Is the frontpage/deeplinking ratio of backlinks an important ranking factor?

[Braumueller]

Hi,

i am asking me since a while, if the relation of the amount of  frontpage backlinks divided through the amount of deeplinks pointing to a domain is an important ranking factor?

In this area, i am not so much looking in the total numbers of backlinks, but more at the number of  linking root domains.

Do you have explore the ratio of frontpage/deeplinking as ranking factor reqarding the 100% of external backlinks?

So for example, what do you consider better, asuming all root linking domains in theory are equal, for the SERP of the main keyword for which the frontpage is running on Google.

Case A

Frontpage = 80 Linking Domains
Subpages = 20 Linking Domains

80 / 20 = 4 / 1 (4 times more frontpage linking domains than deep linking domains to subpages)

Case B

Frontpage = 90 Linking Domains
Subpages = 10 Linking Domains

90 / 10 =  9 / 1 (9 times more frontpage linking domains than deep linking domains to subpages)

Case C

Frontpage = 95 Linking Domains
Subpages = 5 Linking Domains

95 / 5 = 19 / 1 (19 times more frontpage linking domains than deep linking domains to subpages)

Greetings from Hamburg,
http://www.suchmaschinen-experte.de

[StoresDirect]

I was looking at competitors to see why they were outperforming us in some areas. We convert  mostly from returning visitors who have either searched for variations of our brand or searched for a specific brand or product we sell. We rank well for those terms, but also need traffic from some high-volume competitive generic terms to bring customers into our conversion funnel. Our sites don't yet rank highly enough for some of these funnel-entry terms due to weaknesses in external link networks. I don't have time to replicate the quantity of links some of our competitors have, so am looking to beat them on quality instead.

[Braumueller]

Hi,

thanks, all what you are saying is perfectly right.

But if you looked in the past of your competition, if they have had a higher ratio of deep backlinks to home page backlinks than your site, and assuming they have had similar sources than you in this time, were their websites outperfoming you?

[StoresDirect]

I gave this some thought when I looked at our competition for some of our most important keywords - I noticed many of them seemed to have a high ratio of deep backlinks to home page backlinks. Rather than trying to work out the perfect ratio I had a think about the contexts in which home page links and deep links are natural. For example, a home page link from a reputable directory would usually be more natural than a deep link. Conversely, an editorial link coming from a blog about a specific product or product type would look more natural as a deep link to the most relevant page.

Taking this train of thought to the next station, a backlink profile of all directory links would look unnatural, but then again so might nothing but editorial links from blogs. I suspect the optimum "natural" link profile varies according to the field of interest and the function of the website. For example, you might expect the link profile of a reputable retail site to include a lot of relevant directories, consumer review sites and blogs & forums which talk about the products the site sells.

I know you're looking for more of a numbers-based answer, but I think this is an area where it makes sense to stand back and ask what sort of links you should be seeing if the site is any good. Then make it a priority to get those types of links with due consideration for the metrics.

[Braumueller]

Hi,

thanks, yes this logical and that is what i do also in my link building strategies.

But my point here is another. Besides for ranking the internal pages, i am observing the effect that a good amount of deep links helps the ranking terms of the frontpage.

What i mean, that if  you link 100% with SEO to homepage.com, the frontpage will be underperform with "SEO" as if you link 90% with SEO and 10% goes to internal pages with SEM homepage.com/sem, second keyword to homepage.com/second_keyword, etc.

I am wondering what relation is the best to have a "natural" link profile.

Greetings,

[gfiorelli1]

HI!

Honestly I never done an experiment to check out if there's a correlation between the ratio of "frontpage/deeppages" links...

But I think it should be logical.

If a site own many deep links, the overall domain metrics will be higher. More over, the redistribution of juice will be better, therefore your internal pages (the not directly linked ones) will have a higher opportunity to rank better than sites whose link juice flows just from the head to the bottom of the URL architecture.