Now that you’ve read my free 7 Steps to Complete Search Engine Domination report, you know how to get your home page ranked on Google for any number of desired keywords.
What about your inner pages though? Don’t they need to be ranked?
You bet.
Are there any secrets I can share on high search engine ranking for those pages?
Of course.
The secret is not so secret really (like most SEO-related topics): it comes down to internal deep linking.
What Is Deep Linking?
A quick definition from Wikipedia:
Deep linking… is making a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image on a website, instead of that website’s main or home page.
If it sounds simple, it’s because it is.
However, about 90% of websites don’t use proper internal deep linking structure.
As you know from my SEO report, links are the single most important factor for high search engine ranking optimization.
Not only must you get links with your keywords in the anchor text from other websites, but you should also link to other pages within your site through internal deep linking (using your main keywords as anchor text, of course).
Let’s talk about an example.
Deep Linking in Practice
Here’s a website with excellent internal deep linking structure:
http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com
The website is run by Michael Wong who happens to be a very good SEO expert. No wonder his deep linking is so good that I wanted to give his website as an example.
In his right column, Mike displays links to many of his internal pages, which also happen to be some of the keywords he optimized for.
When we scroll down, we see that he has reviews on several leaders in online marketing; names like:
- Perry Marshall
- Ken Evoy
- Yanik Silver
- Armand Morin
Let’s take a closer look at Armand Morin’s page.
No surprise here: Mike does a fabulous job with his on-page optimization, which we talked about in my SEO report.
His keyword is in the page title:
…and in his <H1> header tag (look it up by going to “View”=>”Page Source” in your browser):
Now, I am sure you remember me mentioning… once or twice… that on-page optimization is something that you SHOULD pay attention to, BUT, on its own, it’s not going to get you “there” in your search engine rankings.
It’s all about… that’s right: links, links, links.
Deep Linking Alone…
So using Market Samurai, let’s take a look at the incoming links to Mike’s Armand Morin’s page.
Here’s how easy it is to find all the backlinks and other juicy info about any site with Market Samurai:
- Plug in your keyword;
- Go to “SEO Competition” and press “Generate results“. The software will bring up the top 10 results for the keyword with all the nuts and bolts, including: PR, domain age, incoming links, referring domains (love this new feature), listings in directories, cache age, and more.
As I ran the report on “Armand Morin” as my keyword, I saw that Mike’s site was ranking #6.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
- Press the little down arrow by the website you are interested in and the pull-down menu will give you the option of running PR and Anchor Text reports on the incoming links – pretty cool.
(Click on the image to enlarge)
And here’s the lesson for us to learn:
All of the incoming links to this particular page come from within Mike’s website.
In other words, Mike is ranking on the first page of Google in position #6 for a money keyword (meaning, the searchers for this keyword are most likely searching for Armand Morin’s products and are ready to buy) purely by UTILIZING DEEP LINKING!
Of course, each link, whether it’s from your own website or an external website, counts as a “vote” for the page, and the more “votes” you have, the higher your search engine ranking will be.
Granted, Mike’s site is PR4 and one of the links comes from his home page. That’s the one that carries the most weight.
Ahh, the power of deep linking…
Research Option: even though MarketSamurai is one of the best tools in my internet marketing toolbox (feel free to get it through this affiliate link to get 35% off), I do understand that not everybody has access to it.
In this case, you can easily use Open Site Explore – won’t give you any bells and whistles on your competition, but at least you can get a good picture as to their incoming backlinks.
Deep Linking Marketing Takeaway
Now that you know the power behind deep linking, it would be a shame not to use it, right?
So next time you write a post around a keyword you’d like to rank for, follow these easy steps to give it the initial push:
Add:
- Find older related posts, link them to the new post, and make sure you ping the old posts if you are using any kind of “anti-pinging” plugin on your site.
Plus:
- Leave a few comments on CommentLuv sites, making sure that your new post is picked as your last post.
… and you are well on your way to get rankings for your chosen keywords!
Internal deep linking is entirely in your control, it’s easily done, and you should definitely do it for your own keywords on your site.
I bet you’ll be ahead of most of your competition just by doing that.
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{ 76 comments… read them below or add one }
Just as I think I finally understand linking , and SEO strategy, I can see I still have lots to learn ….oh dear !
Not sure whether to be depressed or grateful !
Great information- thanks Anna
I know what you mean, Barbara – there’s always something.
