Internal link building is one of the best and most overlooked on-page SEO strategies any team can implement throughout an entire website. We will discuss internal linking, why it is important, and what tools to use to help find internal link opportunities.
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It may sound simple at first, but after running many SEO audits over the last ten years in my career you would be surprised how many websites do not have an internal linking strategy in place. When Google bots crawl your website and find an internal link to a page within your site, this helps your organic visibility and grow SERP positioning.
What Are Internal Links?
Internal linking is pointing a link from one page to another within your website. This is very different from external linking, which we cover below. Interlinking allows users to continue their journey throughout your website, helping to improve overall user engagement and boost your engagement rate.
Typically, you only see internal links to your pages from the website menu. This overall process expands to your website content that can link to a blog post or other internal service pages.
In the example below, I will focus on internal linking to blog content and service pages.
It helps to create a link-building strategy as it allows:
- Users can navigate to other relevant pages that cover additional information connected to the topic they are reading about on the page.
- You can make a link hierarchy for your website to prevent orphan pages from being created and not being found by anyone on your website.
- Creating link equity throughout your website provides a positive SEO impact on your rankings and traffic growth.
It’s not enough to write content without trying to create some type of internal link structure. No matter what your topic is, you want to make sure that you build a content strategy for each article and if you will have an internal linking for expanded reference.
In another blog post, we shared our content calendar as it allows users to build out their content strategy as they cerate topics for their site.
Why Is Internal Links Important for SEO?
In fact, Google even recommends that you use keywords in your anchor text. When it comes to internal link building, you have to understand that the link juice between internal and external links can be very different.
Having internal links within your content can help drive the user to click on the link and continue their journey through your site and that will improve your engagement rate. Links will better guide the crawl bots in understanding which pages are essential and relevant to you and your website.
When users are researching and learning about their next step, you want to provide internal links to help promote your content and other services.
Your website structure will speak volumes about how you want users to engage with your website.
Every page on your website should help users find what they are looking for, and a proper internal linking structure can support a better user experience.
Internal and External Links?
As mentioned above, internal links point to another page within your website. This provides link juice to other pages and tells Google that the anchor text you are using to point to the page is relevant to that page.
External linking is when you link to a third-party website that you are referencing on your website.
Internal linking provides faster link equity than linking to a third-party website. I’m not saying you should avoid building links to third-party sites, but you should not only focus on that. When it comes to linking to 3rd party websites, you have to avoid spam sites and whether or not the site is willing to accept your website link to their site.
Internal Linking Structure
When it comes to your internal linking structure, you want to take advantage of its benefits.
You provide authority from one page to another, which helps search engines like Google determine your page’s relevance.
You provide a better user experience when you lead them to relevant content that your user can take to the next step.
Many users spend time searching for information that will help them make a decision about a product or service. Users want knowledge they can share, and it’s key to have them learn more about your article with data and interlinking to supporting articles.
This structure allows you to create a call to action for users to convert, download a file, or even continue their visit to another page relevant to the topic at hand.
You want to ensure you do not just use click here or next as your anchor text. Consider targeting a keyword you are looking for to improve your website’sxz on-page efforts. The boost of a proper URL structure for your internal links is a long-term benefit to the site.
Here is an example of the URL structure: <a href=”/example-link/”>internal linking</a>
Anchor Text Usage For Internal Link Building
Anchor text is the keyword term you use for the internal linking strategy, which links to another page on your website. Instead of using text like ‘click here’ or ‘next’ implement your target keyword and link that term to the page you want to rank for. Adding internal links with different anchor text will help your SEO strategy.
Unlike external links, adding too many internal links can violate Google’s webmaster guidelines. Internal linking should not point to more links than paragraphs on your page. It is encouraged to add links to your pages as it is helps improve your organic rankings.
When adding anchor text, you have to make sure that it works with the content.
- Do not make the same keyword phrase in two different areas of your content the same internal link for your content copy.
- You can use exact match and variations of your linking strategy.
You can link to other blog posts or service pages within your website with your target keywords to help improve a page’s rankings or direct a user to something relevant to support your existing article or new content that would interest them.
SEO consultants can’t settle on an ideal number with how many internal links you should have on the copy of the page or blog post. But it’s best to keep it simple and not overstuff every paragraph with links. It will diminish the quality of the page and make it look spammy.
Visibility Growth Through Local SEO
Local SEO can truly benefit from internal linking, especially when you have location pages, regional, and blogs that focus on cities you service to help build your organic visibility.
Developing content that can provide a boost to a service page. For example, SEO consultation or a service within your city can provide you with the benefits you need to increase traffic.
You can have city pages linked to service pages and vice versa. This helps search engines like Google and Bing count your linked anchor text as a vote which leads to the crawlers to go to the page and identify it’s relevance with the linked text from the previous page.
Many local businesses do not leverage internal linking for location area pages and service expansion. If you provide services throughout many neighboring cities, you want to add city pages to your website.
Audit Your Existing Internal Links
When was the last time you audited your website? How often does your SEO company audit your website?
Running an SEO audit provides a lot of on-page opportunities you may not know existed. There are many SEO tools that can crawl your website and identify link opportunities within your content to gain some quick wins.
As you review your content, you add new links or update existing links on the page. You can add content, lists, or a call to action that can improve your user engagement.
Site Audit Tools
If you are interested to run an SEO audit of your website below are some of my favorite and tools to help identify internal links.
- Screaming Frog
- SEMRush
- Ahrefs
- Sitebulb
Internal Link Building Strategy: Keyword Research
Keyword research is the start of your journey when it comes to ranking your site. This allows users who do not know your brand to search online for you by using a keyword term that is relevant to what you offer.
- Is your internal linking strategy included in your keyword research?
- Are you using different keyword variations for your linking?
These are important questions to ask yourself as you review your audit and keywords to make sure they are pointing to the correct pages. You want to use the right anchor text strategy throughout your website to make sure your organic visibility improves.
Review Your Content
Internal links can help provide breaks within the content. Creating links for the sake of it will go against Google’s guidelines. Keyword stuffing is not a great strategy for your long-term success.
When it comes to your internal link strategy, you have to implement it within the flow of the content. If your content doesn’t receive a link from within your site it is then turned into an orphan page. Avoid orphan pages on your website as it provides a poor website health experience and will impact your organic growth.
The link’s future destination is as important as the keywords used as your anchor text and where it links.
Create a page outline; structure your content to include your target keywords and what pages you want to link to within your site. Avoid orphan page creation as that will impact your website health.
Don’t forget your content should be informative and provide actual value to those visiting your page. Users are researching and are in different stages of their search journey.
Need content marketing help? Contact us today.
Internal Links Provide Long-Term Benefits
As discussed throughout, internal links provide search engines with a way to connect the other pages on your website. You have complete control of your internal linking strategy and how many links to add to a page. Your link building strategy should implement the best SEO practice when it comes to the keywords and where to place it throughout your page.
- Crawlability: This provides search bots to crawl your service pages and other blog content and improve user engagement and experience.
- SEO Audit tools: Leverage any of the SEO audit tools available to help with identifying internal link opportunities to improve your site.
Check out our broken link post and find out which audit tools we recommend to identify and clean up any broken links on your site.
- Find Opportunities: Review your content as you may have opportunities to link to other pages within your content that are a few years old.
- Assists with Orphan Pages: Internal linking can help address orphan pages that are identified from the different audit tools.
Take what you learn today, and check out your website for adding an internal link to your website. If you are interested in improving your SEO efforts and need help auditing your website reach out today to get started.