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Article by LinksManager.com Staff -
© 2006, Reproduction without permission prohibited. Why Deep Linking Equals Deeper Pockets
What exactly is deep linking and is it illegal, unethical, immoral, and a hazard to search engine rankings?
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C.org), which is responsible for establishing the protocols and standards necessary to maintain the Web's compatibility with all manner of operating systems, browsers and other applications, puts it this way: People engaged in delivering information or services via the World Wide Web typically speak in terms of "Web sites" which have "home pages" or "portal pages." Deep linking is the practice of publishing a hyperlink from a page on one site to a page "inside" another site, bypassing the "home" or "portal" page. To further clarify, the W3C has compared a website to a building with multiple doors. Most visitors will enter by the front door, but others might find it more convenient to use the back door, side door, basement door or, perhaps, an entrance from a parking garage. Which door is best depends solely on what part of the building they are going to and where they are coming from. Since the hyper linking technology responsible for knitting millions of servers - think of each as a spool of yarn - into the Web does not differentiate between homepage links and deep (sometimes known as "direct" links) webmasters have to go out of their way to hide, password protect, or otherwise secure pages they don't want directly accessed. While this seems simple in theory, it is quite complex in practice. Consider: You publish an online magazine and you want to make sure everyone who reads your publication has to view the paid ads on the homepage. If you secure the "inside" pages of the magazine with, for example, a password you make it impossible for other sites to deep link to a specific article. But you also make it impossible for people to access those articles from your home page without registering and getting the password - which many casual visitors are loathe to do. (Note: The above is a very simplified explanation and there are other workarounds to the problem, but they all involve compromises of one sort or another.)
Implementing deep links, as opposed to home page links, can contribute substantially to your site and adds little time and only one step to the link-acquisition process. When considering a linking partner -- either one you're thinking of approaching or one who has contacted you via LinkPartners.com or another source -- spend a few minutes browsing their site (something you should be doing anyway to ensure it is compatible with yours) looking for pages that are of particular interest to your visitors. When you find such a page, ask the prospective link partner whether it would be all right for you to link to that specific page rather than their home page. You might also suggest a specific page or pages on your site that would most useful for their customers. Expect to be pleasantly surprised at how often a request for a deep link is granted. There are several reasons for this, but the key reason deals with improving the site's conversion rate, i.e. increasing the number of site visitors who eventually buy something. Let's look at a simple example. You sell skis, ski boots, snowboards, snowmobile accessories, water skis, surfboards, sunglasses, instructional videos and dozens of related products. Your prospective link partner is an online sportswear entrepreneur. He sells Speedos and bikinis, parkas and fur hats, sweat suits and sunscreens, tank tops and running shorts … literally thousands of products. Studying this list, one thing is obvious.. your site visitors are likely to be interested in some, but not all, of what the prospective link partner is vending and vice versa. Can't potential buyers find their way to the products that interest them from a link to each site's homepage? Of course they can. But the questions isn't whether they can, but whether they will. And the answer, according to virtually every study done on the subject is that some of them will drill down through various page levels to find what they want and some won't. In fact, research by the Nielson Norman Group shows that 27 percent of failures to buy are caused by the shopper's inability or unwillingness to get from an e-commerce site's homepage to the correct product page.
As you know, one of the most important elements - some say the KEY element -- most current search-engine ranking programs look for in links is relevancy, the relation between the content on the linking site and the page it is linking too. Obviously, a link from a site that sells surfboards to the home page of a site that sells sportswear is a good link. A very good link, the product lines are related and relevant to each other. But a link from a site that sells surfboards directly to a page in the sportswear site that features bathing suits is an even better link. An exceptional link. An overwhelmingly relevant link. And there's another factor. Since Google and other search engines also reward content "freshness", when analyzing links, you might consider periodically changing your deep links. (But only when appropriate, ranking programs can detect random churning and some consider it an attempt at SE spamming.) In the above example, the links could be changed seasonally - your site to the sportswear vendor's parka and sweater page in the winter and to his Speedo and bikini page in the summer. What could be fresher and more relevant than that? Ethical, reciprocal deep linking. It's a great way to make a good link building campaign even better.
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