Name: Internal Link
Referred to as: Internal Linking
Category: On-page SEO
Correct Use: n/a
Description:
An internal link is a hyperlink that will aid in navigation between the web pages of a website.
Although these links serve the best for navigational purposes on your website, it is the best option to access more information via related content and pages. Thus, it will play a critical role in boosting the page views and the rank of the internal pages, apart from navigational convenience.
Our take:
Do you remember the childhood stories where the little protagonists ventured out into the woods and left behind the trail of breadcrumbs to find their way back?
Consider the internal links as these breadcrumbs that leave the trail for the site visitors. It helps the visitors to navigate back through the different pages of the website.
Typically, the breadcrumb will start on the home page and then venture to the category page, and then an article, and the path continues.
• It is possible to create a user-friendly website if you can place the internal links properly on the website. A reader may not be interested in all the sections of the site. With internal links, the audience gets the liberty to visit only the pages that cater to their requirements. Therefore, you will minimize the chance of losing the visitors mid-way.
• If you can place the internal links on the relevant pages, you can engage the readers for longer periods. Navigating through the different contents gets easier, which will increase the page views. And perhaps, the biggest advantage of these internal links is the dramatic reduction in the bounce rates of the website.
• These links can do wonders in indexing. Search engine crawlers always find it easier to crawl and index the websites that have more internal links. Before your content gets a rank, it needs the links. Google will find your posts and pages quickly if there are links to reach them faster.
• It is essential to explain to Google crawlers the structure of your website. As the links can help in creating a hierarchy on the site, it is possible to provide more links to the valuable pages instead of the less valuable pages. Thus, you are implementing an SEO technique,
• If you have to get high-quality backlinks on some pages, the internal links can help the backlinks to work for other pages too.
Extra reading:
Do:
If you really want to utilize the internal links as a powerful tool for marketing, you need a lot of links. And for that, you have to ideally apply some strategies.
1. Create a lot of content. A killer content marketing strategy can [above the way for an equal awesome internal linking. Unless you have a lot of linkable content, what will you link the landing pages with?
2. Think what a customer can probably search for, on entering your website. Pick the relevant topics and create links to those pages. And it is true that you don’t require the organizational spreadsheets to plan internal linking. 3. Maintain the content theme of the internal links and create the right anchor text for the contents. You can input the image links, as long as they are not the main source of links. Also, the image must have alt-tagging.
Don’t:
There are two types of internal links that you should ideally avoid using in any content.
• Homepage: Most websites have many links to the landing page. It is useless as pointing to the home page is not contributing to overall SEO.
• Contact us: This will be a common mistake that can negatively affect SEO. You tend to add an obligatory call to action at the end of the post and choose an anchor tag to link to the “Contact us” page. But that’s wrong unless it’s absolutely necessary.
• Also, avoid links to the pages at the top levels as the main menu may already have the links to these pages.
Tip:
As this is going to be an SEO technique, you can surely use some practical tips.
1. Create the links in a natural way for the users. Building the internal links needs the understanding of the users’ mindset and leads them to the respective pages as they want. Unless it proves value to the reader, it is useless.
2. Always make sure that the readers find some real information on the linked pages. Otherwise, the visitors will feel that you have just created the links to make the readers waste some more minutes on the page.
Internal linking is neither complicated nor overwhelming. You just need to understand the perspectives and perceptions. It is never too late to audit the old contents and add sufficient internal linking to increase engagement.
Introduced:
What Google Says:
What experts say: