Support Deep Link Visitors to Your Website. Here's Why

An important aspect of web usability has to do with the "deep link" and what it may mean to the success of your website.

A deep link is the initial visit to an interior page made by a new visitor. Instead of entering through the home page, these visitors will see an interior page through a search engine or third party link.

What's important about this? According to Jacob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger in their landmark book, "Prioritizing Web Usability" deep links account for nearly 60% of initial page views. Additionally, the visits to the interior pages account for an average of 60 seconds, well past the 20 to 30 second average for the typical home page.

The important thing for you to remember is to actively support this characteristic of the web. Don't fight it, as many still do, because you're proud of the home page and want everyong to gain access to your site through the "front door." It's virtually impossible to control where the traffic will come from. As the old stock market saying suggests, "don't fight the tape; make the trend your friend."

Many rich sites are akin to a house with a thousand doors. Deep linking will enhance usability of your site. It gives visitors a chance to find the very nugget of information, or point of discuassion, their looking for. An unmediated, inside scoop direct to the most cogent page. Why try to control their access to this information? Deep links enhance usability "because they are more likely to satisfy user needs." A generic link that takes someone to the home page of a site is often less useful than a direct link to an article, or a product, which is the real subject of the search engine query.

Supporting deep linking is not a difficult thing to do. But you must consider this aspect of your site when you design it and build out the site.

Better still, when you create your strategy for search engine optimization, you should consider which pages on your site are the most useful and optimize them accordingly. You should encourage search engines and third party sites to link directly to these high content, high value pages, the ones that address specific issues.

You'll end up with more traffic, more satisfied readers and visitors overall.