Build links to home page or internal to rank internal pages?

[SamCUK]

I understand that naturally people link to the home page and internal pages - probably the home page more often than not. In order to build a natural looking link profile I also understand that I need a variety of anchor text, brand and url links. Should I be building links mainly to the home page with only a few to internal pages? Ultimately I want my internal pages to rank for specific terms so in my head it makes sense to concentrate my link building effort to internal pages but that would seem unnatural to google I'm sure.

For arguments sake if I only built links to the home page with a mix of the anchor texts described above  would these internal pages rank eventually anyway as 'link juice' flows throughout the site? Or is it an absolute must to build some links to internal pages. Could a page rank for a keyword without having any links to the site with the keyword anchor text (simply url links) based on the page title/content?

Also what is a good ratio of home page to internal links? I would assume around 10:1?

A lot of questions I know but I'm confused as to what will be the best strategy.

[DarinPirkey]

I happen to think that your link profile needs to be robust to your internal pages.  Think about user experience here.  If someone is on another blog and writing about red apples, would the person want to go to the home page of a farmers website about red apples or a sub-page about red apples.  I just think that is natural.  If they go to the homepage of your site then they will have to find the page on red apples.  I can image that your bounce rate would be pretty high if that was the case.   I don't worry to much about percentages on any sort of link building campaign.  I don't know if 10:1 or 15:1 or 1:1 is correct.  I can tell you from just about everything the search engines do that percentages don't matter.  It's about quality.  As a general rule of thumb, its going to depend on your type of website you are building.  If you have an e-commerce site and the link is from some where talking about sites as a whole, the link to your home page is fine.  But, if the source of the link is talking about a particular product, then I think that link needs to be to a particular sub-page talking about that product. Again, don't get caught up in percentages.  If you have high quality link prospects then you will naturally be varying your link profile.  If you are using automated links then you won't.  Hope that helps a little.

[josh-riley]

I agree - I think it's important to do more than just the home page. I don't agree there's a specific science / ratio to it for a few reasons: if it was that specific, everyone would do it and we know Google wouldn't let it be that obvious because people would game the system.

There's relative factors to consider: some pages on your site may be way more competitive to rank for than others. If your overall domain authority is a little lower, you have to compensate for that. On my site, I can get some pages to rank well pretty much just with on page optimization because it's not a competitive term. There's others that are taking tons of links, strong keyword hierarchy and such to even get into the top 20.

The best strategy for you will (I'd assume) be based on evaluating how competitive your field is and what pages you want to rank for the best user experience to drive conversions. Will just your homepage do that? Do you need other pages w/in your site to offer a better experience?

[Backlinko]

MOST of your links should be internal pages...especially if you run a site with a lot of pages.

Take a blog with 150 posts. What are the odds that 90% of his links point to his (or her) homepage?

There's no hard and fast rule about what percentage of homepage vs. internal links you should have...but I try to have less than 50% of my links pointing to my homepage.