How many parts of your website should you backlink to?

[s888]

Hey what are your thoughts on backlink targets. Every page on a website will focus on a specific keyword, so should I ideally backlink to every page on my website using each of their specific keywords? Or should I just focus on building backlinks to a few sections of the site? What about mainly creating backlinks to the homepage address?

Thanks

[Dumkist]

Yes.. every page or post should be back linked..also make sure to Include the anchor text in the back links you are creating to that page.

Example: your page keyword is "dog training" make sure your back links have Dog Training In the Anchor text.

Like this >> <a href="http://mysite.com">Dog Training</a>

[McBrett]

@s888 - Wow. I think you'll get some differing opinions on this one.

I would recommend over 50% of your link building efforts be directed to your homepage. It's natural for the homepage to be linked to more than the internal pages of a website. I've read some gurus say 75% - 80% of links should be directed to the homepage.

As for internal linking percentages, I'd say it's probably not worrying too much about what % of your links are internal. As generic as it sounds, I would say just link internally naturally and don't worry about the percentages that much.

[scott g]

Yes, this is one of those topics that people's opinions will differ.

My opinion from my experience for what has worked for me:

I begin almost all of my linking efforts to the main (index.html) domain. When I'm indexed and begin ranking in the SERP's and feel comfortable with the amount of backlinks I've created to my main is when I will begin "deep linking." The link juice travels down from LD to LD2 to LD3.

Example: a link to mysite.com/a-keyword-im-targeting/ (not main domain) trickles to the main domain "mysite.com." It all helps and looks good and natural to the SERPs. 10k backlinks to mysite.com and ZERO to the other 10 pages in your sitemap looks a little off. IMO.

Like I said the juice trickles to your main anyways. You're going to want to deeplink anyways to help get those lovely 3-spots in the SERPs Lol!

CHEERS!

[CoolAromas]

I agree that most of the backlinks should be heading to the homepage, but EVERY post and page should have SOME backlinks.

I like to use youtube videos.

[2d0k]

It's ideal if you create a backlink to all of your site's pages, but this would be very time consuming. Instead, try to build backlinks to the important pages that you wish to rank in the search engines; placing emphasis on the index page, of course..

[mscofield]

You should prepare a list of 4 to 5 main keywords for your site,which can help you in ranking and then go for building links for it.

[RhythmClick]

For me, I am primarily building links to whichever pages I am trying to rank at that point.

So this will start with the home page. but as that starts to rank, lets say you have 10 articles on inner pages that each target a keyword. I will then see how close each of these inner pages is to ranking and start to focus efforts on pages that are getting comparitivley close to the money.

I don't think you will want to be spreading your efforts across all of your inner pages at once as this can result in no page getting enough links to really rank well. Best to get a few pages in the top few spots than all of your pages on say page 2 - 4.

[TheSEOmo]

Whether you are linking to your home page or deep linking to your site's inner pages it's important that you create a funnel for the "link juice" to flow through. This way links to any of your pages will help to boost all of your sites pages.

When I am creating back links I usually link mostly to my homepage and my most profitable pages but I make every attempt to ensure that I have a great linking structure so that the link juice can flow to all of the deep pages throughout the site.

If you're running a blog you can help to funnel juice through your site with things like 'related posts' plugins and breadcrumbs. You can also syndicate your content so that every post on your blog has back links automatically generated. For instance you can have Google feedburner automatically post a link to your twitter account every time your feed is updated. You can also submit your feed to RSS directories and sites like blogcatalog which will provide backlinks to each and every one of your posts.

[DIGITALCHAMELEON]

For me just focus on the most important pages of your website. Every page should have a corresponding keyword as much as possible, but it is also important to pay more attention on the main page.

[kaiserthesage]

Not necessarily build links on each page on your site. Build links to "important pages" on your site, those that can really attract targeted traffic (through keyword rankings), and/or those pages that can really convert or perhaps make a good statement to your brand.

Making use of social networks is the best way to promote other pages on your site, that doesn't really bring in traffic.

[thebarksmeow]

The right answer is that google ranks "pages". You backlink the pages/keywords that you want to rank for. Whether that's the homepage or an inner page is irrelevant.

[jhonsean]

Not every page is needed to have backlinks. I think that you should build quality backlinks for your site and more benefit will come.