I am planning on using separate pages to rank for specific terms than having a main index page that targets many different products. Am I more likely to rank better with separate pages for each product than pointing links with anchor text for many different products at one main index page?
If you optimize a single page well for 1 or 2 key phrases and have links going to it, then your chances of ranking for it increase because the page is more focused and targeted. It is difficult for a single page trying to target many different key phrases to out rank a single page targeted to only 1 or 2 key phrases.
You are in a right path. Search engines, especially google give rank to every pages, so its better to target a single product through a single page.
You can also build links to your main index pages with many different products first before you build links to your specific pages with single product. In this way, you can get the full weight value of the links the your are going to build for your pages.
Exactly. Target each individual page with the right anchor text with the keyword. It will help a lot if you have very good on-page SEO factors, I actually give buyers of my Best Backlinks Ever system a WordPress plugin to get the "perfect" on page score. I've seen my rankings jump from nowhere to the first page with this plugin WITHOUT building any links to the site. Then building links the sites makes it way easier to push to the #1 position.
for each pages you have to optimize them seperately. each page's URL, targeted keywords are different so the SEO have to be different too. thanks
It is a great idea to optimize individual pages. Remember to focus on onsite SEO - get your search term in your URL (site.com/search-phrase-here.html), focus your content on that page around your search term, be sure to change your meta title and description in your header. Then you also want to focus your offsite SEO - your anchor text with your backlinks should focus on your search term, also try to build backlinks from pages on the same/a similar niche. Doing both of these will allow you to rank each page on your site for the unique keywords/keyphrase you're targeting.