How to Prioritise Which Pages Get Links

Given a limited budget, most sites can’t build links to every page that could theoretically use them. The question is which pages to prioritise first, and the answer is rarely “the homepage” or “whichever page the founder likes best.” A simple scoring approach gets you to a defensible shortlist.

Start with rank position, not traffic

Pages sitting on page two of search results, roughly positions 11-20, are usually the best link-building candidates because they’re already relevant enough to rank somewhere, and a moderate authority boost is more likely to move them onto page one than it would move a page currently ranking fiftieth. Pull your current rankings and flag pages in that band before looking at anything else.

Layer in commercial value

Not every page worth a small ranking bump is worth link-building budget. Weight pages by how much they’re actually worth to the business — a product category page or a lead-generating guide outranks a page that gets traffic but doesn’t convert. https://successtoroad.com/blog/aligning-link-targets-with-conversion-pages/ goes deeper into this specific tension between rankable and valuable pages.

A simple scoring model

Factor	What to check
Current position	Is it in striking distance, roughly positions 5-20?
Search volume / intent	Does the term actually bring valuable visitors?
Commercial value	Does this page convert, generate leads or support revenue?
Competition	How link-heavy are the pages currently outranking it?
Existing link gap	How far behind competitors is this page on links?

Score pages against these factors and rank the list; the top handful become your priority set for the quarter or year. https://successtoroad.com/blog/link-gap-analysis-method/ gives a concrete way to fill in that last row rather than guessing.

Don’t ignore pages that support priority pages

A page ranking well because it’s well-linked internally from a strong hub page benefits indirectly from links to that hub. https://successtoroad.com/blog/internal-linking-to-distribute-earned-authority/ explains how to make sure a link earned for one page actually helps the pages around it, which can change how narrowly you need to target external link building.

Reassessing the list over time

Priority pages shift as rankings move and as the business changes what it sells or promotes. Revisit the list at least quarterly rather than fixing it once and building against a stale list all year — https://successtoroad.com/blog/quarterly-reviews/ covers this cadence directly, and it pairs naturally with https://successtoroad.com/blog/building-a-12-month-link-plan/ if you haven’t set one up yet.

When a page isn’t worth prioritising, even if it could rank

Some pages could technically be pushed higher with enough links but aren’t worth the spend — thin category pages with few products, seasonal pages with a short shelf life, or pages the business is planning to retire. Recognising this list is as useful as building the priority list, since it stops budget leaking to pages that won’t repay the investment.

Sourcing links once you know the targets

With a prioritised list in hand, the sourcing job becomes much more targeted: you’re looking for publishers whose audience and topic actually overlap with each specific page, not just generically relevant sites. https://successtoroad.com/marketplace/ lets you filter by niche so you can match publisher topic to page topic rather than placing links wherever happens to be available.

Common mistakes

• Prioritising the homepage by default, when it rarely needs the help most other pages do
• Spreading a small budget across too many pages so none of them move
• Ignoring pages just outside page one because they “already rank”
• Never revisiting the list once rankings change

Handling ties in the scoring model

It’s common for two or three pages to score similarly close once you’ve run them through a prioritisation model. In that situation, use a tie-breaker that reflects practical reality rather than agonising over marginal scoring differences — pick the page where you already have a relevant publisher relationship, or the one with a firmer business deadline attached to it. A scoring model narrows the decision; it doesn’t need to make it with false precision.

Revisiting pages you previously deprioritised

Keep a short list of pages that scored reasonably well but didn’t make the final cut, rather than discarding the analysis entirely. As budget frees up from a completed priority page or a deprioritised underperformer, this list gives you a ready next candidate instead of restarting the scoring exercise from scratch each time.

Communicating the shortlist to a wider team

Once the priority list is set, share the reasoning behind it with anyone who might otherwise push for a different page based on gut feeling — a sales lead who wants their favourite product pushed, or a founder attached to the page they wrote first. A short explanation of the scoring criteria tends to defuse these requests more effectively than simply asserting the list is final.

Where to go next

A short, scored, regularly revisited priority list beats an intuition-based one every time. Read https://successtoroad.com/blog/forecasting-link-needs-from-serp-competition/ next to estimate how much link building each priority page actually needs, and https://successtoroad.com/blog/ranking-plateaus/ if a page on your list has stopped moving despite investment.

Frequently asked questions