I have been doing SEO for a website in a relatively non-competitive niche. The major link source has been free directories. Obviously the homepage of the website has all the major links. Now for a particular keyword (service related) the homepage of the website ranks instead of the inner page which specifically deals with that service. Now my dilemma is whether I should build links with keyword rich anchor text to this inner page or to the homepage. Because the homepage is already ranking on the second page of Google SERPs. So should I concentrate on homepage or should I focus on more relevant inner page. Please advice. Thank you. Pritam Barhate
Try to build backlinks on your inner pages as it will help to improve your rankings for the home page. By building backlinks to your inner pages it also look more natural.
Promoting inner pages is a way to diversify your ways to to bring more people to your website, long term. Still, if you have a unique webpage that your HP is better ranked for, you can always add a better noticed links from your HP to that inner webpage. that way, you'll inhance the number of visitors to that page, and it'll help it's rankings (again - long term...)
From my experience, if your homepage has strength already, then it's a lot easier to optimise it than the inner page. So I guess it depends on how competitive the keyword is. I like to rank my inner pages for less competitive keywords and use my homepage to rank for the keywords that are more difficult but bring more visitors to the site.
I agree its best to first optimize your homepage (like you have) and then work on your inner pages. Its probably worth using blog commenting on high PR pages for this - some directories will let you use inner pages but many won't. If you have a blog, sign up for comment luv and you can link to your last blog post from many sites.