Where should inbound links point to? Main URL or subpage?

[michaelbs]

Hi guys,
I have searched through this forum and can't seem to find a thread about the best pointing place for inbound links.. Would you say the best place to have inbound links pointing to on my website is www.widgets.com or www.widgets.com/index.html or www.widgets.com/keyword.html...? Does this matter towards the SE's or not?
Thanks for any help!

Mike

[Chris_R]

point it to the correct page.

If I was linking to searchengine world - talking about searchengines - I would link to the index page.

If I was talking about google - I would link to the google forum.

Just do what is most natural.

[digitalghost]

That depends on what phrases you want to target and where those phrases reside. Often, the index page isn't the money page, especially if you have a splash page.

If your site is about widget1 and your index page is all about widget1 then having inbounds pointing at your index page is beneficial, especially if the inbound link has widget1 in the anchor text.

I prefer to keep the money pages close to the root, and like to have inbounds pointing at my main keyphrases. If you have all your inbounds pointing at your index page, then you have to decide how you want to transfer the PR (if you are considering Google) to your other pages. It's not a difficult task but requires some thought. I usually prune out contact pages, form pages, the privacy page, etc.

From your linking partner's point of view, clicking the link should take them to the page the link description text describes. In other words, if the anchor text says Buy Widget4's Here! and the link goes to your index page which is all about widget1's the surfer has to search, and is already upset because the link didn't land him at the destination.

[Slade]

I think they've covered most of it fairly well, I just wanted to mention one small item.

Links to your domain home page, I think, should reference one single page. Either 302 domain.com/ to domain.com/index.(preferredlanguage) or 302 domain.(preferredlanguage) to domain.com/

I just think it makes more since to have all the inbound links point to the same logical place...

Note: I'm not overriding any of the previous comments about linking to /widget.html, this is specifically for index/home links.

Just my opinion, comments requested.

[thunderpaste]

We deal in a niche market and find it difficult to get quality related link partners. We sometimes build special pages with content relating our products to similar niches, or build educational content and go after links from non-commercial sites.

We ask for links directly to this content and we keep the files at root level so they lend the most PageRank to our main index.