Table Of Contents
- What is deep linking?
- What are the different types of deep links?
- What are the advantages of deep-linking?
- Does deep linking influence search engine rankings?
- How to add deep links to product pages in E-Commerce?
- What are the approaches for deep linking in E-Commerce?
What is deep linking?
Deep links are links that take consumers straight to an app rather than a website or shop. They are used to direct visitors to certain in-app destinations, saving them time and energy in the process of accessing a certain page — considerably increasing the user experience.
Deep linking does this by supplying a special URL scheme (iOS Universal Links) or an intent URL (on Android devices) that, if your program is already installed, launches it. Deep links may also be used to send readers to certain events or websites, which can tie in with any marketing you are running.
What are the different types of deep links?
To comprehend the philosophy underlying it, you must first comprehend the various sorts of mobile deep linking. Each has its own application and function.
1. Standard deep linking
They are also known as basic links, and they employ the URI to direct a user to a specified area of the installed app. They are often used in a variety of mobile mediums, including web pages, emails, SMS messages, and social networking sites. When a user taps on a push notification, for example, they are taken to the appropriate part rather than the homepage.
The main worry is that they will only operate if the app is installed on the user's mobile phone. If the app is not installed, an error page will appear.
2. Deferred deep linking
These links, yet again, will only bring consumers to a specific product once the app is downloaded. If the app is not installed on the user's device, they'll be sent to an app store listing where they may download it. Furthermore, they direct the user to the relevant location following installation, causing the least amount of disruption to the journey.
3. Contextual deep linking
These deep links operate at a higher level than the other two categories. They are particularly useful for creating a more customized onboarding experience. This sort of link saves and links information about the user to the app, such as their names, who recommended them, and which promotion code they wish to use.
What are the advantages of deep-linking?
One might ask, why is deep linking important to developers? Here are some benefits of adding deep linkages that you should consider:
1. Access to material more quickly
The apparent advantage is that you can go to your selected website faster. They take a user straight to the content within an app. A deep link will also take a user to the correct location if they wish to share the website with a friend.
2. Enhances the user experience
The process of executing the desired task is made simple and quick, using navigation that is nearly painless. Deep linking is more user-friendly, resulting in a significantly improved user experience.
3. Enhanced user retention and engagement
A deep link assists users with installing an app if necessary, directs them to the desired content, increases engagement, keeps them on track, and improves retention. With roughly 97 % of businesses stating that employee retention is a top concern, this can only be a good development.
4. Improves usage metrics
Deep connected users had a twice-as-high activation rate, twice-as-high retention rate, and twice-as-frequent app visits. Sending a single onboarding-related push notification to newly acquired customers in the first week after installation may boost retention by 71%.
5. Customizes the onboarding process
Deep linking provides a personal touch to your website. Personalization based on a user's initial name and activity might actually engage them. After installation, 29% of those who were contextually deep connected joined up for the app right away. Onboarding can also be aided via app invites, incentives, or offers.
6. Retargets clients who have not bought anything in a while.
Deep linking is a powerful remarketing strategy. It reconnects users who have downloaded the software but have not used it in a while. Reengage a user by sending them a push notification with links to special offers or exclusive deals, giving them a reason to use the app again.
7. Increases the visibility of the app
Deep links can effectively promote your app on Google's search engine results pages, according to Google's indexing regulations. This raises the visibility of both your app and your brand on the internet.
8. Enhances revenue
Mobile app users convert three times as well as spend 20 times as much as mobile web users. More consumers will return to your app if they are more engaged, and the higher the ROI, the better. Promoting your app is a smart idea. Having said that, cross-platform deep linking should be a major focus.
9. Examines and evaluates marketing efforts
Deep links collect data about visitors to assist analyze the performance of various marketing campaigns. Apps learn from their users and establish profiles for them, which are then iterated to produce a worthwhile experience. Apps with deep connections have additional advertising chances. Because all digital marketing channels rely on web standards, integrating them with your applications will allow you to use them across all platforms.
Does deep linking influence search engine rankings?
They certainly do! It is normal for your pages to receive links from other websites from the standpoint of search engines. A website with just links to its home page is unnatural, and if it lacks deep connections or connections to other sites, it may be categorized as spam.
