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This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 86. Should you build backlinks to the homepage or to inner pages? You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy, and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies, and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than 99% of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy. Let me tell you why I'm grumpy today. I'm grumpy today because people don't know if they should build backlinks to the homepage or to the inner pages. And to explain, the Homepage is like www.website.com, right? Like whatever. And an inner page would be like www.website.com bluewidgets or whatever an inner page is that is not the homepage. It doesn't have to be blue widgets. It could be literally anything. But I hope you get the point. So let's get in to the discussion for today. But before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started. Everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in the industry. I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical and based on my experience. This podcast does not constitute advice or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. Okay, back to the show. Should you build backlinks to the homepage or to inner pages? Well, here's the thing. The answer to this question is super easy, and I feel like you probably already understand the answer. You just need somebody to tell you. So I'm just going to tell you, okay? It's a quick answer, and then we're going to talk about it a little bit more specifically. So the answer is build backlinks to the page that you want to get the authority, which normally is the page that you want to rank. I know, it's obvious, isn't it? Like, I'm. I'm half kidding. Like, I know it's not that obvious, but, like, I mean, what. What do you. What do you need to rank? Let's. Let's let's take a. A little. A little trip down memory lane. Okay, what do you need to rank? Episode 51, the four things you need to rank. Okay, it's like, what? Like, what are they? What are they? One, avoid penalties. Okay. Okay. Avoid penalties. Number two, have content. Doesn't need to be great, just needs to exist. Number three, you need relevancy. And number four, you need authority. Those are the four things that you need to rank. You should go play that episode if you are confused about what they are or why you need them. So, anyway, the short answer is build backlinks to the page that you want to rank. Like, yeah, right? Makes perfect sense. You're probably like, yeah, that makes perfect sense, grumpy SEO guy. What else are you even gonna talk about on this episode? Great question. Let me tell you. What you actually want to do is build backlinks to, like, both pages. Like, all the pages, right? Because why? What is the number one rule in SEO? Those of you that have been listening for a long time know this. Maybe you forgot it. Don't worry, I'll remind you. Those of you that have not been listening to the podcast, I'm gonna tell you right now. Ready? The number one rule in SEO is would this ever naturally happen? It's actually, you have to ask yourself, would this ever naturally happen? Let's ask yourself a question. If you have pages on your website, would it ever naturally occur that that's the only page that gets backlinks? Would that ever naturally happen? Probably not. I mean, like. I mean, like, I could see a scenario where that might happen, but probably it wouldn't happen. What would probably happen is all of the pages on your website would get backlinks, and some of them might get more, and some of them might get less, and, like, whatever. But if I was looking at a website and I saw that it had, let's say, 50 pages and only one of them had backlinks, I would say that's very weird. And I bet search engines would say the same thing. Okay, remember, the algorithm is designed to approximate what would naturally happen. Okay? So if you're doing a bunch of crazy things like building a million backlinks in one day and then never building backlinks again, or only building all your backlinks to one page and to the detriment of every other page on your site, that looks peculiar. And the algorithm might think that you're up to manipulation, and it might not work the way you think it's going to. Okay, so build backlinks to the Pages or page that you want to rank, but also to your other pages. Pretty straightforward. Okay, but I want to clarify something here, because otherwise people are going to get like, just like bewildered by this whole thing, and they're going to be like, well, I don't get it, grumpy SEO guy. Because you said, build backlinks to the page. You want to get the authority, which is usually the page that you want to rank, but then you said build it to all the pages. That doesn't make any sense. Okay, look, so let's say you have a website, okay? And you've got like a specific page that you're trying to rank for certain things. And the other pages on your website are not as important. Maybe one is a contact page, maybe one is an about page, maybe one is something else. Whatever, right? You're probably in that case going to build most of the links to the page that you want to rank for the things, okay? Because you want that page to have most of the authority on the website, right? Yes. Okay, look, but what if you have different products? What if you have 50 products, right, and each of them has their own page? Well, you should probably build backlinks to all of those pages, shouldn't you? However, that's going to be based on the competition for each of those keywords, and that's a different topic. Okay, but the point is, you need authority to rank. You need backlinks to get authority. Build backlinks to the pages that you want to rank, and you want to have authority. Okay, that's the quick answer. But also, also build backlinks to all of the pages, because