Home Page to Deep Link Ratio for Link Building

by Brett Harper

I read a weblog publish that, in my opinion, presented a bad hyperlink-building recommendation. The article changed into about using links to the house web page. I believe it’s crucial to be aware of how many links are going to the home page.

Nobody can recognize for sure if there’s an optimal domestic web page to deep hyperlink ratio. Google doesn’t publicize that kind of data. So the thoughts contained in this article should be circumspect in their conclusions.

Up to 50% links to Home Page a Bad Thing?

The blogger cautioned that a great 30% to 50% of domestic web page hyperlinks changed into sensible. Neither the 30% nor 50% domestic web page link goals are justified with the aid of any observations or study. Those probabilities reflect his desires as a response to the problem of encouraging natural hyperlinks to product pages.

Link Building

The SEO blogger additionally stated their (unsubstantiated) opinion that it is a commonplace for websites to hyperlink to the home pages of other sites. An excess of home page links has been stated to be a statistical exceptional of creating unnatural links. For example, a look at from 2006 entitled, “Link-Based Characterization and Detection of Web Spam,” the writer states that a statistical study of inbound linking patterns located sites with in-hyperlinks predominantly to the house web page tended to be unsolicited mail.

According to that research, non-spam websites tend to have more links to inner pages than home web pages. See segment three of the study (PDF). Several years ago, I commenced using search engine marketing tools to sample a spread of search queries throughout various niches to discover their domestic page to deep hyperlink ratios, and feature continued to screen linking patterns. Many tools offer the house web page to deep-link metric.

What I discovered changed into that the one-way link ratio of websites that ranked within the top ten of Google’s SERPs tended to characteristic extra deep links than domestic web page links. But that wasn’t real throughout the board.

1. For queries with a geographic factor, pinnacle ranked websites tended to gather a better ratio of hyperlinks to the house page. This makes experience due to the fact the house page may be the answer to neighborhood-based queries.

2. Corporate pages Some corporate pages are dry and don’t function hyperlink-worthy content at the inner pages.

3. Competitive Topics It could be that a lack of sites that might naturally hyperlink to internal pages is rare. For instance, what blogger or internet writer would enthusiastically hyperlink to a PayDay loan or playing an internet site?
Deep Link to Home Page Ratios

Will Too Many Home Page Links Affect Your Rankings? I found that pinnacle-ranked online retail websites tended to have a higher ratio of deep links to home web page hyperlinks. Some sites like gas station manufacturers tended to have greater links to the house page. That may mirror a natural linking pattern.

I don’t suppose Google uses deep hyperlinks to home web page ratios to decide if a site is spammy. Many Fortune 500 websites have extra home page links than internal web page hyperlinks. Clearly, the house web page to deep-link signal by itself cannot predict the spamminess of a website.

I agree that publicizing inner pages to earn hyperlinks is higher than driving links to the home page and hoping that enough PageRank will trickle down to the crucial product pages. A link is a vote. It tells Google that a page is critical.

So it makes the experience that a natural and applicable link to a product page is better than a hyperlink to the home web page. That’s why I consider, based totally on my enjoyment, that encouraging links to the pages you need to rank is a higher method than encouraging links to the house web page.

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