I have a hierarchical layout.
Home Page: /
Jump Page: /jump that links to all topics (150 total)
Topic Page: /topic (Links to topic inner) ~250 words content
Inner Topic Page: /topic/inner ~800 words content
Apart from the Jump page, all the pages target different keywords and I need as many of them to rank as possible.
Current linking is:
Home Page -> Jump Page -> Topic Page -> Inner Topic Page
Inner Topic Page -> Topic Page
Via Navbar:
All -> Home Page
All -> Jump Page
I have external links pointing to the Home Page (more) and Jump Page.
The layout is pretty typically for sites in the site's domain. Through I've taken care to make the layout as simple as possible.
Other sites will be more cluttered than this.
Home Page is Rank #8
Inner Pages are between Rank #15 to #100
All incoming keywords have similar levels of traffic on them.
Goal: I need to get the Inner Pages on the first page of google.
So the thing I'm currently looking at is sibling links between the pages.
Or other internal linking strategies to get the internal pages to rank higher.
Q1. Are sibling links likely to have any effect? Since I currently don't have any.
Q2. Any advice on changing the site structure?
Q3. Is the absence of word count on the topic pages likely to be a big problem?
Q4. I'm accepting all advice.