Other than the homepage, what other pages need linkbuilding TLC?

[Bill4Time]

With my linkbuilding efforts, I know what keywords I want to target but my homepage ranks for most of my keywords. The other pages were written and built for specific keywords, but do they need linkbuilding TLC? They don't rank in the SERPs much anyway (if not at all) and the homepage is by-far the strongest in the SERPs.

[scanlin]

If you want the other pages to rank for the keywords they were optimized (on-page) for then you will need to do some external link building to each of the other pages (with appropriate anchor text for each).

When I've looked at the link profile of other sites and compared the number of external links that point to the home page vs internal pages, it looks like about 40-70% of external links point to the home page. Meaning, 30-60% of a site's links point to its sub-pages. Sometimes this is because the sub-pages have awesome content that people have chosen to link to, and other times it's because the webmaster has done standard link building exercises for the important sub-pages (guest blogging, article marketing, etc) that she/he wants to rank in the SERPs.

[RyanOD]

The pages that need links are the pages that drive (or should drive) value for your business.

Take a look at the keywords your are building content for. Hopefully you can rank those keywords based on the revenue potential. Next, look at where the best pages for each keyword are currently ranking. Finally, ascertain the overall competitive landscape for those keywords.

What you are looking for is high revenue potential + low rankings + reasonable competitive landscape. Build links into those pages.

Furthermore, is it possible your other pages aren't ranking well because they are not properly optimized for the keywords you want them to rank for? Have you surveyed the content on the page, the URL structure, the title tag, etc.?

[Bill4Time]

Good point with the percentages! Thanks, Mike.

[Bill4Time]

Why can't I double thumb-up this?! haha - thanks, Ryan. I appreciate the step-by-step advice.

[RyanOD]

No problem, Jessica! Glad you found the information helpful.

One last point. Depending on your site design, you may have an opportunity to pass some of your home page's ranking power to your most important landing pages by linking to them from the home page. For example, we have persistent links on our home page to our top 10 games, games that convert new visitors very well, and game genres. While part of this is user experience oriented, a lot of it is also to pass on the home page's ranking power to those pages we want to rank well on the SERPs.

The links on your home page shouldn't be random. Think strategically about what you link to from your home page.