1. Product promotions
When product and category pages contain on-topic backlinks from other websites, they can improve their search engine rankings.
For example, if your website's product category page is Women's T-shirts, and you have deep links to that page — such as https://www.emirates.store/eos-store/women/t-shirts-/c-24/c-146 — it will be more relevant and help that page rank higher in search engine results.
2. Content marketing
Let's broaden our definition of "deep linking" to include "what is deep linking and how does it relate to content marketing?" What a great question! Deep linking can help you increase the number of visitors to certain web pages on your site, such as blog entries and other content-rich websites.
For example, Intel's tech newspaper www.insight.tech has a blog entry regarding medical wearables at https://www.insight.tech/healthcare/what-burns-power-in-medical-wearables. If the anchor term medical wearables are used in the link text instead of the home page, deep links to this page will achieve better organic search engine rankings.
How to add deep links to product pages in E-Commerce?
There are several ways to include links into an e-commerce website's home page or blog/article pages. However, most e-commerce SEO experts face the same issue: obtaining links into categories and product detail pages is difficult (PDPs).
The dilemma of e-commerce SEO: the sites that produce income are the ones you want to rank well, yet no one wants to link to them. Of course, you have already interlinked all of your most linked-to pages to your product and category pages, right? Now it is time to move on to the next step: incorporating external links into items and categories.
The first point I would want to make in terms of approach is that you do not always have to go after the keyword anchor text you want to rank for. While that content should play an important role in your link profile, I frequently add a few "click here," "domain.com," and other non-keyword-focused deep links on purpose.
We can easily acquire those kinds of connections onto our home pages, but because most of our deep connections don't come to us organically, they tend to favor keyword-text. Even if it is not, make your link profile appear genuine.
The second point I would like to make is that you should include links on category pages as well. Internally, these are the pages that convey page rank to your items. If your category pages have a high page rank and a lot of good-quality external connections, ranking for a newly introduced product will be considerably simpler, even before you have had time to create links straight into the new PDP.
Using static content on these category pages, as well as adhering to recommended practices for pagination can assist.
Deep Linking in E-Commerce Pages: A List of Approaches
1. Product Evaluations
This is one of the simplest methods to add a link in a PDP, and the anchor text is frequently the product name. In the end, it will probably cost you less than purchasing a link outright, and it will not only be safer, but it will also do a better job of increasing brand awareness, reaching new consumers, and receiving feedback on your items.
Not every review will be fantastic, but I have found that anyone who receives a free thingamabob from you will at least give you a fair assessment - and more often than not, it will be a very decent one.
Do not "beg" people to link to your PDP using a certain keyword phrase. They are going to link to you nine times out of ten anyhow. They will employ an affiliate link every now and then. If this happens, simply state that you will not be sending them any more items for review (if an organic link was your aim) and move on. If they do not connect at all, it is worth sending them the PDP URL "in case you'd want to provide it as a convenience to your readers" or anything along those lines.
2. Sponsorships
Is sponsoring an event the same as purchasing a link? My own opinion on the subject is that it depends on the type of sponsorship you are providing. For example, sponsoring a marathon and having your logo on the race's sponsor website linked back to your running shoe category is not unreasonable.
People will undoubtedly point out that putting "sponsor" or "review" in the URL (or title:) leaves a "footprint" and will advise against developing links in this manner. They make an excellent argument, however, I have yet to encounter this as a problem.
Many respectable websites have pages named links.html, sponsors.php, or product-X-review/ that connect to other respectable websites naturally. In the end, it is up to you to decide what constitutes a risk and whether or not you are willing to accept it. Naturally, you do not want to overuse any link-building strategy or make your link profile overly reliant on it.
3. Guest Posts
One strategy to obtain deep links back into your own website is to write high-quality content for other websites. If you are just starting out with a content distribution agreement with another website, do not put the links in the body unless they have previously stated it's okay.
As your relationships with other sites grow, they may be more receptive to having one or two links in the content (if acceptable and not pushed) rather than in the bio. Personally, I like it this way on my sites since providing the author a bio makes it obvious that it is a guest post, and there are times when I'd want it to appear as if I produced the content.
It is tempting to save all of your greatest work for your own blog. That makes sense in a lot of ways. However, if you are going to start guest blogging, do not try to write low-level content. This will simply lead to you being put on low-quality blogs. Many PR 5+ blogs allow guest articles, but none of them accept the sort of trash you can hire someone to write for $5 on Mechanical Turk.
