Well that's a lot of questions silverbytes, hehe.

Couple of thoughts. First, IMO, and as I've said many times before, a healthy site should NOT be following the 80/20 rule on traffic as you suggest. I do not own a single site where more than 10% of my traffic goes to the homepage. And for all but two of my sites, less then 5% fo traffic goes to my homepage. Few pages in fact get more than 2%. A well planned and well optimzed site should get lots of traffic to many different pages.

As for directories, yes in some cases your link anchor text is weak or not ideal. Solution: Get as many links as you can, and varied if possible across all pages deep and otherwise. Deep links imply quality to search engines (why else would someone be linking to a deep page?)

Basically the more quality links the better. If you're getting plenty of links your site's levels of trust and/or authority will rise and more and more pages will start to rank. If you site is mainly getting links from directories, paid or otherwise, it might signal that it's having trouble getting one-way, unsolicited links. And that means generally not very good rankings. Which might be why only a few pages are ranking decently.

>>I do not own a single site where more than 10% of my traffic goes to the homepage.

I've got a couple of product sites that got most of their traffic from the homepage and they didn't convert a fraction of what traffic to targeted, interior pages did. In many (if not most) cases the homepage is way too generalized and brings in window shoppers rather than motivated buyers.

and varied if possible across all pages deep and otherwise. Deep links imply quality to search engines (

Yes, but you can't get those from directories, because they only link to your homepage.

So unless you make reciprocal link exhcange or get casual inbound links from sites that spontaneously link to you, you won't get any.

silverbytes, I'm afraid that is not true.

I have a number of sites with deep links from directories like and including ODP.

Pick a couple of well known sites and search on the root domain in ODP. You'll find lots of deep links there. I just had a look at one well known site that has 2700+ deep links listed in ODP. Why? Because the site is providing content the ODP editors - across a broad array of categories - find useful. It is one compelling signal of a site's quality, having that many deeplinks from ODP.

So unless you make reciprocal link exhcange or get casual inbound links from sites that spontaneously link to you, you won't get any.

That sorta sounds like the thinking behind a classic old style affiliate site, i.e., what the SE's call "thin affiliates" - mainly links or feeds and not much else unique, hence not much reason for people to link to them.

Bottom line: The search world has moved strongly away from that line of thinking.

The old cliché about the importance of unique and original content is more true now than ever. There may be exceptions to this - in fact I know there are - but generally the attitude of the engines is that unique and useful content will either already have a ton of inbound links, and that includes links to many deep pages, or the number of quality links will be expanding as more surfers find the page and link to it.

If you cannot get people to link to your internal pages you need to think about evolving them, or get a ton more links to your homepage and top high level pages, and make sure your site is structured to let some of that link juice flow down to deeper pages. How do you do that? Most commonly by creating enough substance that people choose to link to you. Otherwise you're reduced to directory and other paid links, bogus networks, link exchanges (which have been severely discounted by the SE's), etc.

If you can't find ways to get new links via improved/interesting/unique/compelling/whatever content or other clever ways, plan for the slow death of the site over time, and think about evolving your site(s) to make them more valuable.

I don't at all mean to sound harsh and hope you're not taking it that way. I'm trying to make general statements about the current state of things.

If you've not read sugarrae's brilliant post on link versus traffic development [webmasterworld.com], now might be a good time. ;-)

I think that getting many listing non keyword rich may even affect the "weight" of those you already have keyword rich

I don't agree with that. There can be a lot of variety in your link development mix as long as the search engines can spot enough things that support your targeted themes.

If your site is about blue widgets, and the directory page you're listed on is clearly about blue widgets, being listed in the company of other blue widget sites will support your own "blue widget-ness" whether or not your anchor text happens to mention them.

Get your preferred anchor text when you can, but don't fuss too much about the wording of any particular link, and certainly don't get into arguments about it. It's a better use of your time to work on getting the next link.

Always remember: a quality directory will want to craft their listings so that their pages end up making good sense to human users. A page full of listings that all say "texas auto dealer" would not read well for users no matter how badly the sites wanted that as their anchor text.

The directories that will do you the most good in the long run are those that send their own signals of quality to the search engines. Often that will mean not caving in to everything people want for anchor text.

I have a number of sites with deep links from directories like and including ODP.

Don't tell that much because they never should list those deeplinks because is not allowed by guidelines. And about ODP as soon as a meta or other with enough power and interest notice that will blow your deeplinks and flag you red.

You are lucky if you don't find other that has websites in your niche, because unless you be youtube or other monster, deeplinks are not allowed in ODP no matter how good you think your website is.

The only valid thing is listing a maximum of 2 times one on topic other in most relevant category, in exceptional cases.

>>Don't tell that much because they never should list those deeplinks because is not allowed by guidelines.

Deeplinks certainly are allowed by ODP, if the pages warrant it. It's explained in the ODP guidelines about deep links and what the rules are.

WebmasterWorld has some deep links that absolutely, positively should be deep-linked to, beyond a shadow of a doubt. In fact, I submitted links requesting inclusion for a thread (and a forum) myself that got listed - and they should be. They're very topically specific, extraordinary quality, and add considerable value to the directory for users - 100%.

As Marcia says, they simply maintain high standards about the sort of content that can be deeplinked to. From the ODP editorial guidelines:

Deeplinking is the process of adding links to sub-pages and sub-domains within a site.

General Rule: In the vast majority of categories and branches, deeplinking is the exception rather than the rule. Deeplinks should offer content that is unique and extremely useful to a particular category. There are no strict rules regarding the type of site that should or should not be deeplinked. Providing deeplinks, in a uniform way, to sites that offer extremely useful and unique content can add value to the directory in a few cases (e.g. categories with very limited content, and where the meat of the available web content is typically buried within larger sites). However, editors should be very judicious when adding deeplinks of a particular URL. If you are uncertain about adding deeplinks, ask an experienced editor, such as a meta or an editall, for advice or guidance. Ultimately, all deeplinking decisions are subject to staff approval.

There are currently 9495 ODP links to wikipedia, hehe. You think that ODP doesn't know that? Of course, wikipedia is an obvious and extreme example, but it is NOT hard to find sites with many deeplinks from ODP. Have a look around the ODP.

More important, this sidebar point is missing the bigger picture. If a site can only get directory listings, and mainly only to its homepage, the site is not going to fare well in the SE's over time, and needs to evolve into displaying more unique content worthy of linking to. That, like it or not, is one of the SE's primary strategies for weeding out non-unique, non-useful pages from the SERP's. If the site doesn't have lots of link equity overall and/or not many links to it's homepages, then its chances for ranking well over time are not good, except on rather uncompeititve searches, where if the search is obscure enough, even supplemental pages (in G's case) can rank.

General Rule: In the vast majority of categories and branches, deeplinking is the exception rather than the rule

That's what I mean when I mention "monsters": wikipedia, youtube, and similar.

For all other websites made by mortals, that rule rules ;)

Sorry, but again, that's simply not true. We have sites with multiple listings, and while I'd love them to be of the monster magnitude, sadly, they are merely niche authority sites. ;-)

What some fail to pick up on is that it doesn't just happen. It requires some thought, some competitive analysis (hint, hint), some search work, and some seriously good content.

Then again, we're fast approaching the point where most sites need those things to succeed. Long gone are the days where you can just throw up a site and see it rank. Even averagely good sites with averagely good content are feeling the heat, increasingly. No surprise either, if you take a bird's eye view of what's been going on in search for the last several years.