Great tips to use internal links for boosting website rankings

Great tips to use internal links for boosting website rankings

The best way to show off your related content is by linking pages and blog posts to and from each other, including the homepage. Your homepage will have the most influence in ranking content, while your contextual links will show search engine bots what content is most important

Here are several places where you should consider adding internal links.

Before we dive into some of the more unique internal linking strategies, let’s take a look at some of the overall best practices for internal links that our respondents recommended.

Start with Quality Content

“Creating quality content is essential,” says Nick Galov of Hosting Tribunal. “The last thing you want is to have lots of linked pages with bad content.”

“Instead of randomly linking pages, you need to devote time to producing original content.”

“For instance, one of the IT websites that I have contributed to had a great design and new posts on a daily basis. However, the content varied greatly: some of the posts were incredibly well written, while others were just put together for the sake of publishing.”

“Overall, we did manage to link our pages, but the result wasn’t as good as we hoped for.”

Link Related Pages to Each Other

“Use relevant links,” says Fisher Unitech’s Jackie Tihanyi. “Before linking two pages together, look at the type of content those pages focus on. If, and only if, the two directly relate, then link them to one another.”

Fundera’s Lizzie Dunn agrees: “Best practice is to link keywords via anchor text to content that directly relates to or covers that specific keyword.”

“Internally linking pages based on topical relevance—as opposed to random internal links—helps indicate to the search engines that these pages are related and thus strengthens the topical relevance of that category within the site,” says Craig De Borba of Ooma Small Business.

And Best Company’s Rochelle Burnside recommends “linking to related content that will keep readers on your site longer, such as engaging blog posts and long-form content. This will increase dwell time and therefore improve SERP rankings.”

Link For Users, Not Just for SEO

“Make sure your internal links are natural and will make sense to your readers,” says Colin Mosier of JSL Marketing & Web Design. “Often, content marketers will insert a link simply because they believe they have to for SEO. Unfortunately, this does not help your efforts.”

“We think about the user first and ask ourselves: ‘Does it make sense to do this, or are we just doing it for SEO?” says Jason Martinez of Redefine Marketing Group.

“You links must provide relevant information,” says Andrea Loubier of Mailbird. “Linking merely for the sake of linking is not a good practice, and search engines will take notice.”

HashtagJeff’s Max Pond agrees: “It’s easy to get caught up making a science out of internal linking: measuring keyword anchor density, linking from your most authoritative pages, balancing partial- and exact-match, etc. Put the science on the back burner and think about how internal links are going to solve visitors’ problems.”

So how do you do this?

“Consider what resources your readers would want to see next that will help them continue their journey towards conversion,” says Matt Benevento of Geek Powered Studios.

“Ensure that your links match the flow of the overall content, and make your links so compelling that the readers can’t resist clicking on them,” says Nathan Sebastian of GoodFirms.

As Lauren Petermeyer of Summit Life Media says, “A link for SEO’s sake on which no one clicks does very little good in the long-term health of the site.”

Avoid Only Linking to Landing Pages

“Stop linking to your homepage or contact page when linking internally,” says Jason Yao of CanvasPeople. “Make an effort to link to unique blog, category, or product pages that are relevant to the anchor text being used.”

Katherine Rowland of YourParkingSpace agrees: “Make the internal links on your site varied and thorough. Most sites have far too many links simply to the homepage. Make each different page link to multiple other, preferably deeper-level, pages on your site. This creates as many ties between pages as possible.”

Use Keywords as Anchor Text

“Anchor text is text to which a link is added,” says Rahul Singh of HubsAdda. “In other words, anchor text is a short description of the linked page. If the anchor text is ‘sunglasses,’ when a user clicks the link it should take him/her to a page about sunglasses.”

“One of the most important parts of internal linking is making sure that you’re using strong anchors,” says Ben Johnston of Sagefrog Marketing Group. “Search engines can glean some intent from the text that you use to link to your pages, so do some keyword research to find a great keyword to use for your anchor.”

“Your own website is the only place that you have full control over anchor text, so take advantage of it,” says Tony DeGennaro of Dragon Social. “Using your target keywords as anchor text for internal links can help you drastically increase your rankings for those keywords.”

“I recently changed the internal links to one of our blogs throughout our website, and without any keyword stuffing, I was able to get the blog to rank #3 on the first page of Google with only about an hour of work. This really taught me that anchor text does matter,” DeGennaro says.

“Many people think a hyperlink can be plopped down over any relevant text, and for some, that may be adequate,” says Nextiva’s Yaniv Masjedi. However, if you’re serious about SEO, you need to get into SEO keyword research.”

“Identify not only the article’s primary keywords, but also secondary, tertiary, and numerous related search terms. While secondary keywords are great for headers, tertiary and related terms make fantastic anchor text for internal links,” Masjedi says.

Read more The reasons why your website should have more internal links

_______________________________________________________________________________

Please contact us for seo service packages at TDHSEO.COM.

TDHSEO Team

Email: tdhseo@gmail.com
Skype: tdhseo
https://www.facebook.com/tdhseo

Thank you!

The reasons why your website should have more internal links

Internal linking occurs when a website creator adds a hyperlink to a page that directs to another page within the same domain. For example, if you go from a company’s homepage to its contact page by clicking on a link in its content, you’re using an internal link. Internal linking makes it easier for users to navigate around a website, helps to create a hierarchy of information within the website, and helps to keep each page’s ranking power even with others within the same domain.

The reasons why your website should have more internal links

If you need some convincing before you start going <a href> happy, there are a few key reasons why internal linking is important for SEO.

