Linking has become more important than ever to search engines, especially Google. That is the very glue that hooks the internet together. But over the past several years, the nature of linking has changed dramatically.

At first, it was number of links pointing to your web site. The generally accepted way of building these links was through reciprocal linking. "You link to me and I'll link to you." As the importance of these links rose, due to changes in search engine algorithms, unscrupulous business began selling links. They created hundreds of web sites for the sole purpose of creating and selling links to webmasters.

It didn't take long for the search engines to figure out what was going on. They like to provide good content search results for their users. These link farms, as they were called, began to skew results away from good content and towards commercial sites with little content. Search engines began to penalize sites having many links from the link farms and banned link farms from their engines.

Next, sites began to develop highly optimized linking to their sites. Keywords were packed into domain names and link text. At the beginning of the Christmas sales season of 2003, Google changed their algorithm to penalize sites with overly optimized links. Hundreds of sites, many from Florida, suddenly had their sites drop out of site in the rankings. Threats of lawsuits continued for many months after that.

Google increased the value of links from high PageRank sites, those sites with lots of content and many inbound links. At the same time, reciprocal links were decreased in value.

Good rankings became harder to come by. A single link from a high-value site became worth dozens of reciprocal links. High PageRank sites began to lose interest in low value reciprocal links and started to charge money for the high value links from their sites.

Recently, links have become more focused on content and the text contained in the links. This is where deep linking comes into play. The preferred linking method is from good content to sites with similar content.

Link directories can still be used on web sites as long as they are done in moderation. Too many outbound links can hurt your rankings. And links from these link directories will produce fewer visitors as link pages are not popular with many visitors.

More sites are beginning to focus on content. This gives you an advantage. Deep linking will give you many more opportunities for linking that you get from a links page. And your links become more prominent on the page.

Typically, you have two ways to get inbound links for your web site:

The first is to ask for a link to your home page in exchange for a link from a relevant content page.

Second, ask for a deep link from one of their relevant content pages to one of your content pages. In exchange, you link back to their content page. To do this, you need to find a relevant page on their site first. Let them know you are limiting the number of links on your page to five (or whatever number you decide). This gives more value to your links and you will get a better response. No one wants their link buried on a links page that few people visit.

So what do you get out of this form of linking?

1 - It makes site owners much more interested in linking with you. They get a prominent link that makes them part of your site rather than being buried on a links.

2 - It shows webmasters that you have actually taken the time to study their site to find the most relevant connection to their content. This makes them more responsive to your request than the typical exchange links request.

3 - Deep linking creates higher quality links. This improves link popularity which in turn improves rankings. You both get this benefit.

4 - You have links going to pages other than your home page. This helps those other pages rise in rankings for the keywords found on them.

5 - Linking with relevant content brings more visitors to your site.

6 - Because you are creating a better link to the other site, it is easier to ask for and get a similar quality link back.

7 - Your links page becomes a stronger resource for the links on it. You are not putting every Tom, Dick and Harry on the same page so you can be choosier about using higher quality links. This makes getting added to your links page more rewarding for other site owners. More of your visitors will use the page and send more traffic to your link partners.

8 - The links you receive this way will bring you more traffic than you would have received from a links page.

Be sure to get a deep link in return for yours. Don't let the webmaster bury your link on a page no one will see. Your deep link has value and you want to receive like value in return.

You will find that getting deep links is easier than the typical reciprocal linking. Even some of the bigger sites you thought would never be willing to exchange links will be willing to listen to your proposition. Tell them you want to link to them as a recommended resource for your (content subject) page. You'll sound like a real pro instead of Joe Schmoe who is spitting out template letters from his linking program.