If I have a certain host blog in mind, I can easily spend three or four hours researching and producing a guest article. In the end, it is still less expensive than purchasing a similar-quality connection with cash. In reality, the majority of these strategies are less expensive and more successful than purchasing connections.
4. Putting Link bait on PDPs
While this is not applicable to all types of link bait, there are ways to utilize a PDP as the landing page for a piece of link bait without detracting too much from the actual selling of a product. To demonstrate, I'll provide a few examples:
- A fantastic product demonstration. We are not talking about a typical product demonstration. Blendtec's Will It Blend series is one of the greatest instances of this ever. While they did develop a separate site for that series, displaying the videos on the blender PDPs would have been a wonderful way to drive deep connections into those product pages.
- A free download. Who says your downloaded eBook, game, software, or anything else needs to have its own landing page? Why not provide a digital eBook on that page that outlines how to test for lead paint on toys, the hazards of BPAs in toys, and so on if one of your best-selling goods is a wooden toy truck hand-made in the USA?
- An Infographic. It is clear that you do not want this to be full-size. If you just provide a link to the full-size version, the links you receive will point to the full-size URL. Instead, present the entire size in a Jquery modal window or some other visual effect that keeps the viewer on the product page.
5. Provide More Information Than Your Competitors
Anyone can explain a product in a few paragraphs, but there is often more to it than what fits into a normal product detail box. When you use tabs in your product description box, you can put a lot more info into the same amount of page real estate. This paves the way for you to turn a PDP into a truly informative resource.
Everything depends on the product, here is one example: You are in the business of selling solar panels. On the PDP, including an "Installation" page that explains how to install your own solar panels. It would include all of the necessary hardware, as well as step-by-step instructions and maybe a video demonstrating how to install the product.
6. Contests and giveaways
The concept of co-sponsoring a giveaway on another website is similar to the review and sponsorship options, but it may be built on to get more bang for your money.
7. Request a Link from Your Brand Evangelists
This may appear to be a straightforward task, but it is astonishing how few merchants really execute it. The concept of raising evangelists or ambassadors is not new. In fact, it is how pro sportsmen make a lot of money. However, you do not need to pay a professional ballplayer for millions of dollars a year; instead, get the people who already love your business to express that love, particularly when it comes to their favorite things on your website.
8. Make Your Holiday Landing Pages Evergreen
These are internal pages that frequently receive a large number of links. So, why start from scratch each year? Put the year in the title and text, where it may be readily updated, but not in the URL. This way, you may return to the same page without having to deal with redirects. Speaking of landing pages, if you do not have one for Christmas, Father's Day, Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, and so on, you should
9. Crowdsourcing
Make a social media crowdsourcing campaign centered on a product. For example, suppose you want to update the design of a T-shirt. Why not allow the community to submit designs and vote on their favorite? Make sure to provide the URL of the existing design (i.e. the PDP) to provide everyone with a starting point and product URL to which they may connect.
10. Keep the Links You Already Have
It is an ancient adage that it is easier and less expensive to maintain a client than it is to replace them. The same is true for links. When you delete a product from your online catalog, be sure you 301 redirect the URL. You would think this is obvious, yet it happens all the time since the merchandising team, which decides which goods to display, is not always in touch and sometimes is not even in the same office as the SEO team. When it comes to product pages, link reclamation may be easier than link creation.
11. Local Links
Create a locations page if you have physical locations, such as a kiosk or a store in a mall. It is not quite the same as gaining a link inside your categories or PDPs, but it is a deeper link than your main page and is usually an easy victory. Every mall, local chamber of commerce, local directory, and so on, for example, is a possible source of connections to this website.
12. Affiliate Pages Hosted on-site
For as long as I can recall, the health supplement and real estate sectors have been doing this, but most of them do it incorrectly. The concept is that you let affiliates usually brand evangelists to have their own co-branded page on your website.
It will be a simple URL that they can include on their business cards and connect to on their social media sites. You could limit this advantage to a small group of evangelists, or you could make it available to everyone. You could make the pages public, or you could put a robots index, nofollow tag to the header. I recommend the latter because you will be paying affiliate commissions on such sales.
