People usually understand linking in its most basic form – links create a path from one web page to another. Little do they know that links make up some of the most integral parts of a website – they’re used in the navigation menu, headers, images, footers, and even interweaved through web copy. Despite its importance, linking gets taken for granted far too often.
Internal linking is a critical component to your business’ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. You can plan where to place links on your web pages and the destination page to help your website rank higher on search engine results. This is the art of internal linking – strategically placing links to different pages on your own website so that users can discover relevant pages and learn more about your business. Through internal linking, your website basically vouches for its own pages. It may seem redundant or even narcissistic but it’s true! Search engines will see that you believe in your website enough to link its own pages, instead of linking to an outside source, and they use that information when assigning web rank.
What are Internal SEO Links?
Internal SEO links lead users to pages on your own website, as opposed to linking to external pages on other websites. The more times you link users to a certain page, the more important that page appears in Google’s eyes. Think of it this way – if you love a movie so much that you bring it up 200 times a day, people will get the hint that you’re obsessed with it. This is the same line of thinking that search engines use when they rank your web pages.
Adding an internal SEO link to web copy isn’t difficult. For example, putting the HTML code around the anchor text “FAQ” will hyperlink the text. The end result will look like this – FAQ. Voila! You’ve just created an internal link.
Creating an Internal SEO Link Strategy
It’s crucial to develop and execute a long-term internal linking strategy. As your website grows, you have to make sure that users can find all pages on it – even older pages.
One of the best internal SEO linking strategies involves maintaining a blog on your website. This proves especially useful for eCommerce websites, as they can showcase and explain their newest products and services via blog posts. Always link to the most important page on your website – usually your services or product page – so customers can contact you after digesting your blog post. Make sure to also include links to past blog posts so that they can keep racking up page views to help boost your rank.
Beware of Internal SEO Link Mishaps
Both the link and the anchor text must be relevant to the destination page. The keywords in anchor text act as a signal search engine (and readers) use to identify the topic of a web page. Creating a link to an unrelated page in an attempt to boost your rank will eventually backfire since you’re attempting to trick search engines.
Also, don’t try and link to the same page 100 times throughout your blog post using different anchor text – search engines will immediately catch this and penalize you for it. Instead, try to always internally link the most relevant pages to the current page. For example, when building a web page focusing on jewelry restoration, adding a link to jewelry cleaner that you sell will prove more beneficial than linking to a web page with unrelated services. The latter option will lead customers to a page that doesn’t align with their search intent, thereby causing them to leave your website.
Don’t forget to repair any broken links, which send visitors to web pages that no longer exist, thereby resulting in 404 errors. Having too many broken links (along with 404 errors) on your website will prevent search engine crawlers from scouring your website. The end result: a drop in search ranking.
You should also make sure that you do not have any orphan pages – pages that have no links to them. These pages are more common than you think. It’s easy to forget about a certain page when they’re not listed in the navigation bar on your website. But you must always link to them in some way or another – whether through a service description or blog post – to make sure your visitors can see them so that they’re not ‘orphaned’.
Grow Your SEO Strategy With Internal Linking
Test some unique ways you can link to pages. Experiment with new blog posts and switch up the header and footer on a different page. Premiere Creative holds decades of experience in both digital and traditional marketing and can come up with a personalized game plan for your business. Contact the digital experts at Premiere Creative today to help you launch your next SEO campaign. Dial (973) 346-8100 and start making a strong impression on the web today!