I have pages within my site I'd like to see get better visibility in the search engine results pages. Based on those page descriptions, keywording and tags, would it be wise to put keyword hyperlinks to those pages directly on my home / index page?
Yep, is called a silo. You can do it few different ways, check this example pic: You can link to your biggest/most competitive pages from homepage than from them link to other similar lower competition pages thus allowing link juice to flow through your site from homepage down to lower competition pages. Than from the bottom link back to homepage to trap the link juice flow on your site.
Wow! I always wondered if this had potential....I mean for Wordpress - which is the new platform I've rebuilt my site with (always thought WP did all the hard SEO work, and NO it does not!). I think I see clearly what you mean....your graphic helped. I have about 50 separate pages devoted to specific image catalogs within my site. If you go to my link menu at very top of page (in my signature below), you notice on far right "cartoon catalog"....click that. It will show a drop down of all the inner pages I want to create a silo for. Some of my inner pages already rank well for chosen keyword search terms . . . so I assume I pick the "weakest" first and then start my "inner silo"?
Or, what if I create a hypertext keyword list of links and put them in that upper left widget where I have that square adsense code? I could then replace that missing adsense code with a small banner at top of introductory text (below my daily image)
I think I have the silo structure figured out if you take time to visit here. If you visit that drop down list in the menu on page in my signature, I only used a handful of pages as examples but there are roughly 50 inner pages I'd like to silo. My question is if I can hyperlink all with the keyword "cartoons" from page to page? I could re-edit that intro text on my index page somewhere....but after studying the silo technique, it looks relatively simple yet has so much powerful potential (I wasn't aware) . . . just want to get that keyword text link verified if it would be good to use or not. This is what my entire site pertains to so figured it would be ideal.
Just so you know, drop down menus are fatal for silo sites Themezoom.com have done extensive testing and tell everyone to never put a drop down menu on a silo site
What if I disable / delete that drop-down and add silo/hyper links on index page (in my signature below)?
My preferred option is always the same - normal sidebar links Alternatively, you can use menus that look "normal", but are invisible to the search engine bots - java or iframe - but they're more difficult to create
See the left sidebar on my homepage (in my signature below) that says: "Cartoons Are Great For" and could I put them in one of those? Maybe placing it in top left where that Google ad currently appears?
Yes, top left Maybe under the Google ad if it gets a lot of clicks I'd also install a plugin such as "no category base" in order to get rid of /category/ in the Cartoon Catalog URLs
"no category base" . . . am now curious as to whether or not that text (category) currently affects the page's SEO as I now have them? THANKS for this info