Take note of how these folks are constructing links and advertising their page. If they have the bright notion to start making spamming blog comments, you may have a problem on your hands. That is one reason you should limit it to a few people, preferably celebrities or business professionals, rather than everyone. You'd also need a clear TOS that they must adhere to, prohibiting them from marketing their page in specific ways.
13. Make Your PDPs Shareable
Here's another no-brainer that most websites are currently doing, but maybe doing it incorrectly. To begin, allow consumers to evaluate your items and display those evaluations on the PDP. When a customer's review is published on the site, send them an automatic email with a link to their review so they may share it with others. You might even include sharing links in the email so they can instantly publish to Facebook or Twitter.
Second, ensure that the product may be shared. However, note that posting a product on Digg or Reddit will not get you anywhere, so try to stay with sites like Twitter, Facebook, and social shopping portals like Kaboodle if you are going to include social media connections on a product page. They may not be clickable links, but they will help spread the word.
14. Perform a PDP-specific Link Analysis on Your Competitors.
Most of us analyze our rivals' backlinks, but it may be required to further filter the data to reveal just backlinks to your rivals' category and product detail pages. Because there is so much crowd from connections leading to their home page and blog, these deep links often go unnoticed.
For example, one of their PDPs may have only one external link, but that link is a high-quality, deep link with strong anchor text. When looking at a report with hundreds of connections, it is easy to overlook links like this unless you filter out the noise.
This may be accomplished by researching backlinks using OSE and just looking at results from other domains linking in with the phrase "product" or anything else that comes in the URL of the competitor's PDPs.
15. Advertise Product-Level and Category-Level Discounts
Having a "Discounts" page or an "Outlet" category is an excellent strategy to establish links and sell overstocked things. However, the majority of the links will lead to this page rather than the product page. And the majority of the reduced items are either slow sellers (therefore overstocked) or soon-to-be discontinued items. It is a good idea to provide big discounts on your most popular goods regularly.
Set up an offer display on these PDPs or categories, and always link to that page when promoting the offer, such as in Facebook ads, PPC, display ads, email, social media postings, blog entries, or on your home page. Most of the links will remain active even after the sale is done as long as you are not developing special "sales" landing pages and are using your regular PDP for that product.
16. Obligatory Grey Hat Tactic - Bait N Switch
As long as the campaign landing page remained on-topic, 301 redirecting the page to a category or PDP many months after the campaign is done is not unreasonable. Say you run the above-mentioned campaign to crowdsource T-shirt designs.
The campaign goes from April to July, and you declared the winner on that page in August, along with a link to the new PDP for that shirt, to show off the new design and proof that you did, in fact, place it in your catalog. You will probably gain a few more links in August, but by October, everyone has forgotten about the campaign, and the page is not gaining any new links or visits.
Now might be an excellent moment to redirect that page to the PDP for the T-shirt design. With this strategy, you may use deeper colors of gray. For example, some months after the buzz has died down, you can 301 redirect a social media hit to your basketball shoe category.
17. Widget Links
This one is a little questionable, but in my opinion, it is still a fantastic concept if done correctly. For example, do not put a link to "Cheap Hotels" on a widget that shows movie timings. In fact, do not "purchase" links on widgets at all. Also, do not create a widget that is completely off-topic and then use extremely specialized anchor text to connect back to one of your product pages.
Conclusion
Stop wondering, "What is deep linking?" and start taking action to get the advantages of embracing it. There are several strategies to make deep links work for your online store, ranging from content marketing to clever redirection and more. Hopefully, these tactics will prove helpful for your business.
This is it for today. I hope you liked the blog and you’ve learned something valuable about deep linking. If you have any questions or comments, write in the comments section and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. If you want expert advice about deep linking or you have an online business and you want to take full advantage of deep linking, write to Prism, one of the Best SEO Agencies in Dubai, and we will take care of it for you. Thank you and Goodbye.
About The Author: Lovetto Nazareth
Lovetto Nazareth is a digital marketing consultant and agency owner of Prism Digital. He has been in the advertising and digital marketing business for the last 2 decades and has managed thousands of campaigns and generated millions of dollars of new leads. He is an avid adventure sports enthusiast and a singer-songwriter. Follow him on social media on @Lovetto Nazareth