1. GOOGLE CAN UNDERSTAND YOUR WEBSITE STRUCTURE, AND INDEX YOUR PAGES FASTER:

Your high-priority pages should have a higher amount of internal links going to them. This gives them more link value and a hierarchy to your website that Google can understand. Google bots can then better crawl your website, hopping from one page to another through your internal links. This is great for newly-created pages of importance to you, as it means they get indexed faster and therefore appear on the SERP a lot quicker.

2. IT HELPS GOOGLE UNDERSTAND YOUR WEBSITE CONTENT

When you use an internal link you send both users and Google bots to another, relevant page. Google will get an idea, and as will the user, on what that page is about when you use descriptive anchor text.

This means it is preferable to describe the page you are linking to with a key word rather than something generic like “click here”.

The words “clicking here” do not tell bots what content will be on the page you are linking to, whereas “blue hats”, for example, reveals this.

Using interlinking on your blog helps you form so-called topic clusters with your content. You’ll have one high-priority page (a pillar page), with other posts that contain content on the same theme but at a more granular level (cluster posts) – The pillar will link to each cluster and vice versa; this is SEO interlinking.

Google will understand that you cover the topic in detail, establishing yourself as an authority on the subject, so therefore Google better understands what your website is about and it can rank you more highly for all the surrounding related keywords you may target.

3. IT HELPS SPREAD LINK JUICE TO ALL OF YOUR SITE

The majority of backlinks go to a website’s homepage, giving the most authority, or ‘link juice’ to this page. But, by using strategic internal linking, you can help spread the power of the site through all the inner pages too. Just make sure you don’t NoFollow your own internal links (it happens!)

It’s good practice to go on your website and check the pages or blog posts with the most backlinks- you can then try and find opportunities to link internally from these pages to make sure you spread link value throughout your site.

You can use Google Search Console to find out your pages with the highest amount of backlinks.

Just log in to GSC, click on ‘links’ at the bottom of the left hand side, and you can then see the sites that link to you most and which pages are the most linked to.

Psst, you can also see which pages have the most internal links too, and use this to run an internal link audit- more on this later. 

Use these powerful pages to link internally to your high-priority pages.

4. IT PROVIDES VALUE TO USERS

Not only are internal links a great way to communicate with Google, but they also are invaluable to users. Often when someone is researching a topic, they will probably have questions that relate to that topic that you can provide answers to, or products for.

An example from one of our clients, GolfSupport (a golf e-commerce store), may be a blog post we wrote on the different types of golf clubs on the market.

Although the post may take you through the differences between woods and irons, it doesn’t answer other questions around the topic – like once you’ve decided on the club you want- how do you know what size to get? Here we could link internally to the cluster post we created on that topic, helping push the user along the buyer’s journey. Then, in the golf club size guide, you may want to internally link to a category page for that particular golf club (if you are an e-commerce store).

You’ve helped a consumer narrow down what they want, and pushed them deeper into your site through an internal linking strategy.

Read  more at about How Many Internal Links per Page or Post

_______________________________________________________________________________

Please contact us for seo service packages at TDHSEO.COM.

TDHSEO Team

Email: tdhseo@gmail.com
Skype: tdhseo
https://www.facebook.com/tdhseo

Thank you!

How Many Internal Links per Page or Post

You might wonder – do I have enough internal links? Or too many? When planning an internal linking strategy, your top question should be “What links will my readers click on?” Understanding what your reader needs will help you determine which related internal content you can link.

Google may consider a high ratio of links on a page as spammy – if the links use misleading, irrelevant anchor text or are unrelated to the page topic.

Rather than thinking of a set minimum or maximum links per page, your guideline should be: Will this internal link benefit my site visitors? If a link won’t help the user find what they want, don’t include it.

Remember, link value is shared between all the links on a given page, so adding an excessive amount of links will dilute link equity. Aim to keep the number of internal links per page to under 100.

Sometimes, your page may contain links that don’t need to count toward the ranking of a page. Tell Google to disregard these links in places such as comment sections by using nofollow tags.

When it comes to knowing how many internal links your website needs, nobody really knows. Google’s algorithms, which change often anyway, currently only say to “keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number”. The problem is Google never lets anyone know what a “reasonable number” is, so everybody is winging it. Even some of the biggest experts in the game have no idea whether that number means a few, a few dozen, or a hundred or more.

In simpler terms, it really depends on your page. When it comes to your content only (meaning exclude your header, your navigation bar, your footer, etc.), you should only have a few internal links on the page. Don’t overuse them but remember to add enough that your page is informative for the user. For example, if you write about 1500 words for a content piece, it should include an internal link every 400-500 words for the best results. However, it’s best to keep track of the best practices for internal linking since Google does change its algorithms often.

Think of your website as the ocean. Rivers and streams run off the mountains into the ocean. As they do, the ocean has more minerals and water. Now, imagine that we started draining the oceans little by little — assuming all of that water actually had somewhere else to go. The oceans would slowly get smaller again.

There is a similar flow through your website, external links fill the site with authority. But they do so by linking to specific pages. These pages become more authoritative. Now, as you begin linking out from that page through internal links, you transfer some of that authority to another page.

It’s not hard to see how internal links help SEO, so we don’t want to eliminate them to prevent draining a webpage of its link equity. But we should be careful not to create too many internal links on our most important landing pages.

To achieve this, streamline your navigation on landing pages. And make sure each internal link really adds value to the customer experience. As your customers click that link, they spend time on the next page and demonstrate to search engines that SEO links add actual value.

How many internal links is too many? It’s not easy to state a specific number, but if you’re asking yourself, “Am I adding value?”, it becomes clearer how many links make sense.

Read more Great tips to use internal links for boosting website rankings

_______________________________________________________________________________

Please contact us for seo service packages at TDHSEO.COM.

TDHSEO Team

Email: tdhseo@gmail.com
Skype: tdhseo
https://www.facebook.com/tdhseo

Thank you!