Why Deep Linking is better than Simple Reciprocal Linking

Deep Linking means linking to a specific page or image of a website instead of that site’s index or home page. On the contrary, reciprocal linking is done by exchanging links which are only pointing to the sites’ index or home page. Both links count to search engines most especially if the back link or referring link is coming from a relevant blog, post, or keyword. But what’s great about deep linking is that, when you have lots of it, it helps in your overall page rank which is reflected in your index page.

From how I understand it, besides the link popularity of your index page, search engines reward you for the incoming deep links to your site. It’s another way of showing them that your site has relevant content and not a spam site that’s why you’re getting all these deep links. Links pointing only to your index page can be viewed by search engine algorithms as a product of schemes meant to trick them; whereas deep links are less subject to that. Additionally, it doesn’t take that many links to get a specific deep page ranked as compared to the index page.

From what I noticed also, this blog of mine produces organic search engine traffic (search engine users) through my deep pages as compared to my front page. With this observation, I believe it’s a lot easier to build page rank for your blog through your deep pages as compared to your front page; because, to put it simply, I haven’t done any deep linking technique yet and I’m already getting visibility through my old posts, what more if I employ deep linking? I am not saying that you withdraw from promoting your site via the index page and shift to deep linking; but you should give both strategies equal importance. That way, your SEO strategy will have a more long-term and stronger effect.

And now the bulleted part!!! :) Here are the reasons why you should give more weight to deep linking as compared to simple generic linking to your homepage:

• It has the potential to rank your blog higher in search engines when partnered with other linking strategies as compared to linking to your home page alone.
• Your older posts will get more exposure, especially if they are really valuable content-wise and have good headlines or post titles.
• You’ll get more subscribers if they find your post really helpful. Just make sure that you’ll make follow-up posts on your most visited deep pages.
• If your front page quickly dropped from the ranking, your deep pages might still save your traffic since it is ranked differently, although there might be some minor effects.
• All your pages link back to your main page, so it’s just another jump before your visitors know what you’re recently up to and decide to participate.
• I said it earlier, but I won’t mind stating it again. If Google sees 1000 links to your homepage and 0 links to the rest of your site; it is very likely they will sense that something is amiss. You know, a black hat scheme maybe.

Now, how do you get deep links?

Basically, if your blog posts are well-written, good headlines, clear and well thought out content, etc, these deep links will just come in naturally. But take note that simply waiting isn’t going to guarantee how long you’ll have to wait or if it’s going to be seen at all. So you’ll have to actively promote and market your posts out there. Here are the easy ways I could think of for you to get your needed deep links:

1. Comment on a blog post similar to your post, place the link to your related post and state how it’s relevant or something to that effect. From here, just hope that the author of the blog can either add a link to your post in his post or on the following posts he’ll make, or perhaps the readers will decide to link to it if they find it equally or more interesting. Theoretically, though, it’s a deep link in itself except if the blog is using a no follow plug-in in the comment section.
2. Drop your deep page’s URL here (don’t spam please) if you think it can help in the conversation. The idea is similar to “leaving your comment” above.
3. Submit your post to social bookmarking sites and get one temporary deep-link, plus more permanent ones (if people rate your post well) and more traffic.
4. You can ask your fellow bloggers if you can swap deep-links, of course don’t expect many to respond positively.
5. Find online syndication services that will display an RSS feed as a web page. These will typically contain deep links to pages on to the originating website, which is a valuable source of backlinks.
6. Find blogs that let you contribute to its content even if it’s just summaries of your original post. Sign-up and write a summary or a teaser which will link to your intended post.
7. Submit your post to blog carnivals.
8. Guest blog and write an article that links to your old posts as references.
9. There are deep link directories around the net. Google it and try at your own risk.

And finally, here are some articles I’ve found which could help you to understand deep linking more. I have to admit that I’m fairly new to the concept so there might be some things about it that I barely or haven’t touched at all.

Deep Linking – Wikipedia
Deep Linking is Good Linking
Deep Linking Strategy for Content Sites
Deep Linking, Or Rethink Your Site Promotion Strategy
Increase Your Search Engine Rankings by Deep Linking (internal deep-linking)
Why You Should Deep-Link Your Blog (internal deep-linking)
Deep Links and the Power of Anchor Text!



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