Backlinks to home page vs internal page
-
Hello,
What is the point of getting a large amount of backlinks to internal pages of an ecommerce site? Although it would be great to make your articles (for example) strong, isn't it more important to build up the strength of the home page.
All of My SEO has had a long term goal of strengthening the home page, with just enough backlinks to internal pages to have balance, which is happening naturally. The home page of our main site is what comes up on tons of our keyword searches since it is so strong.
Please let me know why so much effort is put into getting backlinks to internal pages.
Thank you,
-
Thanks Ryan, you seem to always have good information. I researched it and I agree with your comments.
-
Ryan, I agree with this. I did some thinking and searching and you seem to be right on. I'll pass pagrank to the home page via stronger internal pages. Thank you.
-
Ryan, I agree with this. I did some thinking and searching and you seem to be right on. I'll pass pagrank to the home page via stronger internal pages. Thank you.
-
There isnt really any specific documentation on how much pagerank is passed in certain situations. Historically this technique is call pagerank sculpting, and the direct pagerank passed value is being de-emphasized as of late.
Here was an answer about a similar issue posted by Rand and the SEOmoz team a while ago: http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/15353/internal-links-and-page-rank
The value comes in with a large volume of those "tiny" keywords. Structure you r site so a lot of the tiny ones link to your homepage to keep the homepage ranking well, but only link off of your homepage to a handful of important pages (like if you had a page for each of those 5 or 6 good keywords).
-
Based on your prior reply I believe by "tiny" you mean they are long tail keywords.
In that case, yes.
-
Ryan, is this true even if all of the internal keywords are tiny?
-
OK, so how much pagerank will be passed to the home page from a strong internal page? Could you give specific examples, and if possible, documentation? I believe you are correct, I just need to get a good feel for how much pagerank is passed. I forgot to mention that there are about 5 or 6 good keywords in our main niche, and the rest of the keywords are pretty tiny.
-
Please let me know why so much effort is put into getting backlinks to internal pages.
Because they are out to kickass and make money by getting internal pages dominant in their niche.
All of My SEO has had a long term goal of strengthening the home page, with just enough backlinks to internal pages to have balance, which is happening naturally. The home page of our main site is what comes up on tons of our keyword searches since it is so strong.
How many people do you have working on this? Imagine the result if you had twice as many?
-
The primary reason to have links to internal pages is to help search engines locate your content and promote it's rankings. If you only link to your home page your PA of your more important pages will suffer.
Let's assume you sell various products and one of them is Nike WingedFoot sneakers. You provide the page as one of the 5000 products you offer and do not have links to the page. One of your competitors writes a fantastic article on how this pair of sneakers is the best thing and can make you jump higher, run faster, etc. He obtains links directly to this page. All things being equal, he will outrank you. Even without writing the great article if he gets the links and everything else is equal, he will outrank you for any similar search.
EDIT: I was ninja'd on the response by "the other Ryan". We are in agreement but worded things a bit differently.
-
There isnt a perfect ratio, but for larger sites it is very important to get a large number of backlinks to internal pages. It helps with the overall "Domain Authority". If your site is structured well, then the "seo sculpting" internally will help boost the homepage. You should make sure to utilize internal links back to the homepage or important high-level pages.
For instance, lets say you have 10 backlinks. If they all go to your homepage, your homepage could have a nice SEO value with a pagerank of 5. But your interior pages dont have much pagerank or seo value, and therefor the rest of your site doesnt get ranked well.
In contrast, lets say 8 out of the 10 links go to internal pages, and those internal pages all have a small pagerank, and those pages all link back to your homepage with important keywords, it will pass a bunch of that seo value up to your homepage at the same time of increasing the value of your internal pages. Its a better way to get your whole site ranking, rather than just homepage.
