How Many Links Should You Build to Your Pages

Here's the common question When it comes to link building. Which pages should you be building your links to? Should you be building links to your homepage? Should you only be sending links to informational-type pages and avoiding sending links to commercially monetized content?

 

We're going to answer all of that right now, but first, I want to discuss.

What is the difference between informational-type content and commercial content? 

Informational content

This would be like, how-to guide, like how to pump up your biceps, how to do bicep curls, how to do pull-ups. These are all informational-type queries.

 

Commercial content or commercial type query

which is related to making money. It could be directed to making money like, buy protein powder or tangentially related through an affiliate keyword like best protein powder. Now there's a common myth that comes up quite often. 

 

Because people see in the natural world that most websites will more intentionally and more leniently link to informational-type content pieces that you should only focus on your own link-building efforts on that informational content side of your website to make it look natural. 

 

Now, this is my friend is a big myth. Just because it's more common that links will naturally go to informational-type pieces doesn't mean it's impossible, and it doesn't mean you shouldn't focus on link building to your commercial-type pages. Sure, there are limits on how much you'll link to them, which we'll get into shortly. If you wanna rank a page, it's always better to link to it. One of these techniques would be the skyscraper outreach technique. 

 

Skyscraper outreach technique

With skyscraper outreach, you would create a big long piece of content that's the end-all-be-all on a particular informational type query, and then you do outreach for this piece of content, accumulating a bunch of links to it. From there, you would internally link to other pages on your site that would probably be your commercial pages. 

 

So they skirt around this limitation they put on themselves by getting the links to this informational piece, and then they internally link to their commercial content. Now I've run some single variable tests on the skyscraper technique. I created some tests, created a skyscraper post, sent links to it, and then monitored ranking increases or decreases on the commercial content page and the keywords that I've created for it. 

I found two interesting things. 

There was a long, long propagation delay to get the juice from that informational content piece to the commercial keywords, about two months, so a huge long delay. 

 

Second, the effect of those links was highly muted. You don't get full efficiency when it's filtered through another page. So again, if you want to rank most efficiently, link directly to the page.

The question is, how many links can you create to a money piece of content, to a commercial piece of content? There's an effect I coined called the black sheep effect.

 

 The Black Sheep effect

If you want to figure out the maximum number of links that you can send to a commercial piece of content, look on page one. A lot of the time, in SEO, the answer is already on page one. Look at who's ranking in the top five positions and see how many links each of these guys sent. 

 

Look and see who sent the most of them, and that's your ceiling. Never build more than 10. For example, if 10 was the maximum amount of links you saw in the top five rankers, never build more than 10. Or what do you do past that? Start sending links to any internally linking pages to this commercial piece of content, whether they're informational or commercial themselves. 

 

The next question I get a lot is, 

Should I be building links to my homepage?

My homepage isn't optimized for any keyword. Why would I build links to it if I don't want to rank anything on the homepage? The fact of the matter to look natural, any website will get a lot of links on its homepage, so if you're doing your own link building, you need to build some links to it. 

 

How much is the right amount? Typically, most natural websites will have about 40 to 60% of their backlinks going to their homepage. Stick in this range. You'll be fine. And of course, if you're outside the range, it's no big deal. There are outliers all the time. 

 

But if you want a general guideline, that's what I'd give you. One backlink type that's great and free for homepage links would be business citations. So going out and get your website listed in business directories, industry directories, even if you're an affiliate site, works like a charm.