Many businesses want to build backlinks to their home or service pages. From a business perspective, this makes sense. Those are what we at Page One Power call “money pages.” These pages generate revenue for your business, so it’s natural to want to build backlinks to those pages to create more visibility.
However, not every user who visits your website is ready to buy. Some people need to be nurtured. They need to be convinced that your business is the right one. How can they know this when their first introduction to your business is pricing and quotes?
We recommend building links to pages that have value to the user. These pages could include your home page or service page but also:
- Blog content
- Resource pages
- News pages
Building backlinks to top, middle, and bottom funnel pages creates a diverse, natural, balanced, full-funnel approach to increase high-intent search queries and qualified traffic. It all depends on the user's intent and where they are in the customer journey.
Why Are Top-Funnel Pages Important?
Top-funnel pages attract backlinks from a broader target audience, which are vital in improving search engine rankings and driving organic traffic. When other authoritative sites link to your content, it signals to search engines like Google that your page is valuable and relevant.
These pages naturally attract more visitors because they are shared and referenced across the web more than other content. Since they are relevant to a bigger audience, high-quality content that earns backlinks is more likely to be discovered by new audiences.
This increases direct traffic from relevant, interested audiences. It also diversifies your traffic sources, reducing reliance on just one channel (like organic search).
Topics relate to the reader's interest—not necessarily the business's. The overarching goal is to provide value to the searcher and, in return, strengthen their relationship with a company or product.
The goal is not to sell or advertise a product in top-funnel content—that’s what keyword content and product/service/category pages are for. The main goal in top-funnel content is to attract a large audience with high-level topics related to your business.
Characteristics of Top-Funnel Pages
At Page One Power, we call top-funnel pages “linkable” pages because they can easily attract backlinks. For SEO and content marketing purposes, ensuring a page is "linkable" can significantly boost its visibility and authority. Here are the key characteristics of a linkable page:
- High-quality, unique content
- Educational or informative
- Visual and interactive elements
- Well-researched and authoritative
- Broad appeal (but niche-specific)
- Solves a problem or offers a solution
- Evergreen content
- Comprehensive and in-depth
- Trustworthy and reliable
- Sharable and accessible
- Data-driven or resource-rich
- Clear structure and user experience
- Emotionally engaging or entertaining
- Trending or newsworthy
By focusing on these characteristics, a page becomes more likely to earn backlinks from other websites, which helps build its authority, SEO value, and organic traffic.
Why Are Mid and Bottom-Funnel Pages Important?
The mid and bottom funnel pages are the pages on your site that help users take more concrete steps toward becoming customers, like product information pages or service comparison pages. When other websites link to these pages, they’re essentially giving them a “boost,” making it easier for search engines (like Google) to find and understand them. This means more potential customers can discover these pages directly when looking for specific information closer to buying.
SEO aims to help your whole site get more visibility and attract more qualified visitors. Links to mid and bottom-funnel pages help spread that visibility across different parts of your site, not just the top-level pages. This diversified link profile tells search engines that the whole site is credible and valuable, not just a few key pages. This can lead to a steady, healthy increase in your site’s overall rankings.
How Do Backlinks Affect the Rest of Your Site?
Think of your website as a spider's web. Each page on your site is like a point where the threads come together, which we can call a node. Backlinks are like the threads that tie your web to other webs, connecting your content to the wider internet.
When a particular page (or node) on your website has several strong backlinks from other relevant websites, it acts like a strong thread anchoring that node. This added strength not only supports that specific page but also enhances the stability of your entire website. Think of it like a bridge — the more strong cables it has, the more stable it is.
In addition, if you link between your own pages (internal linking), it further distributes that strength. So, when a single page gains high-quality backlinks, it increases the overall stability and authority of your entire site. In essence, strong backlinks boost not just one page, but reinforce your whole web structure, making it more resilient and better positioned in search engine rankings.
In SEO terms, when a page gets authoritative backlinks, it boosts its visibility, but the benefits flow throughout the website. The search engines see the site as more credible, and this trust spreads across the site, helping other pages become more visible and stronger in the process.
Just like a spider's web becomes stronger when key threads are reinforced, backlinks to one page strengthen the entire website, increasing its ability to rank and perform well.
When Should You Build Links to Your Home Page or Service Pages?
While internal linking to deeper pages is typically more effective for targeted SEO purposes, there are valid reasons to focus on the home page or service pages. Here are examples of when you should build links to these types of pages:
- Brand Awareness: When aiming to increase brand recognition, home page backlinks can help establish authority and drive general awareness.
- Local SEO Initiatives: For businesses targeting local searches, backlinks to the home page or location-specific service pages can improve local visibility.
- Targeted Keyword Boost: Linking to relevant service pages can improve rankings when trying to rank for specific, high-intent keywords tied to services.
- Showcasing Core Competencies: Links to service pages highlight specific expertise, signaling to search engines and potential clients that the company is a trusted provider.
- Referral Traffic from Relevant Sources: When industry-relevant sites link to service pages, it can drive targeted traffic with a higher likelihood of conversion.
- Strengthening Site Architecture: Building links to primary pages helps distribute authority throughout the site, supporting SEO for other pages.
- Brand Partnerships or Media Mentions: When a company is mentioned in media or partnerships, linking to the home or service pages reinforces credibility.
Backlinks to these pages can drive both visibility and relevance, helping attract potential customers who are interested in the company’s main offerings.
A well-rounded approach to backlink building ultimately helps establish your brand as a trusted resource. This strategy leads to increased organic traffic, higher search engine rankings, and improved conversion rates. So, as you develop your link-building efforts, prioritize creating value for your readers, and let that commitment shine through in every piece of content. With patience and persistence, the results will follow, helping you achieve your business goals while providing genuine value to your audience.