But then again, if everyone knew everything, you and I would be out of business. lol
Hi Ana,
Your site has me on a steep learning curve, thanks for that. I already did a fair amount of linking with the aim of increasing time on site and reducing bounce rate, but didn’t know about the SEO benefits.
You are very welcome, Mary – I am great at giving people more things to do for their businesses.
LOL, true, now I need to not get overwhelmed with all the things I could do to improve. Perhaps stop reading and start doing with just a few tips for now.
That would be a good first step!
Hi Ana,
I have a Silly Question !
(But Have to Clear it)
I mingle this Four : Internal Link,External Link,Back Link and Deep Link ! (Sounds Funny ?)
To me :
Internal Link : Those Link Of My site that shows in a page indicating other page of m site
External Link : Those Link that indicating my Sites from a Other Site
Back Link : Show the Anchor Text and some time just URL that directing my site
Deep Link : Confused !
Let me just give you quick definitions, Sayed:
Internal link – link between any pages within your site.
External link – link from your site to any other site or from any other site to your site.
Backlink – link from other site to your site.
Deep link – link that leads to your inner pages, not your home page.
Hope this helps.
Internal links are ANY links within your website that point to ANY pages within your site, including your home page, Sayed.
Deep links can be external (from other sites to your site) or internal (within your site), but they always leads to inner pages of your site and never to your home page, thus the word “deep”.
Did I make better sense now?
I just recently got on the deep linking wagon. Like Wayne Lambert mentioned, I have just started using SEO Smart Links. I have not been using it long enough to see a difference but based on what I learned from Ana in this article I should have to wait too long before I start seeing my site on Page 1.
Hi Ana,
Great article and I totally agree with how powerful internal linking is.
Do you go back and add internal links to new posts on your old posts?
I just love reading you content. It Rocks!!
Thank you for being a true servant
Jeff Faldalen
Jeff Faldalen invites you to read: Quick Way to Make Money – with No Money…Revolutionary Marketing System
Yes I do in some instances, where it would be beneficial.
Linking our article I believe have high value, especially with the right anchor text
Latief invites you to read: 10 Ways To Build Your Links
I checked Mike’s site just now, but haven’t seen the same page format. He had some changes right? Anyway, internal deep linking is indeed very helpful for a site owner/blogger for an instance… However, not actually all does this one because they are always after of linking building outside their site. It’s good to know that you’ve reminded us about this.
It seems like he changes his site every time I visit it, Maria. A mark of a great blogger.
Hi Ana, was fascinated to learn from your example that internal deep links appear to carry as much weight as external ones. All good news for the ‘new to the scene’ blogger. If you are a bit ‘clever’ it would appear to can vote yourself to page 1
Thanks for enlightening us
Mandy Swift invites you to read: Online Marketing Strategy vs Tactics: Three Steps To A Better “Video Marketing Strategy”
You’re welcome, Mandy. And yes, by working smart, you can make some inroads towards page 1.
Hi,
Another great article. I completely messed up my internal linking last month without realising and now I’m working on improving it. This article gives me much needed advice.
Best Regards
Andrew
Glad to be of help, Andrew. You’ll notice the difference.
Hi Ana,
I like your site. Also pleased to hear you are a Christian.
For me the big question is do I continue spending so much time on these SEO strategies or should I pay someone else to do them. It’s tricky because unless you are somewhat knowledgeable yourself then you never know whether the person you are employing is any good.
You hit the nail on the head, Chris – you need to know at least the basics of SEO to have a frame of reference.
Sure you can outsource it, but everyone I know charges a pretty penny for it – we are talking about thousands, not hundreds. Time vs money – which one is more precious?
Hi Lee,
I speculate that a link from a sidebar carries more weight in the eyes of Google since it would be a backlink from the domain rather than just a backlink from the page. The domain overall usually has a slightly higher authority than the average of its constituent pages.
That seems logical to me, but like Ana says, I wouldn’t dwell on that too much and just focus on building links to your pages from credible places and providing great content for humans. It’s the best way forward for the long run.
Hi Ana,
Yes, deep linking is an easy way to build backlinks and you have full control, unlike depending on other website owners and webmasters linking to you.
A great plugin for this is SEO Smart Links. The premium version is my preference but the free one is good enough if you’re a beginner. It automatically picks out keywords in your pages/posts and links them to other pages/posts.
I guess it is similar to MaxBlogPress Affiliate Ninja and Pretty Links Pro except it is designed more for internal link building.