that also looks natural. But you might have most of the backlinks going to a certain page and then different backlinks going to some of the other pages. As far as anchor text goes, mix up the anchor text. And by the way, this is not the episode where we're talking about anchor text, but mix up the anchor text. Mix up the target pages. Would this ever naturally happen? If the answer is yes, you should probably try it. If the answer is no, you should probably not try it. Yeah, I don't really know what else to tell you. I have another episode. It's called is this lower authority website actually outranking this higher authority website? It's episode 52, okay? And in this episode, I give specific examples of a website that outranks another website. But the website that's ranking higher has lower authority. And it doesn't actually have lower authority, it has lower doctor. Right, but people assume that doctor is authority. And people like trolls and haters of grumpy SEO Guy love to, like, misinterpret what I say and be like, grumpy SEO Guy, you said that authority is the main ranking factor, but this website has less DA and it's outranking a website with more da. You're wrong. When somebody says that to me, I know that they either are trolling me or have not actually been listening to this podcast because I've literally never, ever said that higher DA always outranks lower da. I've said that is not how it works. And I even have an entire podcast episode explaining a specific case where I give keywords and addresses and websites so that you can look yourself and see what I'm talking about. And then I explain why the page with lower DA is outranking the page with higher da. Actually, it's doctor but still. Right. And by the way, it has nothing to do with having better content. Like, people always assume content is king. Yeah, all right, bro. Whatever. Anyways, look, and that's episode 52. You want to link to the page that you want to rank. Okay? This is how pay. Pay attention to what I'm going to tell you right now. This is very important. You can outrank if you do this. If you do it correctly, you can outrank domains with higher DA or Dr. Or whatever you want, because do you want to know what those are? Domain level metrics. Okay, I'm going to say it again, so please understand what I'm saying here. DA and Dr. And things like that. Okay? And I assume that everybody listening to this knows what DA and Dr. Means. Okay. DA means domain authority. It's a metric from Moz that is approximating domain level authority. And Dr. Means domain rating, and it is a metric from Ahrefs, and it is approximating domain level authority. Why are they approximating authority? Because the real measures of authority are secret, and only Google knows them. Well, I mean, the search engines have their own, but Google is the one that most people are worried about. So Google has their own. Okay, but it's a secret. It didn't used to be, but it's a secret now. And when they made it secret a long time ago, all these other companies started to make their own because people were using the actual measure of authority from Google. And then Google made it secret, and you can't find it anymore. So Ahrefs and Moz and all these other places made their own. Okay, now you know what Da and Dr. That sounded funny. Now you know what Da and Dr. Mean, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about why you should not worry about them. Because I'm not sure if I can keep this in a short little episode, but I'm going to try. Things like DA and Dr. Are domain level metrics. People mistakenly feel that if a website has a lot of doctor I'm just going to say doctor okay, but you can apply DA too. People always say that if a website has a lot of doctor that you cannot outrank them. However, I'm sure you have seen smaller websites outranking Amazon for specific products, right? I'm going to assume you have, because Amazon is not always number one for everything. They are often at the top for most things, but they are not always number one for everything. Now, it is rather unlikely that you will ever have more doctor Than Amazon does. Okay? Just, just assume you're not going to. Okay, but you could outrank Amazon for your specific product page, even if Amazon sells the same thing. Why? Because Dr. Is a domain level metric and it really has less effect on the ranking of specific URLs, meaning not the domain itself, than people think. Side note, this is why Dr. Is not the best metric to use when buying expired domains. But that's a different topic anyways. Okay, like, cause. And I, and I say that because everybody's always like, how much should I Pay for a Dr. 40 domain? If you have 1 minute to evaluate a domain, use Dr. But if you want to do a good job picking a domain, you gotta use other things. Okay, I have other episodes to talk about this. I might do more episodes to talk about this. Dr. Is, you know the 8020 rule, right? That applies to like numerous things where you get like 80% of the results from like 20% of the effort. You know what I mean? Like, there's a couple things that make a big difference, right? Dr. Is like, I don't know, like 50% of the value in like 1% of the time. Like, you can look at a website and say, oh, it's got Dr. 50, it must be good. And it might be good, but there's other reasons that you might not want to buy that domain. Okay? But everybody only cares about Dr. And they're like, oh, because people sell Backlinks based on Dr. Which, by the way, is why I know that whenever somebody asks me, how do I increase my doctor they are probably wanting to sell backlinks. And they know that people will pay more for higher doctor when that link may or may not even share A greater amount of link juice. I know you guys are probably like, what doctor to hire doctor is always better. No, it's not. That's wrong. But it's a different topic. Just take my word for it for now and