What Is Internal Linking?
Internal linking refers to the process of hyperlinking to other pages or resources like image or document within same website. It helps in navigating the relevant and important, pages on your website.
These links are created with the help of buttons, clickable images, anchor text, or the clickable part of a hyperlink that links to another web page. Internal linking structure is crucial in SEO as it establishes site architecture and improves your link equity.
What Is Link Juice?
Link juice is a common term used in the SEO landscape. In simple words, it refers to the value being passed from one site to another through the help of hyperlinks.
Search engines like Google consider links as endorsements by other websites that offer a clear picture of value and authenticity. Link building can be performed in various ways but is broadly categorised into two types: internal linking and external linking.
Types of Internal Links
There are various types of internal links, such as menu or navigation links, footer, sidebar, in-text or contextual , and so on.
Understanding the differences between these links is important, as they play a critical role in making your website visitor’s journey worthwhile.
Menu/ Navigation Links
Your website’s most important links are in the primary navigation menu. These are the fixtures within your website header that communicate hierarchy to the users. Most often, they get organized around the product categories, primary services, or other key areas.
When users come to your website, these links communicate the hierarchy of pages. They are known as “navigation links,” as they operate like a map or guide for a website’s visitors.
Footer
Similarly to navigation links, footers remain consistent as users go throughout the pages of a website. These links should redirect the user to other pages on the website that are relevant to their needs.
Contact us, help, frequently asked questions, and resource-type pages are frequently linked in website footers.
Sidebar
Sidebar links refer to potential links that also serve the purpose of navigation. Internal links in the sidebar are used by some websites to redirect users to relevant content. These links are common on websites that feature a lot of content, news, etc.
Contextual Links
In-text links or Contextual links refer to those links that appear within the body of a website’s content. They are often used in the form of blog posts. These links emphasize relevant information to appease customers.
Why Internal Links Are Important for SEO
Underestimating the importance of internal linking is common! Warning: avoidance can be harmful for your website.
Yeah! Everyone knows the importance of external links (backlinking) to boost a site’s visibility, but often internal linking gets neglected.
However, eCommerce websites understand the significance of internal linking. Don’t get into a dilemma! Clear your doubts about internal linking!
Boosts ROI
By putting relevant keyword suggestions at their place most of the eCommerce websites are positioning themselves better in Google SERP rankings.
Improves Indexing
When Google crawls a web page, the presence of internal links helps it identify relevant content that is already present in its index. Thus, a website equipped with powerful internal links experiences easy indexing of its content.
Boosts Navigation and User Experience
One of the main purposes of internal links is to improve the site’s navigation. Good internal links provide relevant information to readers. The most popular example of internal linking is Wikipedia.
There are especially two types of links over there:
Contextual Links
These links have the most seo value. They are generally found inside the paragraphs of a text. Contextual links offer readers additional knowledge.
Related Links
These links offer additional articles or related content to the original article. Related links are mostly located between two paragraphs or at the end of the article.
Prevents Keyword Cannibalization
Cannibalization of keywords happens when Google crawls your website and finds relevance in several pages for the same keyword. In this scenario, update internal links pointing to those pages, which you already removed.
You can also see if removed URLs have been removed from Google’s index.
Internal Linking Best Practices
Internal linking is an important part of on-page optimization. However, internal linking done the wrong way can drag down your SERP rankings. So, how do you perform internal linking to elevate ranking potential:
Use Descriptive, Keyword-Rich Anchor Text
The value of internal linking can only become worthwhile without optimizing the anchor text for those internal links. Ideally, anchor text must explain the content on the page.
To boost rankings of specific keywords for your linked-to page, ensure to use exact, partial match, or contextual anchor text to signal your website’s strong relevance to Google.
Strategically Use Dofollow/Unfollow
Dofollow refers to robot search directives that order Google crawlers to follow links on the page rather than ignore them. Sometimes users want to use “nofollow” tags for pages that don’t need to rank.
Link to Old Posts in Your New Blog Posts
Generally, no new blog post should go live without including internal links to relevant content. However, if there is no natural relationship between two pages, forcing internal links can be detrimental to SEO.
Monitor and Repair Broken Links
With the continuous addition of new content to your website, internal links may break. When you change the content or url paths on your website, some content management systems will automatically send redirects. But it never happens.
To tackle this situation, you have to develop a proper link maintenance strategy and identify broken links.
Open in Same Page
It is recommended that your internally linked pages open in the same tab after clicking.You can simply tap the back button in order to find the page.
Internal Linking Practices to Avoid
Internal linking is crucial to the success of an SEO campaign. However, the process of internal linking is a bit scientific. You have to pass the link juice to the pages that you want to get higher rankings.
Unfortunately, to get higher SERP rankings, people get involved in bad internal linking practices that can put your website in trouble.
Here we are listing common internal linking mistakes:
# Adding Too Many Links
Don’t create a slew of links from a page just because it has a high domain authority. Forcing too many links can dilute the internal strength of each link. Too many internal links can also be overwhelming for readers.
# Using the Same Anchor Text Over and Over
When building internal links to a post, avoid using the same anchor text so many times. You should always build 100% keyword-rich anchor text for internal links.
# Links Pointing to Pages Blocked by the Meta Robots
# Links pointing to broken links
Benefits of Internal Linking
The process of interlinking web pages derives a range of benefits, such as a great user experience, more conversions, improved crawl efficiency, and much more.
Enhances User Experience
SEO is not a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to ranking your website on popular search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, etc.
You will be glad to know that internal linking plays a crucial role in boosting the online experience of your website. These links provide a room to the audience to get deep insights on the information they are looking for.
Improves Engagement Metrics
With internal linking, you can make it easy for your audience to dig for information on your website. This helps in reducing bounce rates and increasing the user’s impression time on the web page.
Drives Towards Conversion
For eCommerce brands building internal linking on websites helps improve user navigation and ultimately persuade your target audience to make a purchase.
With early-funnel content, you can drive connections that can ultimately lead to conversions.
Improves Crawl Efficiency
Crawl depth and crawl efficiency relate to the topic of your site architecture. Moreover, search engine crawlers work in the below-mentioned pattern:
- Spiders, which are known as automated algorithms, crawl the web pages on new as well as existing domains.
- After finding your website, they scour the code for SEO ranking factors on every individual web page of the website.
- What information they find will become part of your website’s record or index. This will also determine your website’s rankings on search engines.
Builds Link Equity
Each of the links on your website has something termed “link equity.” It denotes the passing of a link from one page to another.
Linking pages together allows link equity to spread more quickly.Google ranks the page based on metrics such as value, relevance, and authority.
FAQ
What is an internal link?
An internal link refers to any form of link that redirects one page of your website to another page. These links are utilized by both users and search engines to find relevant content.
Do internal links help with SEO?
Yes, of course, internal links help Google find, understand, and index all pages of your website.
How many internal links per page do you use for SEO?
According to some research articles, search engines have approximately a crawl limit of 150 links per page. Matt Cutts of Google advised keeping external and internal links under 100.
Why are internal links important for SEO?
There are the below-mentioned proven reasons that show the importance of internal links for SEO:
- Improves the user experience.
- Boosts traffic.
- Fastens indexing.
What are internal and external links?
Simply put, internal linking happens when a site links to other urls on the same site, on the other hand, external linking occurs when a site links to urls on a different site.
How to build internal links for SEO?
Let’s explore strategies to build internal links.
- Create lots and lots of content.
- High-authority pages should be linked
- Ensure the contextuality of links.
- Be scientific with the number of links.
