Deep Linking - SEO Tip Week 4
While linking is key to success in the SEO game, deep linking is what will set you apart from your competitors.
Be sure to acquire links to all your important pages, not just your home page. It looks odd to the search engines when they notice so many links all pointing to your home page - it isn’t natural. Besides you want visitors coming to the page that will most likely convert them from a visitor to a customer and usually the home page isn’t the best page to accomplish this.
You will have the added benefit of having two pages show in the rankings which always attracts more attention and aids your click through rates. Here is an example. Notice how Big Oak is the shown in the first two listings and the indented listing is more targeted on the search term “seo richmond”. Here is a screen shot in case the link no longer shows the same results.
Deep linking also alerts the search engines to the fact that you probably have good, targeted content if people are linking to your interior or sub-pages. It gives your site a vote of confidence to the search engines to have links pointing throughout your site. If all your links come to your home page it might give the impression your site has little value or its rankings are being inflated unnaturally.
While it is tempting to concentrate links to your home page, you will have many more visitors if you spread the links around. Linking to sub-pages will help those pages rank well, giving your visitors a better chance on finding what they were looking for with one click.
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2 Responses to “Deep Linking - SEO Tip Week 4”
By David Taboada on Jan 26, 2007 | Reply
I understand that Digg and the other social bookmarking services people use help with deep linking, so I assume this is becoming an important SEO issue.
So I would like to ask if you think these services will follow Wikipedia’s NOFOLLOW policy?
And also, if you know of research on the behaviour of social bookmarking?
By Shell on Jan 26, 2007 | Reply
David,
It would seem this is the next step. After all, the only people who would care about such a move are SEO companies. On the other hand “real” links are used to establish true popularity and Digg (and other social bookmarking) are a perfect indicator. It would be a shame if this happens.
Of course, most people won’t realize the nofollow was put into effect and still spam the Diggs of the world, just as I am sure wikopedia will continue to receive spam even though the nofollow is in effect.
If I were a betting man I would say this will happen this year and all social bookmarking sites will follow suit. Too bad, but it seems unethical SEO companies have coruppted another useful tool on the web.