Certainly great for SEO and for blog stickiness, which of course Google collects data about and gives credit for. Bounce rates and time spent on site are two factors Google sees as votes for content, so it would be a great idea to improve those metrics.
Thanks for sharing that with us, Wayne.
Deeplinking is definitely a great way to boost those factors and improve your ranking.
That’s why I don’t dwell too much on those things…
Only Google knows for sure; that’s why they are a multi-billion dollar business and I am not!
Ana, in reading your comments I had an epiphany: my little blog once had a PR7, which fell to PR5, 4 and now 3.
I began moving links to other blogs (i.e. blogroll) out of the sidebar back in the PR7 times. I had 4 seperately categorized blogrolls and moved the last one out (“My Daily Must Reads” just before the drop to PR3…
I’m asking you – could that be why PR has been dropping? (Everything else is good and incoming traffic is higher than ever, as well as links from some major bloggers and even a newspaper website)
Thanks!
Dave Lucas invites you to read: Free Money
Hard to tell for sure, as you can imagine, Dave, but if I had to guess, a few blogroll links wouldn’t have done it.
It’s more likely than not that Google reaccessed the way other blog are linking to yours, their authority, credibility, etc, your overall presence online – all the things that determine the authority of your domain and, in turn, determine your PR.
Hey Ana,
Another great post! I can attest that deep linking truly works wonders. My blog has been online since Nov 2010 and in the last google PR update my home page got a PR 3 and many of my internal pages got either PR 2 or 1. I believe that this is mainly due to a good internal linking structure using keywords as alt text and of course good On-Page SEO.
Which I have to say I learned from Ana.
Thanks Ana for all of the great info you share on a daily basis. It’s no wonder you have such a popular blog.
Ian
Ian Belanger invites you to read: How To Improve Your Page Rank In 8 Steps
You’re welcome, Ian.
Those deep links probably do factor greatly in your rankings.
Hi Ana,
I have to admit SEO still scares me – it’s always on my ‘to-do’ list to learn more about it and then do something about it. Having said that, this seems like some sensible advice that even I can follow.
I have just a couple of questions though, if I may…
1 – You say that links from a home page to articles carry a lot of weight. I have a plug-in on my site which puts links to articles in the sidebar on the homepage – does that count & help SEO in the same way as if I put links to the articles in the actual content / does stuff like this in the sidebar count as actual content (I hope you know what I mean by the question).
2 – On a similar note, for each post I have a ‘related links” plug-in which shows links to similar articles on my site. I was about to follow your advice and link an older article to one i just wrote (both being health articles related to diet) but then noticed that it was already listed in the related articles (chosen by the plugin) so didn’t bother changing anything.
Do these automatically generated links carry the same weight and therefore with these plug-ins I’m automatically following your deep-linking advice or it doesn’t work like that?
thanks,
Alan
Alan invites you to read: Is ‘sugar-free’ the key to sweetness without guilt?
Hi, Alan:
1. No, links in the sidebar don’t carry the same weight as in-content.
HOWEVER, if my homepage is PR4, I am of the opinion that it even a link from the sidebar will carry more weight than a link from a PR0 in-content page.
2. Those plugins are helpful and definitely produce some good deep linking, but it’s not as good as placing the link in-post. After all, those plugins are not considered to be “in-content” links.
Additionally, those plugins are never perfect and don’t always link the same posts you and I would be hand.
I personally don’t pay much attention to what’s down there and deep link my posts the way I feel I need to.
Hope this helps!
Hi Ana,
thanks for the rapid reply & for clarifying that (I just didn’t know and clearly have a lot to learn – I don’t even know what PR4 and PR0 mean yet).
I’m going to take your advice and try and as a matter of process manually add in some ‘in-content’ links now that I know they’re different, without making it too obviously a duplicate of what has been selected by the related posts plugin.
thanks again!!
Alan
Alan invites you to read: Realise that work is half of your life – so enjoy it!!
You’re welcome, Alan.
Ana,
Links, links and internal links!
Since purchasing ScribeSEO (quite a while ago now), I’ve been using the tool to go back through my ‘old’ posts to improve the SEO. At the same time I also link some of the old posts to newer posts. I use the insights plugin to help do that.
Takes time but I believe it’s worth the effort.
Andrew
Andrew invites you to read: 50 Thoughts On Creating The Best Blog Content…Ever!
It’s definitely worth the effort as I am sure you can see from your results now, Andrew.
Great article, Ana.
