Backlinks to home page vs internal page

[BobGW]

Hello,

What is the point of getting a large amount of backlinks to internal pages of an ecommerce site? Although it would be great to make your articles (for example) strong, isn't it more important to build up the strength of the home page.

All of My SEO has had a long term goal of strengthening the home page, with just enough backlinks to internal pages to have balance, which is happening naturally. The home page of our main site is what comes up on tons of our keyword searches since it is so strong.

Please let me know why so much effort is put into getting backlinks to internal pages.

Thank you,

[rhutchings]

There isnt a perfect ratio, but for larger sites it is very important to get a large number of backlinks to internal pages.  It helps with the overall "Domain Authority".  If your site is structured well, then the "seo sculpting" internally will help boost the homepage.  You should make sure to utilize internal links back to the homepage or important high-level pages.

For instance, lets say you have 10 backlinks.  If they all go to your homepage, your homepage could have a nice SEO value with a pagerank of 5.  But your interior pages dont have much pagerank or seo value, and therefor the rest of your site doesnt get ranked well.

In contrast, lets say 8 out of the 10 links go to internal pages, and those internal pages all have a small pagerank, and those pages all link back to your homepage with important keywords, it will pass a bunch of that seo value up to your homepage at the same time of increasing the value of your internal pages.  Its a better way to get your whole site ranking, rather than just homepage.

[RyanKent]

The primary reason to have links to internal pages is to help search engines locate your content and promote it's rankings. If you only link to your home page your PA of your more important pages will suffer.

Let's assume you sell various products and one of them is Nike WingedFoot sneakers. You provide the page as one of the 5000 products you offer and do not have links to the page. One of your competitors writes a fantastic article on how this pair of sneakers is the best thing and can make you jump higher, run faster, etc. He obtains links directly to this page. All things being equal, he will outrank you. Even without writing the great article if he gets the links and everything else is equal, he will outrank you for any similar search.

EDIT: I was ninja'd on the response by "the other Ryan". We are in agreement but worded things a bit differently.

[EGOL]

Please let me know why so much effort is put into getting backlinks to internal pages.

Because they are out to kickass and make money by getting internal pages dominant in their niche.

All of My SEO has had a long term goal of strengthening the home page, with just enough backlinks to internal pages to have balance, which is happening naturally. The home page of our main site is what comes up on tons of our keyword searches since it is so strong.

How many people do you have working on this?  Imagine the result if you had twice as many?

[BobGW]

OK, so how much pagerank will be passed to the home page from a strong internal page? Could you give specific examples, and if possible, documentation? I believe you are correct, I just need to get a good feel for how much pagerank is passed.  I forgot to mention that there are about 5 or 6 good keywords in our main niche, and the rest of the keywords are pretty tiny.

[BobGW]

Ryan, is this true even if all of the internal keywords are tiny?

[RyanKent]

Based on your prior reply I believe by "tiny" you mean they are long tail keywords.

In that case, yes.

[rhutchings]

There isnt really any specific documentation on how much pagerank is passed in certain situations.  Historically this technique is call pagerank sculpting, and the direct pagerank passed value is being de-emphasized as of late.

Here was an answer about a similar issue posted by Rand and the SEOmoz team a while ago: http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/15353/internal-links-and-page-rank

The value comes in with a large volume of those "tiny" keywords.  Structure you r site so a lot of the tiny ones link to your homepage to keep the homepage ranking well, but only link off of your homepage to a handful of important pages (like if you had a page for each of those 5 or 6 good keywords).

[BobGW]

Ryan, I agree with this. I did some thinking and searching and you seem to be right on. I'll pass pagrank to the home page via stronger internal pages. Thank you.

[BobGW]

Ryan, I agree with this. I did some thinking and searching and you seem to be right on. I'll pass pagrank to the home page via stronger internal pages. Thank you.

[BobGW]

Thanks Ryan, you seem to always have good information. I researched it and I agree with your comments.