Effective Internal Linking In Search Engine Optimization
Did you know that there’s more to linking between pages in your website than just creating a bond between them? Internal linking actually passes link juice. But that’s pretty simple SEO. Most webmasters naturally link to and from their content.
But is there a way to effectively link within your website in order to organically cause an increase in search engine rankings? The answer is yes. (Yeah, I just answered my own question… got a problem with that? 😉
The Basics
The best way to effectively link within your site is to link more within your site. Doing this makes it more complex and powerful in terms of linking. It also makes sure your link power is regulated along your site so one page can’t be too much more powerful than another and that if one page becomes more powerful so does the entire website, causing more opportunities to rank in search engines.
Using anchor text is another way you can effectively link internally. By targeting important keywords using anchor text, you are maximizing your gain from internal linking. In addition, you are focusing your link on a keyword that you feel captures your webpage, telling Google what your page is about and terms what to rank it high for.
The Harder Stuff
As mentioned before, it’s important to try to increase your internal linking as much as possible. There are certain tricks to do this.
My favorite is placing a link to an important page in the sidebar or footer of your blog. Again, you should always be taking advantage of anchor text when linking to content in your site, whether you’re linking from outside your site or inside your site. So placing an anchor text backlink to your homepage or services page in a part of your site that’s on most pages like the footer and sidebar is a really great idea to power-up that webpage with little efforts. However, don’t overdo this as the more you use this method and similar ones, the less each link is actually worth. A page with less dofollow outbound links will transfer more link juice with each link than a page with the same inbound links and a lot of outbound links.
Another way to increase internal links in your website is creating a “links” page. Your links page should link to important pages on your site, and if you want, recent posts. Make sure you link to your links page a lot so that the page has a lot of power to transfer to more important pages. If you’re blogging for income, you can also sell advertisements and links on your links page and inform buyers of your efficient internal network of links to persuade them to buy.
As you can see, internal linking in search engine optimization is very important and paired with an effective strategy, can boost your search engine rankings without external links in the picture.
Got an internal linking tip of your own? Share it in the comments!
SEO is Evolving: Trend You Need to Know About [Infographic]
How SEO Services Can Help Increase Your Website Traffic
The Impatient Newbie’s Guide to SEO
What’s Up Bloggers! Roundup #5 with Roxana Nasoi
{ 32 Responses }