Backlinks to internal pages

[Umesh-Chandra]

Hi,

Our website of 3K+ pages currently has more links coming to internal pages (2nd & 3rd Level), compared to links to homepage.

Just wanted to know if this is bad for rankings ? Please share your thoughts. Thanks.

[JordanLowry]

A good rule of thumb for SEO is to write your pages for the users, not the search engines. So I would assume if it seems logical and beneficial to the reader to link to 2nd and 3rd level pages then it shouldn't be an issue. If it makes sense and provides usability then I would not worry about it.

[Paddy_Moogan]

Hi Jeeyaul,

As long as the links pointing at the 2nd and 3rd level pages (and the site in general) are good quality, then I wouldn't worry about this too much. I certainly don't think it's bad for rankings and is actually more likely to help those 2nd and 3rd level pages rank better.

If, on the other hand, these links aren't great quality or could be seen as manipulative by Google, then that could be bad for rankings.

You could take a look at this blog post that I wrote late last year which talks about what makes a good and bad link:

https://moz.com/blog/the-anatomy-of-a-link

I hope that helps!

Paddy