Quick Answer: Deep linking is when your affiliate links send people to specific product pages of an online store you’re promoting instead of sending them to the generic homepage.
Affiliate marketing is the best way to generate income from the comfort of your home.
But it’s not without its challenges.
One of the most challenging parts is figuring out how to get traffic to your site. It’s not enough to have a website—people need to find it for the money to start rolling in.
Deep linking is one way of getting people onto your site.
This strategy is what guides people directly to the product you’d like them to buy or the service you want them to sign up for. Instead of sending potential customers through a maze of pages they may or may not be interested in, deep linking allows you to send them straight where you want them to go.
When done correctly, this type of marketing can help direct traffic back to your site, where you can then try and convert that traffic into sales.
Why Deep Linking Is Important For Affiliate Marketing
Deep linking is an essential component of affiliate marketing. By using the deep link in your affiliate marketing effort, you can ensure that the user will be directed to the page on your site where you want them to navigate.
Contrarily, if you use a normal affiliate link instead of a deep one, the user may end up on unwanted pages that could distract them from the products you are trying to sell them.
Instead, when you deep link, you know they will land on the page with your affiliate link.
Regarding affiliate marketing, you want to drive your traffic to the best page for their needs. Even though you want them to buy your product, they may need a little more information before making that decision.
So instead of sending them directly to the sales page or a landing page, you could send them to a content piece that teaches them about the product. By doing this, you are deep linking your traffic and sending it to the right place at the right time.
What Is The Difference Between A Link & A Deep Link?
A link is a short description of an article or a website that appears on top of a search engine result and helps the user navigate the web page. On the other hand, the deep link is more than just a link; it is an essential part of affiliate marketing that can help you convert your visitors into leads and, ultimately, customers.
A deep link is essentially a unique URL generated for each article or website you are promoting.
This link will send the user directly to the specific area of your publisher’s site that you have selected, which can be anything from a landing page to a product page or even to another article.
The deep link can then be distributed across various channels like email, social media, display ads, and PPC campaigns.
In A Nutshell: Deep Linking = More Sales
Deep linking, quite simply, is when you take someone directly to the product or service that they are looking for.
This can be accomplished in a variety of ways. For instance, if you sell a product with multiple variations, you can send someone to the specific variation they want to purchase.
Deep linking is essential in affiliate marketing because it gives your readers exactly what they want and leaves them with a positive experience.
If you’re not deep linking, you risk sending your readers to a page that doesn’t contain precisely what they were hoping for.
At the very least, this is an inconvenience for your reader; at worst, it’s a missed opportunity to convert that visitor into a sale. If someone lands on a generic category page and has to click pages and pages before finally finding the product they wanted, they’re going to be annoyed.
The 2 Types Of Deep Linking
There are two major types of deep linking: the regular deep link and the deferred deep link.
1. Regular deep link
The regular one is what most people are familiar with – a link that you can put on your website, your blog, your article, or even email it directly to a friend, and that friend will go directly to a specific part of an app without having to go through the App Store or Google Play at all.
2. Deferred Deep Link
It originates from the idea that you can create something more powerful and specific than just a regular old link. In this case, instead of going directly to a page in an app, you can send someone to a page that doesn’t even exist yet. When they launch the app, they’ll be taken right to the page you specified.
Adding A Deferred Deep Link In 5 Simple Steps
Step 1: You sign up and join an affiliate program.
Step 2: Add your affiliate link to your website.
Step 3: A visitor clicks your link and heads to the online store homepage you’re promoting.
Step 4: If visitors do not already have a cookie from that store, they are prompted to sign up for one.
Step 5: Step 3 is repeated until there is a cookie on the machine from that specific affiliate program.
How Does Deeplinking Work?
When you deep link, you take visitors directly to a specific product or content on your site instead of just the homepage. This is very practical when you want to ensure that the visitor is sent to the most relevant product based on their search query.
For example, say you sell online clothing. When users look for “black dress shoes” on Google, they want your site to appear in their search results. So, you create a specific landing page for the search term and drive traffic to it.
When someone clicks through from Google, they will be directed directly to the black dress shoes landing page. This contrasts with a home page where they can view your entire catalogue or go back and find other pages on your site.
Deep linking also improves revenue because it allows you to send targeted ads to people who land on your site via affiliate links.
For example, if a user lands on your website by searching for “black dress shoes” and then clicks on Amazon to make a purchase, Amazon will give you a commission for that sale because of your deep links that sent the user their way.
6 Benefits Of Deep Linking
Deep linking is the process of directing a user to a specific page on a website rather than to the homepage by using an appropriate URL. It helps you achieve specific goals, such as:
1. Sending Users To The Most Relevant Page On Your Site
If you’re an affiliate marketer, your site may offer numerous products or services through different categories and subcategories. You want to help your visitors get directly to the information that’s most helpful for them.
2. Increasing Conversion Rates
With deep linking, you can direct people directly to a product page rather than having them trawl through your blog posts looking for it. This increases the likelihood that they’ll buy what they’re looking for.
3. Getting More Sales Leads
Geolocation-based APIs can send users directly to a contact form or other landing page where they can leave their information in exchange for access to an exclusive freebie or sale (which may be linked back to your site).
4. Effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Deep linking gives Google and other search engines exactly what they want: more pages with a relevant link to your main page. This increases your SEO ranking, making it much easier for people interested in what you have available.
5. Draws Attention To Specific Content
Deep linking is a technique that draws attention directly to specific content on a website. This can be accomplished by using unique URLs relevant to the content they’re linking—which makes deep linking crucial in affiliate marketing. Some examples of how this works:
You take an individual product page on your site and turn it into a URL that makes it easy for people to share the link with their audience or use the link within their content.
6. Highly Relevant
These links are more effective than traditional general links because they’re precise.
They include information like the product name and price, which makes them more valuable than simply calling it “product X.”
These links also make it easier for Google to find your content because they’re formatted in a way that helps them show up in search engines.
Before You Leave…
Deep linking, also known as contextual linking, brings traffic to a specific website area by sending visitors directly to that spot. The term “deep” refers to the link sending traffic to a specific section of the website, not just the homepage.
Deep linking is essential for affiliate marketers because it allows people to click on an advertisement about a specific product and be taken directly to that product’s page.
This eliminates the possibility of people being deterred from purchasing because they must navigate several pages to find what they’re looking for and will increase your conversion rates.
Some people prefer deep linking over contextual advertising because it prevents them from paying commissions on sales generated by referrals through non-direct links. However, deep linking can be more complicated than contextual advertising.
When you use contextual advertising, creating a landing page with simple text and images is easy enough to direct people there when they click on your ad.
