Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Link Building
    4. Should my backlinks point to my home page or to internal article pages?

    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?

    Link Building
    4
    4
    6590
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • jeremyethier
      jeremyethier last edited by

      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

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Caro-O
        Caro-O last edited by

        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

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • becole
          becole last edited by

          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).

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • RobCairns
            RobCairns last edited by

            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

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • Turkey

              Backlinks from the Same Domain (But Different Pages)

              Wayyy back when (in the days of yore) Mr Cutts spelled out in a video that page rank is distributed equally between the external links on the page. If there are two links on a page, each gets passed 50% of the available page rank etc. (Perhaps an oversimplification but bear with me). As a result of this, the company I worked for at the time (this was the dark ages when sidebar homepage links were in vogue) decreed that we would only ever approach a site about a link for a client once, as additional links had little extra SEO Value. Now you could argue that if there are 5 external links, each acquiring 20% of the power, and your site has 2 of those, you are getting 40% of the power, but lets forget the basic math for a minute. I have scoured the web and Mr Cutts' videos and I cannot find the answer to my question: If my site (Site A) has a backlink from SiteB Page 1, and a backlink from SiteB page 2 - does this count as two separate links in the eyes of Google? If the SAME site links out to my site, linking to different pages in different posts, does this give me more SEO benefit? Thanks for your time!

              Link Building | | Turkey
              0
            • emh1969

              Backlinks from non-relevant site

              There's a forum I used to participate in that allows you to include a link to your website in your signature block.  I have over 500 posts in the forum so that provides a lot of backlinks to my website. However, I recently decided to remove my website link from my signature for two reasons: The forum is 95-99% dead.  Hardly anyone uses it anymore.  BTW, the website that houses the forum is still popular within is niche (articles, etc).  Just the forum appears to be dead. The website and its forum really have no connection whatsoever to my business.  I'm in a completely different niche. However, I have no idea if I've made the right decision. Will removing my signature and the backlinks hurt my site?  Or will it help it since the other site really isn't related to mine? Thanks for any thoughts on this!

              Link Building | | emh1969
              0
            • rohitdeveloper

              How to index Backlinks Fast in Google!

              I Made few backlinks with my keyword but they are not getting index and it has been for 15 days. Do you have any idea that will help me out to solve this problem and also to index back links quickly.

              Link Building | | rohitdeveloper
              0
            • kirstyseo

              Hidden Backlinks

              Hi, I hope someone can help me with this. We have a competitor who appears to be ranking No1 for a competitive search term with a very lame site and above some authoritative sites. He has been here for some time as well. When we check out his back link profile through OSE, Majestic and Ahrefs they show as only 3 backlinks from no PR sites. However, someone pointed out that they could be using a link network that is blocking every crawler apart from Google, Yahoo and BIng. I would like to know if there is a way to confirm this. For instance I know that we can use screaming frog to mimic Googlebot, however, if there a way to reveal the real backlinks to a site like this using any tools. Thanks

              Link Building | | kirstyseo
              0
            • SirMax

              URL shortener and backlinks

              Are there any SEO benefits drawn from creating backlinks with Google url shortener service(especially for the very deep links) or for the do-follow link juice I have to use a complete address?

              Link Building | | SirMax
              0
            • BostonWright

              Building backlinks for a newspaper site?

              Anyone have tips on building links to a newspaper site? I am looking for a strategy to create links to a news site beyond building one link at a time. We have so much content that is constantly updated that it would be impossible to do this one page at a time.

              Link Building | | BostonWright
              0
            • clickangel

              Changing backlinks anchor text

              Hi, I've read a few blog post here that suggests the strength of building links using your brand as an anchor text. This supposedly gives the site authority. Currently a chunck of the back links to my homepage are on generic terms i'm trying to rank for which doesn't seem to be working very well. I was thinking of contacting the various webmasters to change the anchor text to that of the site brand name but wondering if this will signal a manipulation of links to the search engines and potentially could be flagged as paid links? Has anybody done this before and what is the danger of doing this? Thanks Duke

              Link Building | | clickangel
              0
            • lawrenceyu1113

              Two Links, Same Anchor Text, To Same Page. Is There A Point?

              Hey guys, My question is this. Let's say I have an article, "How To Golf". I post this article onto my blog. Then I write a complementary article to the first article called "Introduction To Golf". My plan is to submit this new article to various directories to build backlinks for the article on my blog. So here lies my question. Say I am allowed two links from my new article to the one on my blog. The anchor text I am using is "golf". Is there a point to including two links with the same anchor text (golf) in the new article pointing back to my blog article? When Google spiders the complementary article will it consider the links two separate links with the anchor text "golf" or will it just count the two links as one link. After all, the two links have the same anchor text and are both pointing to the same page.

              Link Building | | lawrenceyu1113
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.