Internal Linking and Search Engine Optimization
Thinking about the importance of creating a good structure for your website, you also want to think about how your visitors browse through pages on your site. Whenever you publish a new post, you are increasing the number of pages that make up your site. Unless you complete a mini “web” of linking to the previous posts, no one will discover them, nor will you be able to decrease your bounce rate.
Let’s assume that you have five hundred posts on your blog, but you haven’t made a point to sequentially add links to previous posts that relate to what you are mentioning in the current post. Visitors interested in what you have written won’t be able to visit these extra posts unless you have added a related posts area to your blog or they explicitly search for those terms.
Your main goal is to make it as easy as possible for them to browse through your content, and this is where internal linking comes into play.
Introduction
Internal linking is more than just linking to previous posts, but increasing your search engine rankings for the posts, keywords, and exposing more of your posts that might not have seen as much traffic.
These are a few of the key benefits of increasing the number of links to internal pages, or pages that you have already created within your site.
- Linking increases traffic to those posts that have been linked to more frequently.
- Combined with traditional keyword targeting, you can link to posts that might be able to increase in rankings. For example, you could create simple posts that explain how to do something, then link back to them in future reference posts.
- Linking makes it easier for visitors to navigate your site.
Best Practices
Even though the main method of linking to other posts is through content, there are several other methods for performing the task in slightly less obvious methods.
Link Posts – Posts that share links with visitors, such as your most popular articles over the past month help provide a resource to your readers, while still encouraging them to visit additional posts.
Footer/Header Links – Placing additional links to your content in “featured” areas can help increase visibility of the articles, as these areas are often most viewed anyway.
Images – When you go about placing images into your content, rather than linking them to other sites (where appropriate), you can link them back to other posts of a similar topic.
Related Posts Widget – Placed in either the sidebar or beneath individual posts, this addition can provide value, in that it increases the chance that people visit additional pages.
Navigation Structure – Including a breadcrumbs or drop-down navigation menu could help you place additional content in these areas, specifically for individual posts.
SEO Methods
An important decision that you have to make is how effective you want internal linking to be. For example, if you want certain posts to rise more in search engines, link to them more often. Otherwise, you should simply be linking back to internal posts whenever possible and with whatever keywords are available.
Using Surrounding Text – This can be important, especially if you are targeting a key phrase, such as “How to Blog”. Ideally, the entire phrase should be used in the link, rather than just one or two words. Many search engines take into consideration these words when generating the quality of the site.
Variation – Don’t stick with one format for linking to internal pages. You want to vary and change the surrounding text and any keywords you are using.
Targeting Keywords – In other examples, it would be better if you left out smaller, filler words that just add length to the link. With this method, you should target sole keywords that stand out to readers who may want to learn more.
Avoid: Using words like “click here” or “link” to inform your readers that they should be clicking on that link isn’t good. You should instead be using the appropriate keywords.
Use Statistics and Tools – Check the ranking of several pages within various search engines and other tools to determine where your posts rank. See if adding extra links throughout posts and the homepage of your site increase the ranking (towards the top of the results) after targeting certain keywords.
Focus on Link Equity – Don’t link out “externally” too often, but keep the number of internal to external links rather equal. Additionally, don’t focus too heavily on a single post, but rather a collection of posts that have been semi-popular.
Conclusion
Remember that internal linking is just another strategy that you have to think about every time you write a new post. Although it does add some time looking through your archives and selecting the right keywords, in the end it will help increase your traffic through higher search engine results for certain keywords and pages.
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I like this information, especially about the internal linking to keep visitors on your site and reduce the bounce rate. Now to figure out a way to go about doing this… o_O
very nice thanx alot
The best tip in SEO in my opinion is to not link out to any neighborhood that you believe is unsafe. Not have any outbound links is even better.
ya,
There is no point taking risks by linking to a bad neighbor. I think it can have adverse effect on your search rankings.
These have been great tips about internal linking. I would think about it more carefully next time i update my blog, although I rarely do it. Using Facebook, Flickr and Twitter as promotion tools can also drive a huge amount of traffic to your site.
Internal linking is a very important concept for SEO. It such nice suggestion for SEO’s.
Another brilliant ideas from you bro! I really hope that soon this will work for me. Keep it up!
Please also remember to make maximum use of categories and tags on your blog. Use your primary keywords for both. There are also several SEO plugins for WordPress. It is important to click the “no-index” box for the category, tags and archives. This will eliminate any duplicate content filter from Google.
I also agree that embedding your keyword link into popular posts will have good benefit. You can link to older posts. These po;ular posts carry more PR and authority. Normally, it is the job of the category pages to distribute authority. You can help by providing more internal links.
I think that the secret of success in the online marketing varies. Determined on the nature of your own websites, the best approach might differed from some other kinds of individual blogs.
Your post about internal linking is very informative. Thanks a lot for sharing it. I’ve bookmarked your blog. Keep working.
This is a great article. I was just about to do a search for an internal linking guide and I find it here before I even have to search. There are a few tips in this guide that I was not following, I will have to implement those tips to get the full value of internal linking.
I also agree that embedding your keyword link into popular posts will have good benefit. You can link to older posts. These po;ular posts carry more PR and authority.
hanks for the tips, it’s always nice to bring up some points that is usually forgotten or never learned in the first place.
A very nice tool to build internal linking into your wordpress blog is the related posts plugin, which I’m using on my blog. Besides that plugin, I always link manually to pages that are related to the post I’ve written.
And a self written “Top Posts” widget is also a very easy and usefull tool to give linklove to some of your better posts.
Internal linking is very important part of onsite optimization. it will definitely help crawler to get index various pages of the website. nice information
I would like to ask whether the placement of the image our site, whether the outgoing links? or no effect? (eg images stored in tinypic. thanks for support
Nice article. I’ve learned about external and internal linking, but i don’t understand, why link to my self blog its main external linking?
sometimes i don’t care about amount of linking, its make me confuse.
How to make a link to my self post as an internal linking? i use blogger and still confuse with: link to this post method.
thanks
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You definaltely want to stay clear of seo firms that don’t shows signs of evolving, algos never sleep. The days of keyword stuffing and automatic search engine submissions are long gone.
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I always keep external links to a minimum and try and maintain good navigation around my site.
The best tip in SEO in my opinion is to not link out to any neighborhood that you believe is unsafe.
Hi! Great post on internal linking strategies. I did this for one of my sites. I noticed the bounce rate went way down and consequently my sales rose. Thanks for this – I’ll apply it to my other sites as well! -david