14 replies to this topic

[eclipse]

First read this: http://www.seobook.c...es/001470.shtml

Ror my industry top20 sites have 20%+ deep link ratio. Top10 sites have DLR (deep link ratio) 40% - 70%. My site has only 7% DLR and i'm stuck at 50-120 position. What is Your DLR and your position ?

[bwelford]

I'm not sure about all this, eclipse. My website's Deep Link Ratio calculated out to be 2,840/48,800 or 5.8%.

I have some very competitive keywords where the search performance is middling but in general, particularly with Google, the website performs extremely well. I don't do particularly well with Yahoo! or MSN. Does this DLR concept work better for them perhaps?

[randfish]

#1 avatarfinancial.com - 13,700/15,800 - 13.4%
#2 seomoz.org - 6,060/27,500 - 78%
#3 XXX - 2,370/2,750 - 13.9%

Yet, of these sites, #1 is ranking best for its respective keywords... Deep linking is important, but for some sites, it's not the end all. There are a lot of smaller websites (company "presence" type sites) where the majority of links, both natural and built, are going to come in to the homepage...

[EGOL]

My favorite site has about 60% deep links. Of the thousands of links going into this site all of them are natural except for about a dozen. When the site was a lot smaller most of the new links were deep links because the webmasters linking were connecting to a specific resource on the site. However, as the site has grown and there are now many linkable resources on the site, most of the new links are going to the homepage. No complaints, I'll take any free links, but that is the trend that I see.

[eclipse]

Don't You think it looks more natural, when site has links to deep content, not only home page ?. I have a site in very competetive industry stucked at #40 and i can't get it to move up . The only diference is the deep links ration. Top20 has 20% or more links to deep content.

[IrishWonder]

Well like Aaron says in that post, it depends on the industry and there's no particular figure that would make sure you become #1 for your keyword. On the otehr hand, if in some particular industry the DLR tends to be gnerally low - nothing to be surprised abotu if yours is low and you're ranking well. But to me, it makes a lot of sense in the light of Google's dislike for link exchange - those doing link exchange normally get links to their home page - thus this does show whether the links are natural or not so natural.

[earlpearl]

My DL ratio is about 28%. Checked one competitor at 30%. My rankings for most terms are first page.

Of interest. Spammy bls are now the majority to my site and to competitors sites.

So the numerical dl ratio is a function of spam sites scraping content from wherever. If I put up lots more internal page content I'll get lots more dls.

Do they really count?

Where I've made a concerted effort to get internal bls with anchor text I'll often see 2 consecutive pages ranked in the serps...the internal page and the tld next to one another.

That brings up an additional question. Had I purposely driven the bls that are themed and w/anchor text to the home page would I have a higher ranking?

Don't know. Either way though the double entries in G help as it gives me more 1st page real estate.

Dave

[IrishWonder]

That brings up an additional question.  Had I purposely driven the bls that are themed and w/anchor text to the home page would I have a higher ranking?

Not necessarily. Links per se are only part of the picture - then you have their age, quality, etc etc

[earlpearl]

All true irishwonder. It was more a rhetorical question.

But getting back to the deep link % issue. One element is clearly the volume of spam bls versus real bls either targeted by the webmaster or earned through content, as link bait, etc.

Makes me think that the actual dl % number needs 2 levels of analysis. One level is the overall percentage...but there could be a more telling value to this if you could evaluate the meaningful links...and ascertain the dl ratio for just them.

Dave

[IrishWonder]

Makes me think that the actual dl % number needs 2 levels of analysis.  One level is the overall percentage...but there could be a more telling value to this if you could evaluate the meaningful links...and ascertain the dl ratio for just them.

I'm guessing that Google does it anyway - not all your links have the same value for G.

On the other hand, think of this hypothetical situation: you employ link building techniques frowned at by Google but instead of building links to just your index page you build them to the index page AND one more page that's somewhere deep within your site - theoretically, this also qualifies as deep links doesn't it? However, since say 50% of your incoming links pojnt at your home page and 50% point at just one more page - it shouldn't be that difficult for G to figure out something wrong is going on here. That's in theory - but I wonder how it really works? Do they take the variety of deep pages the lins are pointing at into consideration?

[rossio]

Hi

Sorry to bring this one back up - I just found Jim Boykins DLR tool and have found that the majority of pages in the top 10 also ranking for my desired keyword all have a DLR of about 70-80% - mine is 18% (the average is 60% but I think I am dragging them down!).

I am thinking it might be a good idea to try and align myself more to the rest of my industry as my site probably sticks out like a sore thumb in terms of the way our links have been built (some naive shady/amateur SEO in the beginning) in comparison to our competitors who are all squeaky clean (dont know what SEO is).

Would this be a wise thing to do? I'm thinking that we might be semi-raising a flag or two....

[IrishWonder]

Yes that's generally how the DLR should be applied - compere yours to your industry. However, if you follow the route of adding deep links make sure you don't do it in a rush but follow your natural link growth pattern more or less - otherwise THAT alone might raise a flag.

[rossio]

cheers irishwonder

thats pretty much what i was thinking. I have pretty much halted almost all reciprocals (in the automated, non valuable sense) so any new links are going to be natural or good value reciprocals and these will be the ones that are to specific resources/products. i think it would be impossible to gain these too fast.

should be slow enough not to raise a flag and fast enough to be worthwhile!

cheers again
ross

[incrediblehelp]

On the other hand, think of this hypothetical situation: you employ link building techniques frowned at by Google but instead of building links to just your index page you build them to the index page AND one more page that's somewhere deep within your site - theoretically, this also qualifies as deep links doesn't it? However, since say 50% of your incoming links pojnt at your home page and 50% point at just one more page - it shouldn't be that difficult for G to figure out something wrong is going on here. That's in theory - but I wonder how it really works? Do they take the variety of deep pages the lins are pointing at into consideration?

Exactly Irish. A deep linking ratio like this can be greatly skewed by your own link building attempts with minsites and such.

[FP_Guy]

#1 avatarfinancial.com - 13,700/15,800 - 13.4%
#2 seomoz.org - 6,060/27,500 - 78%
#3 XXX - 2,370/2,750 - 13.9%

With results like these how can you tell if you push for links to the home page or links to the internal pages?

It seems to me that if you optimize a site and everything else is equal THEN look at the ratio to see if you can improve your ranking through that. But if I were to get results like quoted above, which would be the best to do?