The Overlooked Link Building Tactic: Fixing Shallow Links

You may have a sizeable number of inbound links pointing to your website, but they provide little value if they don't lead users to the right pages.

Even with stellar on-page optimization and high-quality content, your webpages won't rank well in search results without the right inbound links directing traffic.

Let's call them «inbound links» rather than «backlinks» — the latter is outdated terminology. While tactics like outreach and competitor analysis have their place, there's one overlooked link building technique that can greatly impact your pages' visibility on Google — fixing shallow links.

What Are Shallow Links?

Shallow links point to your home page or another top-level page instead of deeper, more relevant content on your site.

Why Does This Matter?

Google ranks individual pages, not entire domains. Although domain-level metrics exist, they don't directly determine rankings.

So when a link points only to your home page, it confers authority solely to that page. Your internal linking spreads some of that authority site-wide, butlower pages receive crumbs rather than an equitable distribution.

For inbound links to fully optimize rankings, they must connect directly to your most pertinent content. For example, say a popular blogger reviews your new cross-training shoes. But instead of linking to that product page, they link to your homepage.

Even if your homepage links to those shoes, the blog's link authority cements the homepage without benefiting the target product URL.

In most cases, shallow links happen unintentionally — writers don't take the time to find better pages to reference. As an SEO audit often reveals, the issue is widespread but overlooked.

Finding Shallow Links

Start by generating a list of all your site's inbound links showing the source page, linked URL, and anchor text. Additional data like nofollow status can further refine your list.

Download into a spreadsheet and filter down to only homepage links. You'll likely need versions both with and without trailing slashes.

Not all homepage links are «shallow», so filter anchor text too. Company name brands often indicate a valid top-level link, so hide those references. Review branded anchors separately just in case.

Optionally, ignore nofollowed links since they don't pass authority. But if your list is small, include them as all links have user value.

Fixing Shallow Links

Now the real work begins. For each shallow link:

• Find author contact information. Existing contacts or publicist records help here. Otherwise, do outreach research to source.
• Thank them for linking, explain the concept of shallow links and their SEO impact, then provide a more suitable page to link to instead.
• Send follow-up emails and track changes via rank monitoring on the newly linked pages. Expect informal rejections or lack of response.

It's tedious but worthwhile. Ongoing monitoring means future requests will be fewer as you continually fix new shallow links.

The payoff comes when those previously underserved pages start ranking higher in search results!