Deep Linking your Web Pages to Improve SEO

Are pages of your website invisible to search engines?

Does your homepage rank highly but internal pages are virtually ignored by search robots?

Are older pages sitting there lonely on the back shelf of your website, attracting mould and collecting dust?

It has been said that Google works “on a budget”. If it spends too much time scouring your image-heavy, flash-funky home page, Google won’t have the energy left to scan the rest of your site.

Defining "Deep Link"

Deep-linking is the practice of peppering your website content with links back to other (often older) pages within your website. This way, both search engines scanning the site and people browsing your web space will maximise your website’s potential, not isolating their visit to the main pages but following links that lead all over the site. Having other websites link the pages that are harder to find or less promoted on your site are also deep-linking. Any links that lead to deeper-hidden, less viewed pages are deep-links.


The way that search engine robots work is that they index your site by what they deem to be the most relevant term after assessing your keywords and content. This could work in your favour when played in to wisely, or you could unassumingly be damaging your search results. For example, if you are a flower business and have the word “weddings” on your home page eight times, and “flowers” ten times, including in the meta tags and "alt" tags (on the images); during a visit to crawl the site, Google will quickly take the most logical approach based on the evidence and decide that this is a website about flowers for weddings and assign it to that category. Sure, the floral funeral pages were scanned as well but to Google, this appeared to have little relevance to the rest of the site.

Why Do I Need to Deep-Link?

You need to deep-link for your readers so that they are getting the most out of your website. Search engine algorithms reward deep linking, because it shows that your website contains relevant information to the user's search term..

You need to focus on deep linking if:
 • Your homepage has a good ranking but internal pages let you down
 • Many pages aren’t getting indexed at all
 • Your internal pages are optimized for competitive keywords

How Can I Deep-Link My Site?

A suggested guideline for suitable amounts of deep-linking is 2-3 links per page that lead readers further back in your site. A longer article could have more, but the average post, like this one or a little shorter, should stop at 3.

If I wanted to deep-link this article, I could mention the words "search engine optimisation" and link those words to our article on Search Engine Optimisaion which was published about six months ago but is still highly relevant (and one of our most commonly visited web pages). As I link to other articles on Search Engine Optimisaion within more pages across this website, Google perceives the site as an authority on Search Engine Optimisaion and will rank us higher for that term. It might not be as relevant a keyword for this website as “Do It Yourself Websites”, but the more visitors the better: I’m sure that’s your website’s motto, too. Deep-link the older, less visited pages, and you should see your website’s overall visitor statistics start to rise.

Don't Double-Up

If the Google robots discover duplicated content over different URL’s, it will waste the robots’ time trying to understand this and your site’s credibility will be lowered.

The pages of your website should be populated with frequently updated, keyword-rich unique content.

Extra for Experts:

PDFs are a huge time-drain for search engine robots. Have them as downloadable files, not taking up page space on your website.

Try to get more back-links from sites that are regularly crawled. You can do this by corresponding with other relevant web site owners and offering reciprocal linking.

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