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
-
Page Rank Flow
I wonder if someone can help me understand clearly page rank flow. If we have a website with a Home page, Services, About and Contact as a very basic website and the page rank will flow to each of those pages from the Home page (i'm not including internal linking between pages or anchor text from the home page content - this is a question purely about home page flow via the main navigation). If the Services page had 3 drop down pages. Would the home page rank also flow to each of these or is it going to the Services page which then distributes it to the three drop down. So instead of Home page rank flowing to 3 pages 33% each - it is flowing to 6 pages 16.6% each. Or is it flowing to 3 pages - 33.3% then the Services pages get a third of 33.3% ->10.1% I know this is simplifying it all a great deal- but it is the basic concept I am trying to grasp on this simple example. Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
How to index Backlink Fast
hi, From the past some month i am facing the problem in indexing backlinks, please share the method to index backlink in google fast
Technical SEO | | vijay231 -
Duplicate page titles for blog snippets pages
I can't figure the answer to this issue, on my blog I have a number of pages which each show snippets and an image for each blog entry, these are called /recent-weddings/page/1 /2 /3 and so on. I'm getting duplicate page titles for these but can't find anywhere on Wordpress to set a unique title for them. So http://www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/recent-weddings/…/2/ has the same title as http://www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/recent-weddings/…/3/
Technical SEO | | simonatkinsphoto0 -
Help! Pages not being indexed
Hi Mozzers, I need your help.
Technical SEO | | bshanahan
Our website (www.barnettcapitaladvisors.com) stopped being indexed in search engines following a round of major changes to URLs and content. There were a number of dead links for a few days before 301 redirects were properly put in place. And now, only 3 pages show up in bing when I do the search "site:barnettcapitaladvisors.com". A bunch of pages show up in Google for that search, but they're not any of the pages we want to show up. Our home page and most important services pages are nowhere in search results. What's going on here?
Our sitemap is at http://www.barnettcapitaladvisors.com/sites/default/files/users/AndrewCarrillo/sitemap/sitemap.xml
Robots.txt is at: http://www.barnettcapitaladvisors.com/robots.txt Thanks!0 -
Why is the Page Authority of my product pages so low?
My domain authority is 35 (homepage Page Authority = 45) and my website has been up for years: www.rainchainsdirect.com Most random pages on my site (like this one) have a Page Authority of around 20. However, as a whole, the individual pages of my products rank exceptionally low. Like these: http://www.rainchainsdirect.com/products/copper-channel-link-rain-chain (Page Authority = 1) http://www.rainchainsdirect.com/collections/todays-deals/products/contempo-chain (Page Authority = 1) I was thinking that for whatever reason they have such low authority, that it may explain why these pages rank lower in google for specific searches using my exact product name (in other words, other sites that are piggybacking of my unique products are ranking higher for my product in a specific name search than the original product itself on my site) In any event, I'm trying to get some perspective on why these pages remain with the same non-existent Page Authority. Can anyone help to shed some light on why and what can be done about it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | csblev0 -
2 links on home page to each category page ..... is page rank being watered down?
I am working on a site that has a home page containing 2 links to each category page. One of the links is a text link and one link is an image link. I think I'm right in thinking that Google will only pay attention to the anchor text/alt text of the first link that it spiders with the anchor text/alt text of the second being ignored. This is not my question however. My question is about the page rank that is passed to each category page..... Because of the double links on the home page, my reckoning is that PR is being divided up twice as many times as necessary. Am I also right in thinking that if Google ignore the 2nd identical link on a page only one lot of this divided up PR will be passed to each category page rather than 2 lots ..... hence horribly watering down the 'link juice' that is being passed to each category page?? Please help me win this argument with a developer and improve the ranking potential of the category pages on the site 🙂
Technical SEO | | QubaSEO0 -
Google inconsistent in display of meta content vs page content?
Our e-comm site includes more than 250 brand pages - lrg image, some fluffy text, maybe a video, links to categories for that brand, etc. In many cases, Google publishes our page title and description in their search results. However, in some cases, Google instead publishes our H1 and the aforementioned fluffy page content. We want our page content to read well, be descriptive of the brand and appropriate for the audience. We want our meta titles and descriptions brief and likely to attract CTR from qualified shoppers. I'm finding this difficult to manage when Google pulls from two different areas inconsistently. So my question... Is there a way to ensure Google only utilizes our title/desc for our listings?
Technical SEO | | websurfer0 -
301 lots of old pages to home page
Will it hurt me if i redirect a few hundred old pages to my home page? I currently have a mess on my hands with many 404's showing up after moving my site to a new ecommerce server. We have been at the new server for 2 years but still have 337 404s showing up in google webmaster tools. I don't think it would affect users as very few people woudl find those old links but I don't want to mess with google. Also, how much are those 404s hurting my rank?
Technical SEO | | bhsiao1