There’s no denying it: Internal link building is one of the best SEO strategies out there! Not only does it help Google crawl and index your content more efficiently by directing them through different pages on your site, but it also helps users find your content more strategically with related posts.
Table of Contents
- What is Internal Linking?
- What is the purpose of Internal Linking?
- The Theory Behind Internal Linking
- Types of Internal Links
- Steps to an Effective Internal Linking Strategy:
- 1. Set your Topics
- 2. Create a lot of content around those terms
- 3. Identify Important Pages
- 4. Silo your content
- 5. Link Placement
- 6. Use Effective Anchor Text
- 7. Link Deep
- 8. Link Naturally
- 9. Use Relevant Links
- 10. Use DoFollow Links
- 11. Do NOT use too many links
- 12. Fix Broken Links
- 13. Identify Orphaned Pages
- 14. Optimize Navigational Links
- 15. Use Google Search Console
- HTML <a> rel Attributes
- Conclusion
- FAQ
What is Internal Linking?
An internal link is a hyperlink on a web page that links to another internal page or resource on the same website or domain, such as an image, page, or document.
What is the purpose of Internal Linking?
Internal Links connect content for readers, improving your website’s usability.
Internal links help Google to understand the most critical pages on your website. Search engines consider pages with lots of internal links to be more important than those with fewer links, and Google uses PageRank to calculate the value of that page, showing them more in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
The Theory Behind Internal Linking
Internal linking strengthens the overall search-optimized value of a website. Inner linking provides clear paths for spiders, prolonged sessions for users, and a tight-knit network of pages and posts.
Types of Internal Links
You need to know four types of internal links: contextual links, navigational links, footer links, and image links.
- Contextual links: a type of link found within the body of content that has matching content surrounding the link.
- Navigational links: a set of site-wide links to keep visitors oriented and make it easier for them to move around.
- Footer links: a set of site-wide links that appear on nearly every page of a website in the website’s footer.
- Image links: links that are found attached to an image or graphic. This links out to a linked page and not a larger size of the media.
Steps to an Effective Internal Linking Strategy:
Please follow these steps to improve your site’s structure and up your digital marketing game.
1. Set your Topics
Before you start any optimization, you must ensure you know what you are optimizing for. These could be key performance indicators (KPIs), product pages or services your business relies on, keyword research you find promising, or even personal goals. The goal here is to link to relevant pages within your website.
2. Create a lot of content around those terms
With any link optimization, you will need lots of content to link to. It’s tough to optimize your link strategy with no content to link to. Use keywords that fit your plan and focus your content marketing efforts on improving the SEO score of your website.
3. Identify Important Pages
Identify the pages you want to rank and for people to read; do not link every page equally. You want to signal to Google that these are important pages, and if they are not necessary to you, they will not be important to you or the reader.
4. Silo your content
Silo’ing content is the process of organizing your content into virtual or physical silos. This silo’ing helps users find your content more manageable and helps internet crawlers better understand what your content is about. The process of silo’ing is organizing your similar content together under one parent and subcategories.
5. Link Placement
In-content links are significant, and this is a part of the Reasonable Surfer Model Google employs to analyze links. This algorithm focuses on where links are on the page and how they are emphasized (bold, italicized, font size) determines the likelihood they will be clicked on versus buried in the footer or sidebar where no one might not see them.
6. Use Effective Anchor Text
When identifying target keywords/topic clusters to hyperlink, make sure they are descriptive and not generic. Instead of having a link read “learn more,” try using “learn more about [topic],” this lowers bounce rates and helps Search Engines understand better what the backlink is about.
7. Link Deep
No one is going to find your content if it’s more than three clicks deep. Make it easy for readers and Search Engines to find your best new content. We live in the age of convenience; if you don’t offer easy answers or solutions, someone else will. Category pages can naturally improve the click depth and interlinking of your blog posts or e-commerce pages.
8. Link Naturally
Add links where you expect someone to click on them. This means they must be visible (not hidden with CSS, disguised with font colors, etc.) You should add links to keep people engaged; this implies a link could elaborate on a topic, could provide additional information, it could offer a call-to-action or something you’d like the user to perform. Do not use a Plugin that blanket links everything together; this tactic is seen as spammy.
9. Use Relevant Links
The links you add should be related pages to the anchor text and the reader. Please do not add links you want to rank with zero search intent behind them; this will confuse the reader and search engines. You always need to add relevant content when linking. When bulk updating links, do not automate dead links all to the homepage because it’s easier; that provides a bad user experience.
10. Use DoFollow Links
You want readers to follow your links, so you should wish to Search Engines to follow suit. Make all internal links do follow so crawlers can get a better topography of your site’s architecture. If you use no-follow links, Googlebot might choose not to follow them. It’s ok to use nofollow on external links; be mindful of how you use it.
11. Do NOT use too many links
Do not over-optimize your website links. You want to improve your internal linking structure, not make it more confusing and messy. The goal is to send as much “link juice” as possible to appropriate target pages, so be mindful of the number of internal links you add to your new piece of content to help broaden your link equity.
12. Fix Broken Links
I can’t believe I’m writing this, but fix broken links or links with too many redirects. Keep the layout flowing as quickly as possible. Every time a link is broken, it adds a layer of latency. It’s also essential to fix 404 links as it stops the reader dead in their tracks and has them start searching for what they were searching for.
13. Identify Orphaned Pages
Orphaned pages are pages with no internal links, and this is bad because no reader will be able to find these pages. You can identify these pages by performing an SEO Audit with SEMrush, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, Sitebulb, or another SEO Tool.
Every new page on your site does not need to be in your navigation. If you have a lot of content on your site, use landing pages to navigate users to critical areas of your website. This will provide a better user experience and avoid cluttering up your navigation.
15. Use Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) Top Internal Links will show you what Google has found to be your top linked internal pages. You can also use Screaming Frog to identify link placement, link value, and other essential link metrics.
HTML <a> rel Attributes
It is crucial to understand how to properly hyperlink content within your content management system (CMS).
Examples
A link with a rel attribute:
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://example.com/">matt cutts</a>
Attribute Values
| Value | Description |
|---|---|
| alternate | Provides a link to an alternate representation of the document (i.e., print page, translated, or mirror) |
| author | Provides a link to the author of the document |
| bookmark | Permanent URL used for bookmarking |
| external | This indicates that the referenced document is not part of the same site as the current document |
| help | Provides a link to a help document |
| license | Provides a link to licensing information for the document |
| next | Provides a link to the next document in the series |
| nofollow | Links to an unendorsed document, like a paid link. (“nofollow” is used by Google, to specify that the Google search spider should not follow that link) |
| noopener | Requires that any browsing context created by following the hyperlink must not have an opener browsing context |
| noreferrer | Makes the referrer unknown. No referer header will be included when the user clicks the hyperlink |
| prev | The previous document in a selection |
| search | Links to a search tool for the document |
| tag | A tag (keyword) for the current document |
I hope these steps helped to boost the authority of your pages. If I missed any steps, please let me know in the comments below.
Conclusion
Internal linking is one of the most overlooked aspects of search engine optimization (SEO). When done right, internal links can help improve page rankings for higher-ranking pages linked internally -making them more likely to be seen by Google’s crawlers.
Resources
I’ve compiled a list of resources with guides on implementing internal links in your blog posts, pages, and content.
FAQ
What is internal linking?
Do internal links help SEO?
How many internal links per page?
Published on: 2021-10-02
Updated on: 2023-03-14
