Date First Published: 21st January 2023
Topic: Web Design & Development
Subtopic: SEO
Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions
Difficulty: MediumDifficulty Level: 5/10
Learn more about what deep link ratio is in this article.
Deep link ratio is the percentage of backlinks pointing to a specific page on a website (e.g. https://example.com/directory/article-1.html') rather than the homepage (e.g. 'https://example.com'). In addition to analysing the quantity and quality of backlinks, deep link ratio is something that should be analysed. A high deep link ratio can indicate that a website owner has built a legitimate backlink profile, but this ratio does not say anything about the quality of backlinks and does not measure the total number of links to their website.
Deep link ratio can be calculated using this formula:
Number of deep links ÷ total number of backlinks x 100
For example, if a website had a total of 850 backlinks and 290 of those backlinks were not deep links as they were pointing to the homepage, the deep link ratio would be calculated below:
850 - 290 = 560 deep links
560 ÷ 850 x 100 = 65.88% deep link ratio
The average deep link ratio cannot be listed here as it depends on the type of website and the content that it offers. Most links pointing to a website are deep links as without them, users would have to manually type URLs to specific pages within the website, which is time-consuming. Most websites will have a deep link ratio of 50% - 70%, but there is not an ideal number in terms of what makes a good deep link ratio.
It is important to build a backlink profile which includes a mix of homepage and deep links. Even though the quantity and quality of backlinks is a major Google ranking factor, there is no strong evidence to support the idea that Google uses deep link ratio as a ranking factor. It is unlikely that deep link ratio is a direct Google ranking factor or that websites with a higher deep link ratio will perform better in the Google search results.
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