Deep links
When building links with external counterparties it is usual to ask that the link is to the homepage of a site, typically either http://sitename.com or http://www.sitename.com. Many directories will only accept site submissions to the home page.
Unfortunately this type of link-building fails to mimic the real world, and the search engines are getting wise to it.
When people link naturally to a site, it is very frequently to a particular page within the site - take a look at this blog entry, read what they have said about the new BMW, etc. This happens as frequently as a simple recommendation to ‘take a look at this site’. And so it should be, that’s why you are trying to write hundreds of pages of interesting content!
So when a search engine sees that all the links to one site are to the home page, whereas another is peppered with links to internal pages - deep links as they are called - they would rightly rate the second site higher.
To what extent is this already the case? It is hard to be sure, but certainly even Matt Cutts - chief Google spokesman - when talking about ’supplemental pages’ said that the best way to get out of supplemental results was to have good links, including deep links, to the site. (supplemental pages are a different subject, but broadly these are pages that google rates much lower in searches, because they have assessed them to have less value, and are rarely seen).
So it is clear that they recognise deep links, and reward them. So what to do to get them? There are a few possibilities:
1) Use deep links when doing link exchanges
2) Submit deep links to paid directories
3) Try and write something so fascinating or interesting that people want to link to it naturally (this should be number 1 on the list as a technique, but is number 3 because it is pretty tough to achieve in the real world).
4) There are some (mostly quite new) directories that actually insist on deep links, and others that accept them. Make full use of these directories, they are worth their weight in gold! A couple of examples are:
When you are submitting a deep link to a directory, remember you are submitting to the category appropriate to that page, and with the keywords/phrase for that page, not for the site as a whole.