Dear Directory Owners, I have read that many directories are offering deep links submission these days. But the question remains, are deep links really as useful as it is? We all know that deep links are for seo purpose to rank better for your sub pages as well. But it is also known that the more outgoing links you have on a page, the lesser link value each link gets. But if you have only 1 outgoing link on the listing detail page, you get all the value that link can get instead of being divided in value. What are your thoughts on these guys?
A directory deep link is probably worth a little bit. Its benefit is probably diluted by a high number of other links in the same sub-category. I never hesitate to get a deep link when I can. One positive benefit is that I get to choose the anchor text, thereby telling the search engines the theme of the page on my site that the deep link is pointing to.
Deep links strengthen your sites profile in Google's eyes. If you've built your site to include a link from each inner page to upper pages (i.e. category page or home page) then the deep link will strengthen those pages too. What you want to try to accomplish with a deep link is getting more weight on your main keywords through links with your long tail words. For example, if your site is about pets then you want some links to your dog page with link text like "Why Dogs are Good Pets". This clarifies your theme of "pets" to google and also lets them know that you have info about dogs. The deep link will boost your home page and your dogs page.
deep links are a good way of getting exposure to your inner pages, a good way to do that is bookmarking, but if you can get it from directories too. ... nothing like it,... M.
Deep linking is basically getting back links to internal pages...absolutely worth it when it comes to SERPS long time...Like msolution said, if you can get it from some good directories, nothing like it!
Since we are on subject, I want to mention something that I have been observing for the last two months. Even though one of my directories have the deeplinks feature, I see that out of 10 submissions, only 2 or 3 submitters are actually utilising the feature. This has become more apparent as of late. Any reason why submitters are purposely ignoring the opportunity to add deeplinks to their listing?
I second what awin said above as well. I have noticed that the SEO firms who submit to my directories do not even bother using the deep links though it comes together without additional cost for them to submit. I believe deep links would only have a good amount of effect if the links are from a high valued directory like Yahoo, botw etc. From the general pr3-pr5 directories chances are deeplinks would not carry much weight in link value at all compared to the high end directories. And the end result might be the link submitter getting lesser link juice to their targeted page if they add deeplinks to their other pages. Though in the long run if they combine with other SEO methods the links to the inner pages will boost the SERPs power of the home page as well.
If you have all incoming links pointing to your homepage then it would possibly raise flags at Google that you are building links to manipulate the SERPs. For most sites, natural links would be pointing to the homepage as well as various internal pages.
I'd say there's 2 reasons. They may be submitting for a third party and not want to spend the extra time as there's no benefit for them as a contracted submitter. Also many people don't know what deeplinks are and so ignore them, it sounds a bit esoteric and maybe if they were just called 'other pages' or something it may help, as may an explanation on the submit page.
They do help until competition's not to strong. One of the articles at my website jumped seven spots after I posted some deep backlinks to various directories. It went from the bottom of page one at google to 4th place. So If you ask me, deep links do help, so I'll pay more attention to them in the future.
Normally site owners would pay SEO firms to submit to paid directories, I think it is quite rare to see site owners paying contracted submitter to submit to paid directories.
By 'contracted submitter' I was including some so-called SEO firms. If you read post #7 Meph addresses this.
i personally submit deep links quite often. It is much easier to get deep link pages ranked for targetted keywords than the index.php for the main keword