Do You Believe in Deep Linking ?

[Webfu]

What do you think ?

Is it better to link to the homepage or go a little deeper and link into an internal page you want to boost?

[tork311]

I deep link and I do believe it does help, personally I do not think it looks natural having all your links going to just the home page. I also notice that the sub pages gain in page rank. My site for example has a homepage pr6 and serveral pr6 sub pages and according to sitemaps my highest ranking page in an internal one.
For me I offer several different services and I don't want to point all incomming links to my home page. The main service we offer is data center colocation, we also have an antispam service. When I promote the spam service I deep link to the spam service page not my homepage which has a main theme of colocation. I've also written some ecommerce content that picks up natural links.
When I link out from my blog I notice that I mostly link to sub pages.

[solidghost]

Some directories dont allow deep linking.So the only choice is the main domain.

[Webfu]

Yes, thats true... most directories don't allow for deep linking. It seems to be if all energy is pointed to your homepage then G will figure out the next most relevant page. Some times listing it second to the most relevant page about the same topic.

Is it better to link to the homepage or go a little deeper and link into an internal page you want to boost?

What do you think?

[Batch]

Having all the incoming links in the Home Page is not a good idea. Sometimes internal pages proved to be good conversion pages. Then it will be desirable to have that page as the main landing page. So gaining link for internal page is as important as gaining link for Home Page. Moreover PR for internal pages can boost up the PR value for Home page and the total site as a whole. As internal linking do help in PR distribution. Therefore an internal page having good PR value contribute to raise the PR value for the whole site. Strategic distribution of links will be a better linking process.

[DebbieV]

Deeplinks are wonderful. I like deeplink ratios of 40% and above.

[PuneetJvw]

Hello my friends,

I agree with some of the people above.

And why not because most of the times the important pages are inner pages and not the home page.

The directories which allow deep linking then do it otherwise prefer to link your homepage url only. The important thing is to make good links.


Regards/Puneet M.

[nigelaxis]

Deep linking also allows the link to arrive at a page with the same keywords as the link phrase / linking site / linking page. This improves the value of the link.

[Buskerdoo]

Some percentage of deep linking is good and looks more natural.

[HJMAX007]

In my experience deep linking is very good especially when you are just launching a site. It helps to nudge your sub pages in the SE rankings. In time there really isn't a need for it as your Index or Home page will pull all of your sub pages along in the SE rankings as long as you have good relevant links! Also, I have found it important how you link your internal sub pages.

Good Luck!

[justtupeu]

Just keep it natural. Don't bother with percentages like 40 %, etc.

[sponge06]

Just get the links to the most relevent page on your site. A simple way to do this is to look at the page title of the page you are getting the link from and then ask yourself what page on your site matches that the closest.

It is tempting to get all of your backlinks to your main page in the hope of getting a high PR, but from my experience this is not a good idea.

There is an article here on deep linking and how to calculate the ratio etc... : http://deanhunt.com/time-to-go-deep-linking/

[solidghost]

How about a homepage with just a few links ?
I mean, it makes it easier for search engine to go to the relevant pages.

[Kitchen Designer]

I love going deep.

A lot of my internal pages have a higher PR than my front door.

[WhatcomsFinest]

Originally Posted by Buskerdoo

Some percentage of deep linking is good and looks more natural.

That makes a lot of sense

[Webfu]

Originally Posted by solidghost

How about a homepage with just a few links ?
I mean, it makes it easier for search engine to go to the relevant pages.

Just putting a couple links on the homepage has always been a tough one for me. I have no proof but imo if you link to something off your homepage " going deep " - internally or outbound - it carries more weight for that page.

In other words putting a link on your homepage sends power to the page you link to. Compared to a page that is internal and doesn't have a link to it from the homepage, that page seems to me less important. Seems like the SE algos are thinking like this as well. Again, I have no proof on this - things just appear that way.

I see what you mean though by making it easier for a search engine with less pages, sometimes when a web design client wants a super clean and simple website with a minimal look/feel - Sometimes you totally have to minimize the links. Home, Contact, Sitemap. Give or take a link or two.

And btw.... I do believe in deep linking.

[CarrieH]

We deep link and we link to interior pages from the homepage - with good anchor text into those interior pages wherever possible - it MUST make sense to the visitor - make the text user friendly with some good text links. We've had good results from this.

[shogun_ro]

I'm allways link to home page of a website and let the search engines do their job.

[vangogh]

When getting backlinks you should look to get links to the most relevant page. So if the link mentions your shiny ne blue widget it should point to a page selling or about your shiny new blue widget.

Having all links point to your home page is unnatural though there really isn't any kind of % you should be looking for with deeper links. Just get them where appropriate. In all likliehood your home page will end up with the most links pointing to it.

When linking out just link to the most relevant page. If that happens to be the home page of the other site then link to that. If you're referencing a specific article on another site link to the article.

Think of the end user. Based on the anchor text in your link (both incoming and outgoing) where would they be expecting to go if they click on the link? Where they would expect to go is where the link should take them.

Think of real people first and search engines second.