Many thanks for the E-book. I have much more reading, analysis and application to go through.
As far as the whole linking of internal pages(often much older posts) I had done this a while back with two particular articles(One new- one quite old) , updating the older article. The new article is in top spot, the older one is in second position. The keywords they rank for are not really that great traffic wise. though, it proved this method definitely works.
What you have said about pages, both in how they rank better(Posts as pages) and also the flexibility they provide, is very interesting.
Slightly off topic, I am using a custom Template whereby, I have removed many of the top menu bar tabs and will be putting pages in their place(Way too many menu tabs on some templates. Also, I noticed some Blogs(Sites) doing similar to what you have done by using pages for “Most Popular” or other descending sidebar links.
Market Samurai looks like a great tool. Oddly enough, I first heard about it before I started Blogging and went to the site to check it out.
Once I get my “Big Move” sorted out, I will be definitely shelling out some Mullah for a copy of Market Samurai(It will save plenty of time- less spinning my wheels).
As for the ” Big Move”? A move I am dreading(Heard some disaster stories about what occurred during the migration process) Yep! Moving from the Big B- over to the Self hosted Big W.
You’re most welcome, Daniel.
I also use Market Samurai and it is a great tool.
You’ll find the Big Move to be less daunting than you imagine. There are several great tutorials available too to help.
Ana,
seems to me that if we concern ourselves with quality content, including links to relevant topics, we can’t go wrong.
Great suggestions here, thank you.
Dan
That’s correct, Dan. Those are the basic musts of blogging. Thanks for stopping by.
Besides linking your posts to other internal pages or posts, getting links to your internal pages from other sites is helpful too. Commentluv enabled sites can help you accomplish this. Naturally we tend to link to our homepage or main page when getting backlinks, but it can be helpful to have them to other internal pages if you want to rank for other pages too.
Ray invites you to read: Google Pagerank Update July 18, 2011
That’s right. One of the many reasons why I love CommentLuv.
Great Article Anna,
I have seven hundred plus posts, which I also believe could be made into a lovely mesh on which Google’s Spider could crawl.
My idea is this… I want to choose 100 plus keywords that I rank highly for or would like to rank highly for and go back over my posts and cross-link them using these keywords in a relevant fashion?
Also since my site sevensentences.com is based on the number 7, I have seven posts on every page (homepage included). Would a good strategy be to make sure every page(of seven blogs) has a link(s) to another pages post. Does symmetrical linking help?
This question may not even make sense, but I am feeling to make a linking lattice to attract the spider?
What say you girl genius?
Geoff
Blogging and commenting in seven sentences
Geoffrey Talbot invites you to read: Quit and Flip your World
Yes, it’s a good idea to go back and interlink some of your posts, Geoff, just don’t go wild about it.
Your second part of the question: no, linking like that won’t do anything, other than interlink posts that are not related – not good any way you look at it.
Careful with that “deep linking” – I see a lot of blogs doing this, but those “deep links” contain too many DEAD links and/or {O BOY THAT POPUP IS SO ANNOYING! BEGONE WITH IT} er … Sorry, Ana….
And/or EXPIRED features and services. WHEN I encounter this, I let the blogger know right away (it makes me an “enemy” , even though I’m reallyt not)
I found it highly unlikely that your own internal links would be broken, Dave.
Additionally, with the Broken Links Checker plugin, most blogs that use it have virtually no such problem
It all comes down to the blogger…
I’ve just started trying this deeplinking thing and I can quite honestly say, it’s genius – it works great.
I love Market Samurai I must say .. I found it when a friend introduced me to the thirty day challenge, nothing else beats it that i’ve found yet.
Adam James invites you to read: 5 of the Best Ad Management Plugins for WordPress
Yes, it is. Both programs are pretty awesome.
Great article and I rebuilt my html site this spring so I am working on rebuilding traffic to my domain. You share some excellent traffic strategies and I am impressed with your Alexa page rank being 12,700 or so.
I like the idea of getting traffic inside of my domain. Will keep reading your articles and have a great week!
Thank you, Danielle. You have a great week too.
Ana, I love your info, your site, your help. Thanks for doing what you do! I remember a post on creating an RSS that updated links to ones own site. Do you still have a link for that. I misplaced it.
Are you talking about this post, Ellen?
http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/rss-feed-link-building/
Ana-
I read your email today, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. In fact, I just did this on several posts of mine that I linked together, and I added updated resource links to them, and every one of them is climbing up the rankings for the keywords they’re targeting. I think sometimes people assume a particular result without having the research on hand to back it up.
