If you’ve heard that your website needs more backlinks for SEO and you’re not quite sure what that means, you’ve come the the right place. As a part of our Industrial Marketing 101 series, this article will cover the topic of backlinks and deep links, why your website needs them, and how you can get them.
But First: What is SEO?
Let's start off simple.
The “SE” in SEO stands for search engine. Search engines are what you use to search the internet. Think Google.
The “O” stands for optimization. There are currently 1.14 billion websites on the internet. And there are hundreds of thousands of manufacturer websites. This means your company has a whole lot of competition when someone searches for a product you make.
This means you need to optimize your site so that it shows up higher in the search engine results page and people can actually find you.
How much higher?
When you Google a product or service, do you ever go to the second, third, or fourth page of search results?
Most likely not. You choose a website from the first page.
Everyone wants to be on the first page. SEO is what helps you get there.
A lot of factors contribute to SEO.
Backlinks help.
What is a Backlink?
A backlink is a website link that is embedded into a page that takes the user to another website. Say you are on the supplier results page for COATINGS on IndustryNet.com and you click on a company’s link that takes you to their website. You just followed a backlink.
What is a Deep Link?
A deep link is a backlink that takes you to a specific page on a website (anything other than the home page).
When you follow a backlink, you might end up on the company’s home page. For instance, you might follow a link to gasket manufacturer Stockwell Elastomerics’ home page: https://www.stockwell.com/.
Or you might end up on a specific page of their site. For instance, say you followed a link to Stockwell Elastomerics’ page on environmental gaskets: https://www.stockwell.com/environmental-gaskets-seals/. Since you ended up on a specific page other than a company’s home page, you just followed a deep link.
Most the of suppliers listed on IndustryNet have multiple capabilities and would have separate pages on their website describing each capability. Taking our COATINGS example, they might have a page dedicated specifically to resinous coatings. A link from IndustryNet to the supplier’s page on resinous coatings is a deep link.
In short, all deep links are backlinks but not all backlinks are deep links.
How Backlinks and Deep Links help SEO
Backlinks are great for SEO and deep links are even better. Having backlinks to specific pages on your site helps boost your site’s authority overall. So, if a coatings supplier has a lot of backlinks to all the pages that display various coatings they supply, this tells the search engines that they are really expert at coatings.
A website with a lot of backlinks and deep links signals to the search engines that a particular site has been “vouched for” by other sites and it is not spammy or confusing or of little value to the user.
The more reputable the site, the more value the backlink from that site has.
Just like someone you trust might recommend a restaurant or movie, you can think of a backlink from a reputable site as a digital referral.
Garnering backlinks from reputable sites across the web helps boost your site’s reputation.
How Backlinks and Deep Links from IndustryNet Help
Because IndustryNet is a reputable site with millions of users, backlinks and deep links from our site are especially valuable.
More valuable backlinks help a site move up in the search engines so that they are closer to that first page.
Companies with Preferred and Featured listings on IndustryNet may include a direct link to their homepage (backlink). And those that list their business in three or more categories are also able to include deep links to specific product pages on their website (deep link).
Want to learn more? Explore the difference between a basic, preferred, and featured listing here.
