Quick Tip #7 – Don’t just link to your home page

Don't assume that the best place to link to from external websites is your home page. Taking visitors directly to pages relevant to their search will help your pages and overall website ranking.
6 Nov, 2009

It’s good to find ways to link to your website from other websites.

Contrary to popular belief, external links don’t always need to land on your home page. Linking to different pages on your website will not harm your home page’s Google (or other) search engine ranking. It will, however, improve the individual ranking of other pages on your website and probably your website overall. Your home page will usually give a more general overview of your site as a whole, and so may not be an appropriate starting page for many visitors. So much better to drop them on a page that is immediately relevant to them.

For example, let’s say you want to link to your website from a site that specialises in SEO. There’s a fair chance that anyone visiting that site is interested in SEO. Let’s also assume that your home page introduces your visitors to your company, telling them that you provide web design, hosting, website care, and SEO services. That’s fine, but if you really want the link to be valuable to your visitor, wouldn’t it be better to link them straight to your SEO Services page?

Sending them to your home page and then expecting them to find their way to the content that is most relevant to them might cause them to bounce away, and may well be detrimental to your SEO efforts. This is especially true if the page they really need is more than 3 clicks away from your home page.

So, in summary, don’t automatically assume that the best place to link to from external websites is your home page. Think about where the visitor is coming from in the link and try to give them the most appropriate landing page.

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