SEO - Getting a Subpage to Rank, Links to the Homepage as Well?

7 replies
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On my site, I have different subpages that I try to get to rank for different keywords (products I promote). I build links with product keyword anchor texts to the subpage I'm targeting.

My question is, is it important to also drive links with the same keyword rich anchor text to my homepage as well, even though I'm not necessarily trying to get it to rank for that set of keywords? Or does it not matter at all and I should simply drive as many links as possible to that subpage, and ignore the homepage? I already have around 2,000 links to my homepage, so its not like there's nothing there already, they're just not keyword rich links for the product I'm promoting.

I ask because it seems that Google favors ranking homepages above subpages. Or at least, I can't figure out why dinky little sites' homepages with comparable on page content to my subpage are ranking higher than I am, when they have 200 links to their home page and I have 1200 to my subpage.

I want only my subpage to rank because it is the optimized landing page, but I'm wondering if Google gives more authority to sites that have the keywords in links to the homepage, in addition to keyword links to the subpage.

Let me know your thoughts/experience with this. Thanks!
#homepage #links #rank #seo #subpage
  • Profile picture of the author adenclark
    For the homepage, i always build backlinks to target the broad keywords within the market and then use each post to target the various long tails.

    With one of my most established websites, i gained first page rankings first for the homepage and now everytime i make a new post that is optimised for long tail keywords, the post enters the search engine on first page without building backlinks to the actual posts, this is due to the strength of the homepage and a link to that post on the hompage.

    Its always a good idea to build backlinks for each post and try to link back to the homepage with correct anchor text (deep linking). If you write the article for a new post, try to enter a keyword you are targeting within your sentence and then link it back to home.
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Johnson
    One thing to keep in mind is that Google applies a decay factor on inbound links. If your homepage has 10 links to each of your 10 subpages, each of those links do not carry 1/10th of the PageRank. Instead, Google decays each link's PR by about 85%. Hence, each link is carrying 85% of that 1/10th.

    And then, if your subpage has a link back to your homepage, that link is also decayed even further, to where its 85% of 85% of 1/10th.

    So, if you have 1,200 internal links pointing to a single page, then each of those links are decayed. Your site might create a circuit where a hundreds of pages are interlinked, and each of those links is decayed over and over to where eventually a link is only carrying an extremely minuscule PR.

    What ends up happening is that 1,200 internal links is no more better than 200 internal links. The overall PR for your subpage does not benefit from having that many internal links.

    So, the reason why that dinky little site with 200 internal links to a subpage is still ranking higher than yours, is because it's doing a lot of other things right that you're not doing.
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    • Profile picture of the author ringer37
      Originally Posted by Steve Johnson View Post

      So, the reason why that dinky little site with 200 internal links to a subpage is still ranking higher than yours, is because it's doing a lot of other things right that you're not doing.
      Sorry, i didn't make it clear. I'm not saying I had 1200 internal links and the other guy has 200 internal links. I'm talking inbound links from other sites. I have 1200 inbound to my subpage from several hundred different sites, plus a couple thousand more inbound links to my domain as whole, while the other guy has 200 inbound links total, to his whole website.

      Now, granted, his website is all about product X (something like, productXreviews.com), while my site is not product specific, I promote several different products off of it, each one from a different subpage. From the other replies I've been reading, seems the thought is that a homepage will always outrank subpages, so maybe that is why he is beating me, even though I have a lot more links than he does....

      So, another question for you all - Seems as though what you all are suggesting is that the "mini-site", focused on promoting one product (targeting some broad and some long-tail keyword phrases) would be better than a larger site promoting different products off of its subpages and never really trying to get the homepage to rank (my current situation). Is this the general consensus?

      I'd definitely be willing to switch to making mini-sites to promote off of, because it's the same old story with my current website: I can't seem to get ranked above smaller sites, even though I may have several hundred or a thousand more links to a subpage than they do to their domain. It is frustrating.

      thanks for all your input so far everyone!
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      • Profile picture of the author Beldin
        Originally Posted by ringer37 View Post

        Now, granted, his website is all about product X (something like, productXreviews.com)
        This will probably stir up some controversy but... it seems as though your competitions choice of a keyword rich domain name is giving him an advantage. From your descriptions it doesn't sound like yours is.

        There are many cases where this type of domain name seems to automatically gain a ridiculous bonus in the eyes of Goog... it's what gave rise to the "sniper" type sites.

        Just a thought...
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  • Your home page should target your head terms, your most competitive hard to rank for terms. The sub-pages should target longer tail terms. Sub-sub-pages even longer tail terms. But you know that...

    That being said, dropping a few links to your home pages with keyword phrases being targeted by the sub-pages can be beneficial in a couple of ways.

    1) Relevance - Since your home page likely links to those level-one sub-pages, having inbound links to your home page with the targeted keyword phrase(s) of your sub-pages will make your home page seem more relevant to the sub-pages.

    After all, how does Google determine if your URL is relevant to a user's search querey? They don't just look at the on-page factor of your URL. They also look at the inbound links to that URL, most importantly the link text, to determine if your URL is relevant to the query.

    I can pretty much guarantee that they are not just looking at the on-page factors of your home page to determine how relevant it is to the sub-pages it links to. They will look at its inbound links as well to determine relevance to the pages it links to just like they look at inbound links of a URL to detemrine its relevance to a search query.

    2) Another benefit of having some links to your home page with link text containing the keyword phrases targeted by your sub-pages is that you will start picking up indented listings. When your sub-page appears in the SERPs for a particular keyword phrase, your home page will start appearing as an indent.

    If you can spare the time to build some extra links to your home page targeting your sub-pages keyword phrases, it can't hurt and will only help.
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  • Profile picture of the author kalens99
    The advice shared here is discussing the pagerank algorithm, which is obviously not the same as relevance which is probably shared throughout the site. You should have deeplinked pages because Google wants to know that your homepage isn't the only page on your site that is relevant to a keyword. if you want to rank you want a relevant site not just a homepage. Also, many claim that Google wants to see deeplinked pages in order to build PR as well if that is your only concern.

    However, I do agree that you should target high profile keywords on your homepage. That is where most of your links are going to need to go so that's where you are most likely to build your search engine traffic.
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    • Profile picture of the author F1SEO
      Totally agree. Homepage will easily outrank subpages on any keyword, so optimise the homepage for the big key terms, and get more niche as you go down.

      If the terms are overlapping, then homepage will always take priority in Google. Not always the case in Yahoo and Bing.
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