Hi guys, I have a question about linking to a product page for linkbuilding. Does that count adversely vs. linking to a homepage?

[DGM]

Hi - so until now we have been building links via blog posts and articles and linking them to the homepage. It seems the ranking of some of my top keywords has fallen so had a few questions/concerns:

1. Does it affect the rankings adversely if I link to the product page vs the homepage?

2. What is rule of thumb for increasing rankings of inside pages/keywords and building links to them?

Thanks

[RyanPurkey]

For internal linking you should try to be as precise as possible. You can also freely control the anchor text of the links so if you're talking about a specific product, link to that specific product. Google has enough data to know when you link to a page and the content it should be finding is not there (as may be the case with some of your home page links).  I would clean up any and all internal links that don't point to the best page, either deleting ones that just don't apply or pointing them to very specific products.

With external links it can vary. A lot of times people link to the home page when mentioning the company, while some sites garner a lot of product specific links (eBay, Amazon, Craigslist, etc.) due to the nature of their content. Wikipedia would be another example. Using OSE you can find some great ideas around how the competition has built links, but also some really spammy examples. Avoid the spam and make it a goal that when you do add a link to a page or work with someone interested in linking to your site, that the link is as user helpful as possible.  Think of the link or mention from a conversion perspective more than as a way to help your rankings and you'll be much better off. Cheers!