Nov 24 2008
SEO Advantages of Deep Linking
There are several different schools of thought when it comes to linking such as where should the link come from, where should it go and how many links is enough. I have been through each of these thoughts and have tried each method plus a few more. Over the past couple of years I have seen some pretty good success with my SEO efforts and have learned quite a bit about the effects of linking and have come to the following conclusion. Deep links are the best.
What do I mean by deep links you ask? A deep link is a link that comes to you from another site but does not point to your index page. But wait a minute…… don’t I want all of my links to point to my home page so people will find out what I am all about? Not necessarily. While links to your homepage are needed and do help people to find your site, wouldn’t you rather have someone refer a visitor via a text link directly to one of your site’s inner pages and provide that visitor with an immediate solution to what they seek?
Another advantage of having a deep link is the originators website will pass “link juice” to your inner page thus making it stronger in value which in turn will have a positive effect on you overall page strength.
Let me use the example of one of my websites which is a trucking industry website. TruckerHub.com is a directory style site that has links to almost every aspect of the trucking industry. While I would certainly like a lot of in-bound links point to my home page, it is advantageous to me to have a trucking website specialty site link directly to a page within my site dealing with that subject. For instance a specialty chrome shop could link directly to one of my inner pages that deal with chrome modification and customization for trucks. The visitor to that page obviously wants chrome related info and by landing on that subject page you save the new visitor time.
Deep linking also helps in your search returns as your inner pages start to show up in better positions for more precise searches such as “chrome plating for trucks”.
If I had my preference I would want 25% of my inbound links to hit my home page and the other 75% to go to inner pages for deep linking.
What are your thoughts on deep linking?
Also, usually inner pages are more targeted and thus fewer backlinks may be be needed to rank for that phrase.
Targeted pages tend to convert better, because in theory you are giving people what they want, chrome truck parts instead of just trucks.
However, it can be more difficult to get the links to the inner pages. Especially if your URL becomes too long.
What do you do to find good deep links? I would think Article Marketing could be good as you control the backlinks in the article.
Thanks for sharing this great post! Very helpful!