Homepage - Inner Page Link Ratio - Google

Hi Guys,

I know there are a lot of discussions when it comes to link building and whether You should target the homepage or pages directly.

For some 80/20 homepage/inner pages works, for others, it is the other way around.

I don't want to discuss which is better now.

Since I am actively building links, mainly through guest posts and other strategies, I am approaching a ratio of 90/10.

So >90% of my links are pointing to my homepage, the question is, does google view it as unnatural at some point and may penalize the website when the ratio goes out of hand?

Any experience with it?

I don't have any real strategy to actively building links to my posts and natural links don't come that easily.

Would Web 2.0 posts help me for a more "natural" ratio?

I prefer to link to internal pages more often. When you read an article and it references something it usually points to that particular page. It would be bizarre if it linked to the homepage that doesn't have much context as opposed to an internal page that covers that topic in depth. Your goal should be to look as natural and organic as possible.

Still you need homepage backlinks... I mostly use homepage for those blackhat techniques, eg PBNs, as this is way safer.

For guest post, you can also use homepage, but most of the time, they prefer to have it in an inner page/post that has informational content to it.

I try to link back to different posts/pages I have. No certain ratio for me too, but it never hurts to point back to your homepage.

Oceans13 said:

I prefer to link to internal pages more often. When you read an article and it references something it usually points to that particular page. It would be bizarre if it linked to the homepage that doesn't have much context as opposed to an internal page that covers that topic in depth. Your goal should be to look as natural and organic as possible.

Click to expand...

well put. natural is when sites link out to inner page with content on what is relevant to them. maybe they will use your brandname as anchor. this also gives juice to your review pages--what you really want