Deep Link Ratio – What is it? Why is it important? How do I calculate it?

By Scott

First, what is the “deep link ratio,” and why is it important?

The deep link ratio is the percentage of links to your site that go to internal pages, rather than just the homepage. It tells you how good of a job you’ve done at getting people to link to your internal pages.

It is important because it gives the search engines insight in to the value of your entire website, not just your homepage. Think about it – if your website has a lot of valuable resources and content, it would be likely that there would be many links leading deep inside your site, not just your homepage.

By having useful tools, content, resources, and more – you can encourage other sites to link deep within your website. Yes, a big part of search engine optimization is investing in making your site more useful – not just optimizing keywords. The more useful your site is, the more people will link to it, and the higher your rankings will be (all things equal).

Now, how do you calculate it?

To calculate your deep link ratio follow the instructions on by following the link below. Notice, I’m linking deep within their website, so that improves their deep link ratio:

The final percentage you calculate is the percent of links to your website that go to internal pages. Calculate that number every few months. Your goal is to have a good balance of links leading to your homepage, as compared to internal pages.

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