While analyzing the link profile of a website, it is important to keep a check on the amount of external links pointing at the home page as compared to the amount links pointing at the inner pages of the website. Many people talk about a ratio which can never be termed ideal from a number of perspectives. And since Google doesn’t give clear directions about what ratio a website owner or manager needs to maintain, this article tends to inform the SEOs in a pretty careful manner.
50% links to the home page
Some people aim at building 30% to 50% links to the home page. The matter of fact is that neither 30% nor 50% is an ideal number. It clearly shows that the website owners are not quite confident about the quality of their inner pages.
Moreover, it is worth mentioning here that the links to home page in excess amount are usually deemed to be unnatural links. A study in 2006, which was titled as “Link-Based Characterization and Detection of Web Spam”, states that the higher number of links pointing to home page as compared to the number of links pointing at the inner pages is usually considered spam. The research also suggests that non-spam websites tend to have more links to the inner pages. However, let’s also talk about the websites which are an exception here.
- The queries that ask for the geographic content are often shown the websites which do not have many links pointing to the inner pages. This is due to the fact that home pages of such websites have the answers to the questions.
- Corporate pages are usually dry. And you are not going to find much of the link worthy content on the inner pages of those sites.
- Sites that update topics on the home page are rarely going to get links to the inner pages. This is due to the fact that users are going to find what they look for on the home pages.
Deep links to home page ratios
It is a common observation that retail sites on top ranks tend to have a bigger number of deep links. However, the sites such as gasoline station brands usually have more links to the home page.
Is there any impact on ranking when more links point to home pages?
Looking at what we have discussed in this content, many people may conclude that having more links to the home page might not be the best idea. Well, the matter of fact is that Google doesn’t consider more links to the home page a negative ranking factor.
You can look at the logical process of linking. What are you going to do when you have valuable content on the inner pages and you want this content to be promoted on the web? Surely you are going to build links to those sites rather than building links to home page with a hope of enhancing the PageRank to a level at which the inner pages would get the benefit. In other words, it just makes sense to promote the inner pages rather than paying full attention to the home page.
