That’s not how SEO works. When someone searches a term in Google they display results that link to actual pages, for example an article page that is relevant for a particular search term, not links that just all go to your home page.
There are a lot of factors that go into SEO page ranking authority and a large one is having other credible sites link you your article pages. The more “external” pages that link to your article page the more it signals to Google that this is an important page for that topic. If your pages are hidden that can’t happen.
A web crawler is less likely to find pages that are not linked to anything else. A web crawler “crawls” by following links from one page to another.
The idea of articles helping SEO is that the article is easy for Google and users to find and then when users are on your article page they may navigate to other areas of your site. With enough good content on your site your “domain authority” increases and Google is more likely to send traffic your way.
There are “on page” factors that affect SEO rankings and “off page” factors. Both these things need to work together to achieve high rankings in search engine results. Understanding the way SEO rankings work is quite complex and not something that can be fully explained in a short forum post. I wrote a 100 page corporate SEO strategy for my firm to help stakeholders understand what actions are necessary to improve SEO rankings.
If you want to increase your SEO ranking I would recommend taking a video course to understand all the things that you can do to help. LinkedIn learning has a lot of great courses.
Here is a 10 hour course that will get you started 
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/paths/become-an-seo-expert