It’s common for most people to send most of their traffic to the home page of their website – but is it smart? Maybe not. Most SEO companies know the importance of ‘deep linking‘, for example linking internal pages to other internal pages, getting other relevant sites to link to internal pages, etc. However, they also know the importance of more advanced deep linking tactics. If you notice that your bounce rate seems high, that visitors tend to leave after viewing only one page, or that they just don’t spend much time on your website, you’ll be interested to learn about advanced deep linking tactics, and why they’re effective.
Three reasons deep linking is essential in your overall SEO strategy
Creating deep links helps increase your website’s visibility, overall relevancy and authority. By linking to your internal pages, you can rank higher for more keyword phrases. There is just no way that you can optimize your home page for every keyword you want to rank for!
Deep linking helps improve visibility overall, because more of your pages get indexed.
Your website becomes more relevant, because you do have the ability to rank higher in the search engines for more keywords. Using anchor text to link from one page of your site to another which is keyword-rich helps search engine crawlers understand what keywords that page is based upon.
Your entire site becomes more of an “authority” site in Google’s eyes, rather than just your home page. Instead of your internal pages having no authority and your home page having a considerable amount, your entire website enjoys more authority.
So, what are some additional deep linking tactics you should be using?
Don’t assume that you must link to your home page in email signatures, blog comments, guest posts you write for relevant blogs, forums, articles written for syndication purposes, social networking sites, etc.
Rather than automatically linking to your home page in every signature, profile or bio, give it some thought. Which page of your website would be most relevant to those who might click through from your link? For example, sending people who have read your article to a page of your website that expands further on the topic of the article would likely be much more effective than sending them to your home page. This helps decrease your bounce rate, and increase the amount of time spent on your website.
Help your visitors find what they are looking for on your website by including a list of relevant articles at the bottom of the page, so that they can explore further. It’s now widely known that Google is focusing on user experience in ranking websites, so help your visitors have the best experience possible!
From now on, before automatically linking to your home page, consider what the reader wants. Deep linking tactics are good for the popularity of your website – and SEO success!
E.B.B. Interactive is an Atlanta and Honolulu-based SEO agency that can assist you with your business’ digital marketing needs. For more information, please call 877-323-0661 or drop us a line!
