Deep link ratio is the proportion of a site’s inbound links that point to internal pages — product pages, articles, category pages — rather than to the homepage. A high ratio indicates that multiple pages on the site have independently earned external recognition, which search engines tend to interpret as a signal of genuine authority spread across the content rather than concentrated at a single entry point. Conversely, a very low ratio, where almost all external links target the homepage alone, can look unnatural in the context of an otherwise large site. Healthy link profiles typically show a deep link ratio above fifty percent, though the ideal balance varies by site type; e-commerce and news sites naturally accumulate more deep links than simple brochure sites or lead-generation pages.