[martynrlee]

Hi Guys,

Just wondering if anyone can shed some light on the topic of link destinations.

Basically, I have a main website homepage that I want to place high in Google (who doesnt!) . I also develop lots of mini-sites - single page sites for our clients that we host on the same domain.

We are getting increasing number of links to the mini-sites / single pages but not as many to our homepage.

What effect will this have on our homepage ranking? Will there be any increase in ranking because the mini-sites are only a folder away from the root /www /homepage for the domain?

Does anyone have any suggestions for best seo practice in this scenario?

All help / ideas / thoughts most appreciated!

[andyf]

Links from such sites will not be helpful in SEO terms
Try to get links from other relevant sites with your keywords.

[martynrlee]

Andy, thanks for your response, however I think you may have misunderstood me. The links we are getting are from credible sources containing our keywords however:

We are getting more of these to pages contained on our domain but a folder away from the root directory. for example:

ourwebpage.co.uk / clientpage / index.html

I was under the impression that backlinks to my whole domain may be important wherever the link location. I basically want our homepage to be higher in google than the web pages from the example link above.

I simply can't have everybody linking to our homepage when we need to direct people to these more specific parts of the site. However I don't want to lose the ranking of the homepage by directing people to another area of the site?

What do you guys do? Any advice?

Hope this makes sense, please let me know any thoughts on this topic...

[cjgraphix]

You say that you want your home page to be higher in google, but don't really specify what for. If people search for 'x', and a micro site is all about 'x' then it would be better for them to go to the minisite than your home page.

You just need to make sure that each page, home page or microsite is optimized properly for there relevant search terms. And any links coming into those pages use proper terms in the text link.

[loxyattappy]

Nice!!!

[SEO Freelancer]

Minisites sometimes can harm your SEO because if their content is not relevant to your home page,google will read it as spam and ban your site so be careful when developing mini sites and linking them together. The best way to get links for your home page is to get them from authority sites which are highly related to your website's business relevance.

http://bostonseofreelancer.blogspot.com/

[martynrlee]

Hi Guys,

I appreciated your responses on this topic... perhaps it will help if I post my address and example of a mini-site:

My homepage that I want to increase position in google (receiving a few backlinks):

revolutionviewing.co.uk

An example of a mini-site / single page that I host on our domain a couple of folders away from root :

revolutionviewing.co.uk/morgans/57centaurhouse/

Another example:

revolutionviewing.co.uk/devizes/

The mini-sites are developing an increasing number of backlinks now perhaps more than our homepage, but you can see why we want our homepage to be higher in google.

Should we be hosting our mini-sites on other web-domains and linking to our homepage? Any suggestions?

I thought we might gain homepage ranking value from having backlinks to these mini-sites because of their proximity to our homepage?

[weldo]

who is linking to the minisites and why ?

i'm guessing that those links are coming from other sites which have an interest in the featured service or product - i.e apartments or yachts, rather than a specific interest in virtual tour software ... ??

that might be your problem.

your clients might just be more active in search marketing than you - or belong to a larger industry with greater opportunities ??

unless search engines can easily crawl your site and see the relationship between your home page and all the links it will not be able to see it a single piece.

[martynrlee]

Thanks for your response Weldo,

who is linking to the minisites and why?

Say for example we host a university or college virtual tour on our domain at revolutionviewing.co.uk/universityname - the people linking to the site will be the university themselves and other educational institutions or people involved in photography or interactivity in immersive environments. All good quality links and relevant to our business - virtual tours of varying environments.

i'm guessing that those links are coming from other sites which have an interest in the featured service or product - i.e apartments or yachts, rather than a specific interest in virtual tour software ... ??

We are not selling the virtual tour software, we take the photos and create the virtual tours. We then host the showcase virtual tours for our clients on our domain. The backlinks are from different locations / reasons for linking to us - I have tried to explain this in the last answer.

your clients might just be more active in search marketing than you - or belong to a larger industry with greater opportunities ??

We are developing the mini-sites and helping to generate interest / backlinks to these pages as they showcase our virtual tours.

unless search engines can easily crawl your site and see the relationship between your home page and all the links it will not be able to see it a single piece.

This is interesting...could you elaborate on this? I understand that search engines crawl etc but perhaps you could shed some light on the best way to make it seem like a 'single piece' - through correct internal linking / site structure?

All help/thoughts most appreciated.

[weldo]

i'm not sure i get it ...??

you're miffed because pages on your site other than you homepage are getting more backlinks than your homepage ?

maybe its just because your home page doesn't really work like a homepage in itself ??

its a mix of spiel, faqs, marketing messages, flash content, diary etc ...

you could try to shorten it for a start - keeping only the content that you'd expect to find on a homepage - structured traditionally with good links to all appropriate sections (including title tags) utilising your relevant keywords ...

try to condense things - Google may only read the first few hundred words on a site - that may be why it is able to rank your microsites higher ?? cos it can assess all the content .. wheras your homepage rambles in all directions ..

that's just my thoughts ...

[martynrlee]

yeah - I think we are getting a little cross-wired here....

I am happy with the homepage. It serves its purpose, its a little bulky I agree but a result of client feedback mainly.

I am not miffed about anything. I am just wondering whether because I have started to host quite a few pages on my domain 1 folder away from root that are generating good backlinks if this is going to have a positive or negative effect on my homepage ranking.

The homepage is at the top of the site hierarchy and currently places higher than the other pages on our domain for our main keywords/phrases. I am happy with this, just wondering if I perhaps should create more links from say homepage -> mini-sites or mini-sites-> homepage or both or none (and host mini-sites on a separate domain) ?

I suppose I am talking about best practice for site structure. Other sites I have created have been easier to optimise as I would generally direct backlinks to the homepage of the site. This is not the case here and just wondered how it will affect seo....

Hope this helps to explain the scenario a little further and not perpetuate any existing confusion. I am appreciative of all your help / thoughts on this.