Internal linking is an important part of SEO, and almost every post you see about it online extols its benefits. The concept itself is simple: you link one page of a website with another page on the same website, so that the source domain is the same as the target domain.
Why Internal Linking?
An SEO company does internal linking for three basic purposes:
- Keeping website navigation easy
- Defining the hierarchy and architecture of the site
- Sharing out ranking power and page authority over the whole website
Internal linking is known to augment the search engine optimization value of a website, through making clear paths for spiders, extended sessions for users, and a close network of posts and pages.
How to Maximize your SEO with Internal Linking
- Make Enough Content: With internal linking in play, you will need many internal pages on the website. For this, you will need a compelling content marketing strategy, and for that, you will need loads of content, with a lot of it being linkable. With more links to more places on the website, your internal linking will work better. While some strategies demand complicated page layering and a certain number of links to page levels, many experts agree that all it takes for this to work is enough links redirecting internally.
- Make Use of Anchor Text: The internal links you set up should be made to anchor text instead of linked images. While image links are ok, they should not be the main source of a link. Moreover, when using anchor text, make sure it is not optimized. It is a lot better to go with something natural and then highlighting and linking it.
- Make Deep Links: It is important to avoid the top-level pages that are on a site when creating internal links. People often add links to the homepage on every other page, but this does nothing for the overall SEO. Ensure that instead, you make links to other pages embedded deep in the website.
- Make Natural Links: Internal linking revolves around giving the user information. This means the links themselves will – and should – have value to the reader. Internal linking drives up the engagement on the site, because when a user sets eyes on a link that matches the content’s context, they will click on the link. If the link happens to be internal, the visitor will stay on the site for a longer time.
Published: March 28, 2018