Want to Maximise Internal Links? Effective internal linking plays a vital role when it comes to improving user experience and Boosts Your SEO
When you hear the term “link building,” it is probably assumed that the person is talking about external links or backlinks.
This isn’t wrong. Backlinks from other websites are a strong signal to search engines and a driving force behind organic search rankings. However, the benefit of building internal links are often underestimated and overlooked.
While internal links aren’t necessarily what we think of first when we discuss link building, they are an integral part of successful SEO. If used strategically they can successfully boost your rankings and web traffic to other important pages on your site.
Maximise Internal Links
What are Internal Links?
All websites consist of a variety of internal and external links. Internal links connect pages and posts on your own website. External links connect your website and pages to and from other websites. In this post, we will only focus on how to maximize internal links for SEO.
Simply put, an internal link is any link from one page on your website to another page on your website. Both your users and search engines use these links to find content on your website. Your users will use links to navigate through your site as well as to find the content they want to find. Search engines also use links to navigate your site and are unable to find a page if there are no links to it.
Internal linking has three main purposes:
- Aids in website navigation
- Defines the architecture and hierarchy of a website
- Distributes page authority and ranking power throughout the site
Internal linking is an important factor for Google and other search engines as it is what helps them discover the content on your site. A page or post that gets a large number of links tells Google that it is a page of importance and high-value.
Maximise Internal Links
How to Maximise Internal Links
Key Pages
Any successful internal linking strategy begins with identifying your key hub pages. These are often your target broad keywords, that have a larger search volume and are often the pages that drive the most valuable traffic to your website.
Content
Content links prove to be extremely beneficial SEO. To maximise internal links, you need great content. A killer content marketing strategy is key to successful link building. Without pages and content, you have nowhere to link to. With lots of great, keyword-rich pages, you have lots of linkable content.
Engagement
As mentioned above, internal links help users navigate and find content on your site. By adding internal links, you give users the opportunity to engage with your site. Google, specifically, loves to count links that people actually click.
Positioning and accessibility play an important role in the value of your internal links. Are users more likely to engage with a link that is at the bottom of a page or are they more likely to interact with more visible links at the top of the page and within the content they are reading?
A good tip to help tell if your internal links are working and have value is through their engagement and interaction from users.
Anchor Text
Once you have determined which links and pages should be on a page, it’s important to use the right anchor text. Anchor text is the clickable text that readers can see and interact with.
Although optimising your keywords is incredibly beneficial for your SEO rankings, Over-optimising and keyword stuffing can be just as damaging! Ensure your anchor text looks and read naturally in your copy.
Accessibility and User Experience
In the fast past and ever-changing digital landscape users want to be able to reach the content they are looking for. Today, many users don’t wait more than 3 seconds for a web page to load, thus will become frustrated and leave if they cannot find desirable content they seek.
A golden rule to consider is that no page should be more than 3 clicks away.
Maximise Internal Links
Common Internal Link Problems
Another important aspect to help maximise internal links are understanding the various issues and problems that may arise during your link building strategy.
Some of the most frequent problems that occur include:
Broken Internal Links
Bad URLs and non-existent pages are the most common causes of broken links and can be detrimental to the value of your website. This results in the user and search engine crawlers being sent to a non-existent web page, which often results in a 404 error. These errors can be fixed by removing the broken link or replacing it with a live page.
Links that Could Not be Crawled
This often occurs when the format of a URL is incorrect and can be fixed by editing the URLs and formatting problems as necessary.
Page Crawl Depth of More Than Three Clicks
Important pages and content should be easy to discover! If important pages take too many clicks for users to reach search engines will consider them as unimportant and lose value. Ensure your important pages are quick and easy for your users to access.
Pages with Only One Internal Link
A page’s value relies upon receiving several links from high-authority pages within your website. Pages with Solitary internal links are a missed opportunity to add value to your important pages. As we’ve discussed, you should be internally linking to key pages from other relevant content.
Orphaned Pages
Orphaned pages are pages with no incoming links. These are often forms or galleries that have little to no SEO purpose. These may cause search engines to scan unnecessary content and overlook other valuable pages. Ensure your sitemaps contain beneficial, linkable information on every page.
Maximise Internal Links
Get Started
Without internal links, your content can’t rank! With a well-planned and detailed internal linking strategy, you can show which content is related and which of your pages are most informative and valuable. Internal linking doesn’t need a complex approach either. Unlike earning external links, you are in full control of every step of the process!
With the right data, tools, and planning, you can intuitively roll out a quick strategy that can have big results.
If you need help to maximise internal links on your site, our SEO and digital marketing experts are here to help. Get in touch with us today and we will be happy to assist!
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