Jamie
Sometimes, it’s amazing how simple things like internal deep linking, which is entirely under our control, can make such a big difference, Jamie.
Glad you came by!
Deep linking truly works and accounts for why I was able to generate plenty of traffic to a new blog of mine that had just 15 posts.
There you go – great to hear it worked for you, Udegbunam.
Ana, does the first guy you mention use posts or pages in the topics he has listed on the right hand side of the page. I’m beginning to realize that the way one’s site is built, organized, put together—the structure of it—is important. I’m wondering whether my teaching site might be better served with pages than posts. Any thoughts are appreciated.
Paula Lee Bright invites you to read: What is a Think-Aloud and How Will It Help My Child?
You are bringing up a great topic for discussion, Paula – something I’ve been meaning to talk to my readers about.
In short, yes, you are absolutely right.
Your potential for higher rankings goes up significantly when you write a post around a keyword and publish it as a PAGE instead of a regular post.
That’s precisely what MIke did on his site and that’s what I do on my blog (take a look at the links under “Ana’s top picks” in the sidebar – they are all pages).
This was of organizing your site is called siloing and is great for SEO.
Thanks Ana and Paula,
I have been wondering if it would be worth it to have pages that link to my posts in certain categories. I mean it would be easier for my readers to find them right at the top but now I know it is good SEO practice so I may need to do it.
Paula, thanks for bringing that up!
~Allie
Allie | Ramblings of a WAHM invites you to read: Advanced Blogging for Newbie Bloggers
I wrote a blog post on the topic of blog structure that I will be publishing on August 3 – I’ll go into detail as to how I do it on my blog.
Ana, your post about deep linking is incredible. I’m still learning the whole backling process but starting to put it all together. Connecting with you and your work has truly been a great resource for me and my Internet Marketing. Thanks for putting out such great material.
You are very welcome, Michael.
I always do a lot of internal deep linking between posts. Even if you don’t care about the SEO value, you should care that it’s a great way to ensure that people who steal your content will be linking back to you.
Kristi Hines invites you to read: 4 Ways to Increase Your Traffic With StumbleUpon
Lol! That’s a good point, Kristi.
This is so true. I don’t know too many times that my content has been copied but the time it was, I got a bunch of links because of all the deep internal linking.
Great you pointed that out
Scott Webb invites you to read: Toronto Engagement Photography Teaser and 41 Degrees Celsius
Free external deep linking is great, although I am not sure it helps that much when it comes from scraping sites, Scott.
Yep, this is very good for reducing bounce rate as well.
Dave Doolin invites you to read: Content Strategy for Small Business Bloggers (part 1)
How about deep linking via sitemaps (paginated)? Does that help similar to the ones on either the index page or via the sidebar (site-wide)?
A sitemap link alone won’t get you far, Daniel; however, a sitemap IS the perfect place for all your pages to be discovered and crawled. It’s not a bad idea to make sure SE spiders find it easily.
Deeplinking is something that I try to remember to do each time I publish a post. I do have a plugin that automatically inserts links to related posts, so if I forget to include a link, some are automatically generated for me.
I never know how much of an impact deeplinking can have on a page.
Paul Salmon invites you to read: How Do You Measure Your Blog’s Success?
It can have an incredible impact. While plugins are great, it’s good to just have a good read through your posts to ensure you have everything linked up.
Great post Ana,
I never really understood deep linking before – but I do now !
David
David invites you to read: Tracking, Analytics Code and Split Testing – what do you want to know?
You’re welcome, David.
Hi Ana,
great stuff on deep linking. What I learn from you on a daily basis is nothing short of amazing.
I also like Leo’s point that contextual links are stronger than non-contextual ones. And AJ is right too: A good contextual linking strategy will most likely keep people longer on a website.
Thanks for sharing your insights.
Take care
Oliver
Oliver Tausend invites you to read: MLM Success With Think And Grow Rich And Oliver Tausend Pt. 12
Thanks, Oliver. Yes, AJ & Leo are right on target.
I think it’s also worth mentioning that another very important factor is deep linking within your posts is that it can greatly increase your pageviews and “time on site” values for your blog. People reading through your post are going to be likely to click these links in the most much more then they will be to go back to the homepage or a category and click on another post to read.
AJ invites you to read: Giveaway – 17 Premium WordPress Themes by Themify
Yes, that’s one of the greatest benefits of deep-linking.