we might like talk about it later. There's a, you know, it's a different topic. Look back to the point. Oh, but the other reason people sometimes ask me how to increase Dr. Is because they think that if they increase Dr. They will have a better position in the results. Which is not true. Because the purpose of SEO is not to build your doctor. The purpose of SEO is to get to the top of the results. Those things are not quite as correlated as most people think. Small websites can outrank Amazon for specific pages. Not the domain itself, obviously, but like specific. If you're selling blue widgets and Amazon has a blue widgets page where they're selling blue widgets, you might outrank them. Your blue widget page might outrank their blue widget page even though you have way less doctor Than they do. Okay, why? Why? Because you can do a good job building backlinks to your specific product URL. Okay, again, this is unrelated to Dr. This is unrelated to Dr. Okay, but anyway, this is kind of a more like involved subject that again, I'm not going to get into now. But the answer to the question is build backlinks to the page that you want to rank. You probably want your inner pages to rank, but you might also want your homepage to rank. I have zero idea how your website is set up. So decide what pages you want to rank for what keywords. Build appropriate backlinks to those pages, but build backlinks additionally to. If you're building them to specific pages, build them to the homepage. If you're building them to some pages, build them to other pages. Why? Why? Because. What's the question? Would this ever happen organically? Would it? I think I said naturally before, but same thing. Would this ever happen organically? Yes, you would probably get backlinks to lots of pages on your site. Why? Because when normal people are building links to things, they link to all sorts of pages, right? They don't say, hmm, which backlink would share the most link juice to this website that I am linking to. Nobody cares about that. Like normal bloggers don't care about. They probably are aware of it at this point, but they also don't care. They might care, but they're probably just like, here's a cool thing I saw. Here's a here, look. You can check it out here, right? Click here. And like, that's what they do. They're not like, wait a minute, which page specifically should I link to? They just link to the thing. Stop thinking so much. Honestly. And I say this as a person who, like, overthinks everything all the time. Okay, stop think like, okay, like, okay, Multiple listeners have emailed me because they're building their own pbn and they're like, hey, if I send you a site that I made, will you look at it and tell me if I'm doing it right? And I'm like, yes, of course I will. And so they sent it to me. And, like, almost all of them have been great. Like, because people are overthinking how to make a PBN follow all of the directions that I give, right? As far as hosting and IPs and content and speed and all that stuff. But, like, as far as the website, if it looks like a regular website that, like, some average blogger would have, yes, you're doing it right. Don't. Don't be a robot and be like, I need exactly this many words on the page. Like, no, because a normal blogger does not say, how many words should I have on my page. They just blog, right? So anyway, look, stop overthinking things. Stop overthinking the design of your pbn. As long as you're following the suggestions I gave in episodes three, four, and five, you're doing it right. Probably. I don't know for sure, but, like, probably. As far as what pages do you build backlinks to? Homepage or inner page? Again, stop overthinking it and build backlinks. All authority helps. It's all redistributed through your site anyway, right? But if you have specific pages that you want to rank, build backlinks to those pages, but also build them to the homepages. Right? Don't be like, I need exactly this many backlinks because I am a machine. Like, dude, that looks weird. If you think it looks weird, search engines are going to think it looks weird. Okay, so build backlinks like a normal person to the pages that you want to rank. Here you can ask yourself this question. Hmm. If I was linking to my site to talk about a product, which page would I link to? Probably in most cases, that specific page. Now, you might link to the homepage once in a while and be like, hey, this place sells this really awesome product. I found it on their website. Here's a link. And then it's like a link to the homepage that would probably happen, so you should do that, too. Okay, but don't build all your backlinks to the same page, because that's weird. Please don't do that. You're going to do it anyway. Grumpy SEO Guy, why is it not working? I built all my backlinks. I built 5,000 backlinks to one page and no backlinks to any other page. I'm like, did you. Did you listen to this episode? Yes, I did. Hmm. Okay. Because you listened to this episode, do you know what the problem might be? The problem is you don't understand SEO. Grumpy SEO Guy. And content is king. Yeah. All right. Anyway, thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe, and if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can contact me on Reddit. My username is grumpy seoguy. You can visit the grumpyseoguy subreddit or you can email me@hellorumpyseoguy.com if you email me, please either whitelist my email address or check your junk folders, because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder, and it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks, and I think those words will classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast, because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do so@patreon.com Grumpy Seoguy and I will talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday when we talk about SEO is a competition, not a checklist.