pages. My reason is I want to make my root domain to be strong to beat competition and improve my inner page to be strong too.

But if my site has 2 target above {ex. pets --> 1. Dog , 2. Cat} I will point quality and high pr back link to root and main sub page. As google give precedence to head line {<h1>,<h2> and <p>} | pet = <h1> | Dog and Cat = <h2> | inner page = paragraph with keyword

With normal back link to inner page, my inner page can place at the top rank. I don't know the ratio but all link to home page is high quality and high pr(not quantity). I found that my home page has PA : 40 and all my inner pages have PA : 31-36

I'm not expert but this is the real result, I want to share.

i think it does make sense to link all pages as this will help ensure that all your pages have good pr.

It only looks natural to link to inner pages as well to your home page.