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My first post here and I hope that you can help me out.
I have website with a couple of hundred incoming links and they are linking to me freely.
My website have about 20+ categories, each placed under the www.domain.com/categoryname. All categories are optimized for keywords for that category.
The incoming links are optimized for one category that I have on my site. However all links points to my root and not the category it self.
Now to my question:
Should my incoming links point to the category or to the main site? When I search on Google now then I see my main site first and the category link is placed a few pages back.
Personally I think I have made a misstake and it would be better if all links go to the correct category instead of the main site. Maybe I should add that the sites that is linking to me have the same subject as the category they should be linking to if I change.
Question 2:
My categories are now identfied as file without a specific filetype due to (mod_rewrite). Should I add an extra / (slash) at the end so it looks like a folder instead?
I'm really confuzed in this matter and Thanks for taking the time to read my post :)
You are correct in thinking that links to internal pages (called 'deeplinks') are valuable. They suggest to search engines that you have pages inside your site that other sites consider worthy of linking to. Sites that have most or all of their IBL's coming to the homepage are more likely to be spammy sites, speaking very generally.
Also, inbound links to internal pages boost the perceived importance of those internal pages in the SE algo's.
Eliz.
...you have control of the incoming links, and can change them at will to target what you like....
stapel: That is correct.
So these aren't genuine links from independent sites; it's more a matter of "cross-linking between the various sites and/or link-farms that I own"...?
I don't know how much good "tweaking" these links will do, if the search engines figure out what's going on. I mean, isn't this one of "the" things that will get you banned entirely from the rankings?
Or am I missing something...?
Thank you.
Eliz.
I have control of the links because I can make the webmasters to link to another location by sending them an email. It's not a link farm or anything like it so lets leave that out of discusion.
All I'm wondering if it is better for me if they are linking to the category than the main site.
I'm also wonder if it is better to have folder structure than file structre:
www.domain.com/category (file structure)
www.domain.com/category/ (folder structure)
I have website with a couple of hundred incoming links....
I didn't mean to offend you, but when you said that you control hundred of sites and their links and are wanting to tweak the cross-links on these hundreds of sites to optimize your ranking, that sounds (to me) like link-farming or some related activity.
But if these hundreds of sites of yours are legitimately related, then of course that would be a different situation entirely.
FredrikMH said:
I can make the webmasters to link to another location....
Unless you control these other sites, I don't see how you can "make" them do anything.
Eliz.
Let's stick to the situation and questions outlined by the original poster. He is assuming that he has some degree of control, regardless of how that occurs. ;-)
Also, inbound links to internal pages boost the perceived importance of those internal pages in the SE algo's.
This is true. Also note that you will not lose rank or position by linking to specific categories within your site.
For example, if an IBL refers to, "www.yoursite.com", that's good for your site, but doesn't tell the user anything about where to find, "a specific widget file, in a specific category, etc., etc.)
If, however, an IBL refers to, "www.yoursite.com/category/", it's not only good for your site, but also helps boost the perception of that particular page/category, and puts that categories keywords to good use.
If IBL's refer to specific categories, you won't lose rankings or position, since the link has to include your domain name.
