Google has definitely come out publicly several times, saying that all TLDs are treated the same. They new TLDs don't get any kind of initial preference over .com.
However, keep in mind that one of Google's major ranking factors is links and anchor text. So, if you're using an on-topic, keyword-based URL for your website, your links and anchor text of those links is going to include your keyword (in the beginning if you have a keyword rich .com and in the ending if you're using something like .AUTO or .CARS).
So, if you use a .CARS domain for your website, and you're trying to rank for "cars" related keywords, then there actually might be an SEO benefit from that because of the links and anchor text. That's the way other sites link to you, so that in itself is a ranking factor that will help.
Yes, Google says that initially everything is treated the same--but in reality there's a benefit because of the links and anchor text.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you Bill (and maybe we do agree), but there are some things that should be mentioned here.
With inbound / backlinks, the keywords used in the anchor text is what search engine bots weighs (you show the bot intent) along with the name of the pages or posts; not necessarily the keywords that are positioned within the domain name itself. It's a lot smarter to create pages or posts that have specific keywords in their titles (which most CMSs automatically apply to URLs, but generally can be manipulated). Hence, why you see so many blog posts do extremely well without having to have the "page content keywords" within the domain itself.
Plus, anyone looking to backlink entirely to their money site / page alone should do their homework. That's a poorly thought out concept, for a variety of reasons. I just wrote a case study on this actually, most of it is shown below.
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Understand the importance and determining the best practices and strategy for building quality inbound / backlinks to your inner pages is vital.
Rules of thumb
When it comes to hyperlinks built toward your home page versus your inner pages, a general rule of thumb is to keep a one to three ratio to enhance SEO for your site. This means that for optimized search ranking, the number of links pointing toward your inner pages must collectively be three times higher than the number of links pointing toward your home page.
Why is it Important to Build Links to Your Inner Pages?
Authority
The page authority of your home page is enhanced when you build a lot of links to it. High page authority is good as this decides how high in search results your site is displayed for your target keywords. However, building high page authority for your home page alone does not create high page authority for your site as a whole. To build high page authority for your whole website you need to increase the page authority of the inner pages as well. Your website gets a boost in page authority when you expose your inner pages to the search engine bots by building links to them.
Diversity
If you have 1000 websites linking to your home page but none linking to your inner pages, search engine bots might categorize this as unnatural link building, even if your links are legitimate. It triggers an indication of spam, especially if the links are all built within a short period of time. Many cheap SEO companies offer bulk link building but this practice is no longer legitimate as more and more webmasters have received unnatural link warnings since 2012. Thus, it is advisable to spread your home page and inner pages link building over time to create the necessary diversity in your link profile. A diverse link profile is considered to be more natural than a unidirectional linking pattern (exclusively to the home page).
Relevancy
This is a very crucial factor when it comes to understanding why deep linking is important. For instance, say your website is an automotive website and you drop a link to your home page on a forum thread discussing the Accord versus the Civic. The members of the forum that follow your link expect to find a comparison of the Accord versus the Civic but instead will find a comparison of a wide database of vehicles. Although webmasters most often leave links back to their home page, in this instance it makes more sense to drop a link to an inner page specifically about the discussion topic. This will lower the bounce rates on your website. Inner page links tend to be more relevant, thus you should have higher chances of attaining repeat site visitors, as well as a higher page authority for that particular page.
SEO
When you primarily build links to your home page your website will only be optimized for two or three keywords. By building links to inner pages you are able to target your site for a wide variety of keywords. Thus your site will be search-optimized for numerous keywords, which improves the visibility of your site in organic searches. Building links to your inner pages will also help search engines crawl and index your inner pages efficiently, making it easy to return relevant pages in search results. This will ideally increase the click-through rate (CTR) of your search snippets and decrease the bounce rates of your inner pages because the page returned in search results should be relevant to the keyword query. When CTR’s are high and bounce rates are low there are higher chances of your pages moving up in the SERPs.
How Do You Build Links to Inner Pages?
Examples:
- Niche Relevant Blog Commenting
- If you comment on blogs in your niche, take these as opportunities to drop relevant inner page links to your site, wherever relevant. If you do not normally comment on blogs, we recommend you start doing so in order to build links to your site and also to build authority within your niche community.
- Niche Relevant Forum Commenting
- Similar to blog commenting, find forums in your niche and create profiles with a link to your home page or one of the popular inner pages in your website. You can also drop links to relevant inner pages in the forum comments in order to direct members to pertinent information.
- Niche Relevant Guest Posting
- While guest posting on other blogs can be done legitimately, bloggers often leave links to their home page in their guest post bios. If you are talking about a specific topic in your guest post, consider linking to a relevant inner page on your website that offers further information on the topic of the blog. This helps direct targeted traffic to specific pages on your website and also builds quality deep links.
- Social Bookmarking
- Bookmark your inner pages with keyword-rich descriptions and tags. This will generate high quality links as well as essential social signals for your site’s inner pages.
- Business Listing / Citations
- Google values business listings so much that it is apart of the local search algorithm. The cool part about listings is that about 50% of them give you a dofollow, unoptimized link.
- Blog
- If you have a blog page on your site, link to relevant inner pages throughout the posts. This builds quality internal linking and also helps to build inner page SEO.
- Deep Link Directories (preferably Relevant and / or Geo Targeted)
- Submit your website’s inner links to deep link directories.
- Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
- On your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn brand pages make sure you link to inner pages on your site. You will benefit from the traffic sourced from social network brand pages, even if the links are nofollow.
- Pinterest, Flickr and Instagram
- Post images to image sites such as Pinterest, Flickr, Instagram, etc. and link them to the inner page where the original image is found, even if the links are nofollow.
- E-mail Signatures
- Include inner-page links in email signatures, specifically in E-mails talking about a particular service or product on your website.
- Questions & Answers
- Sites like Quora, Just Answer, Yahoo Answers, Answers.com is a great way to drive traffic to your website. Choose a blog post to use as your answer and a link back that has multiple examples or strategies. Find a new question to answer or one with more than 1,000 views per week. Answer questions with helpful advice and link back to your blog post.
- Document Sharing
- There are many document sharing sites on the web, such as Scribd, DocStoc, Slideshare, where you can share blog posts in the form of PPTs or PDFs. These sites allow you to link to your website, so add relevant inner-page links.
- Press Release
- If you share company news on press release sites and the news is related to a particular product, service or concept that is not directly represented on your home page, you can add relevant inner page links in the resource box of the press release. This is a good way of building links to your site’s inner pages.
- Wikipedia
Create a backlink strategy around posting with authority, diversity, relevancy and SEO in mind.
