20+ Second Page Keyword Rankings...Let's Talk Links...

[RMcdonald]

So I have been working on my main project site, ramping up the content production. I must admit it is going incredibly well!

The main reason I have created this thread is for a little guidance when it comes to sending links back to my site. I have created content silos which works great.

The question I guess really is: What would be the best way to send links to my site?

- Home Page?
- Category Page?
- Actual Post - Internally Linked To Other Posts?

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!

 

[RomesFall]

I build more links to my homepage than most do, and it's quite simply to do with the fact that the largest brands on the web have a high RD-Homepage Ratio.

That being said it's not that simple.

I am a big believer in reverse engineering competitors, so I'd do that and try to figure out the strategy of successful competitors.

Some SERPs you'll need links to break the top 10 and almost all of them you will need links to get to position 1... So linking to actual posts as you put it, that is an important part of any strategy.

Anchor text and all of that is really important as part of a good strategy, this is why I'm also recommending looking at your successful competitors. SERPWoo by @CCarter would be really beneficial there because you don't want to copy a competitor that has risen sharply and will probably drop sharply too.

Having access to that kind of historical serp data is super important imo.

Sorry I couldn't give you a more concise answer but it's mostly about doing the boring research.

 

[Hercules]

It's really dependent on many factors, but I believe the most important thing is to ask yourself "what's most natural?".

When a concept/business/website goes "naturally" viral, the websites/blogs/personalities that post about the topic will often refer their readers to the homepage. Take Marie Kondo for example, many blog posts about her will be linking to her homepage, as well as a relevant external source such as a link to her book on Amazon.

I would focus on building links to your homepage, that is how most natural websites gain links originally.. because the homepage usually gives the reader an general overview of the website and a call to action.

Overtime, links will naturally grow to your internal posts. You can also build links to your internal pages during your outreach time, there's no answer that fits everyone. Take RomesFalls advice of figuring out the link profile of your industries most authoritative leaders, and follow their ratios as a general, but not absolute, guide.

 

[Ryuzaki]

The question I guess really is: What would be the best way to send links to my site?

- Home Page?
- Category Page?
- Actual Post - Internally Linked To Other Posts?

Yes to all of the above, with category pages being the caveat. If they act as another 'homepage' for categories then sure. If they're just a list of blog posts in the category with very little other static content then I wouldn't bother too much with that.

What gets discovered as you set about to build links is that most opportunities that you can achieve easily will restrict you to one of those options anyways. There's a zillion brand profiles you can create and get crawled and even indexed that restrict you to your homepage and social media pages. Infographic galleries, as one example of a ton, will restrict you to the page that the infographic exists on (which you would interlink with other pages you want to rank).

That kind of dirty trench-work link building doesn't have the conundrum of choosing where to send the link most of the time. It's already defined. Guest posts, forum posts, etc... that's where you can choose. And at that point you're talking about contextual links that are likely serving a specific contextual need related to the conversation, so that's usually defined for you too. And at that point you'll have enough home page links, because the amount of forced-links-to-homepage style of links to be built are endless.

 

[RMcdonald]

Thank you guys, I guess I just didn't want to go too full on building links and getting penalized for over optimizing.

I want this site to slowly become an authority within it's niche, so it's important that I start to build it out the right way!

I'm thinking build a good majority to the home page, as the posts which are hanging round the 2nd page are all good search volume and not a huge amount of competition, so the "Link Juice" will flow nicely into these pages.

For those with higher search and higher competition, I will build a good range of links to those specific pages to help them make their way up the ranks.

Going to build out a spreadsheet so that I can keep a track of which links are going where and so that I don't over optimize any page.

 

[Hercules]

Going to build out a spreadsheet so that I can keep a track of which links are going where and so that I don't over optimize any page.

Just make sure that spreadsheet isn't on Google Sheets

I can't stand it when people share all of their link building strategies freely with Google like that. It might just be a conspiracy theory, but I don't see why Google wouldn't examine their users content to figure out if they're using their products for financial, business, writing blog posts, etc. Seems like good data to just go to waste.