Homepage vs specific page Backlink

[dpaq2011]

Hello,

I have a local business and have been working on getting backlinks for highly relevant keywords.

1. I have keyword optimized pages (keyword in URL, title, H1, etc) but I have been sending backlinks to the homepage, as these keywords represent the core of what we offer.

See example below:

• car repair

• car repair london

• auto repair

• auto repair london

I have been sending backlinks (with the correct anchor text of course) to the homepage, am I better off sending them to the specific pages?

2. One more thing: the SEOMOZ report talks about cannibalisation of keywords, where for example the page optimised for "car repair" links to "Car repair london".

I have links to the optimised pages in a footer at the bottom of every single page on the website, is this bad practice? (considering SEOMOZ talks about cannibalisation? Should I do something else instead (or eliminate the footer links altogether?)

I would appreciate your expert advice.

[ebenthurston]

In regard to question 1:

I think it's best to mix it up a little. In "real life" users would sometimes link to your homepage, and sometimes to your product/services pages, so a natural mix of anchor text to home and inner pages is probably best. You don't want your inbound links to appear overly organized.

I'll defer to one of our many gurus to shed some light on question 2.

[dpaq2011]

Eben,

thank you - you definitely have a point.

In terms of overall SEO, I guess I am trying to understand whether it is better practice to push SEO for a specific page, or to push SEO for the homepage/entire website... Does Google favour page SEO or domain SEO? Let's not forget we are talking focussed niche here...

Thank you and I will wait to hear from the gurus as well !

I love the community of SEO MOZ

[AlanBleiweiss]

Eben is correct in his answer.  It's unnatural to only link to a home page or to an individual page for a specific keyword phrase or any links at all.

In my experience, cannibalization is a false flag concern for the vast majority of sites and it's overplayed by some people in the industry when there are so many other things to be focused on that have a higher value.  I say this because it's like this.  If your site is really well designed and people can easily navigate to find what they are looking for, then you should be happy for either your home page OR an inner specific page to be found and clicked.  And when you execute properly with a mix of targets (home and inner pages), you will ultimately get BOTH the home page AND the inner page to show up in the search results.

Having said that, burying links in the footer the way you describe is NOT an SEO best practice.  First, because footer links are the lowest form of link you can have on a site.  Second, it's a signal that you're potentially attempting to spam the search engines.

If you wish to continue to maintain links in footers it should not be a case of keyword stuffing attempts, but instead, links to highly important pages where the anchor text is not specifically a keyword phrase, but instead, a description of the link destination.  And typically, it should be a mirror of the main site navigation, or alternately, to second tier corporate pages (such as customer service, privacy, disclaimers, etc.).

On a final note, I'll suggest that you can ultimately only truly optimize the home page for the site's highest level topical focus or intent, and secondarily, to whatever other keyword focus you have actually optimized the home page for.  So while it's okay (and natural) to have links pointing to the home page that have anchors with other keyword phrases, the majority should not be so.

[dpaq2011]

Alan,

thank you for your reply.

I am happy for either the homepage or the specific page to be found, it does not really matter to me.

Ok maybe I should have made it clear that the keywords I am targeting are for the highest level topical focus/intent. Looking at the analogy I give above where I use the keywords "auto repair", "auto repair london", "car repair" and "car repair london", you can see these are very close topically and the overall website theme would be "car/auto repair in london".

While the topic is the same, the homepage focusses more on the brand of our business (domain is also www.brand.com) with title, h1 etc focussed on the brand, while the inner page focus more on the specific keyword www.brand.com/keyword, with title, h1 etc focussing on keywords.

I am hovering on position 2-3 for the london-specific keywords, this is for the homepage, I wonder if I should focus link-building more on the inner page to try push to no.1.

As far as the footer links, I see what you mean, but since these pages are very similar topically and really there for SEO, unless I link from the footer, I really dont see any other place where I could link from - unless you suggest I am better off without the links at all?

Thank you.

[AlanBleiweiss]

I'm suggesting that you should focus on inbound links rather than internal links at this point.  You've got a strong base given that you're hovering in such high positions already for the home page.  Building on this through inbound link and social media efforts would be the primary place to put your link building energy and resources.  And again, even in that scenario, work on a mix of links pointing to both the home page and inner pages.

If you do this, over time, you'll find you may bounce back and forth for a while between the home page and inner pages showing up in ranking, yet ultimately you'll get both the home and inner pages showing up in the results.

If you then also seed in brand related anchor text from external sources and social media, you'll also achieve the ultimate results for your brand - having Google SiteLinks show up with your brand in the #1 position AND having other site pages show up in the mix further down.