Internal linking and SEO: overview and useful tips

Internal links are an important part of a successful SEO strategy. It is the hyperlink between two pages on the same website. These links help in the navigation process for users. It offers search engine crawlers information about how your website works. They boost your rankings in Google search results. Search engines and users can find content easily. Internal links point to pages on a website. The more it points, the more important it will appear to search engines.

How to Optimize Your Content for SEO

Then you need to understand how internal links work, where to place them. The improvement of internal link structure and various analyses is a part of on-page optimization. Internal link structure is essential for SEO. It is because it establishes a site architecture. It plays a pivotal role in improving link equity.

It is a simple site design that keeps the website structured logically. It improves your chances of getting ranked high by allowing search engine crawlers to index more content.

In a nutshell, let us look at the intent and purpose of internal links:

• aids in the website navigation;
• defines the architecture of the website;
• determines the ranking power for the site.

4 Reasons Why Internal Linking Is Good for SEO

Helps Google Index Your Site

Search engines find and index all important pages on the website. Internal linking plays a major role in establishing the hierarchy of the website. It allows you to boost your SEO efforts. It is important for user experience and search engine crawlers. It is one of the best ways for Google to understand the context of individual pages on a site. 

A strong internal linking will make it easy for Google crawlers to find new content and publish. Google bots regularly crawl the website for fresh and engaging content. Improved crawling and indexing can boost your SEO. 

Increases Backlink Earning

Build a solid internal linking structure. It will increase the overall usability of your website. It is a great way to build links using preferred anchor text. It will help you to boost the link earning potential of internal pages. It will help in building quality backlinks and boost your SEO.

For eg. With proper internal linking, Ringostat has gained thousands of backlinks naturally from other websites.

As you keep earning additional backlinks, it will help you rank higher on the search engine results page. It is because the search engines will infer that the website possesses valuable and insightful content. 

Internal Linking with Optimized Anchor Text Is Good for SEO

Take the time to carefully plan how to use anchor text links to your advantage optimally. It helps to improve the value of the link by adding keywords to the linking process. Updating the anchor text of the appropriate internal links helps to boost SEO efforts.

Anchor text that flows well with the overall content is the best option. You have an option to diversify the anchor texts wherever possible for better optimization. It enables you to choose longer tail key variants of keywords to rank better. Creating an internal link with anchor text enhances the value of internal links.

It Provides Value to Your Users

Internal linking is useful for users. Internal linking on a site enhances the value of each content. It leads users to relevant and insightful information. It helps you in retaining your users to stay longer on your site longer. It helps in increasing their trust and credibility by using internal linking. 

Internal linking boosts page views. If you provide relevant content to your viewers, they are more likely to read more articles. It helps users to navigate throughout the website. 

Your anchor texts, along with relevant content, are more likely to interest your readers. It will help them to redirect to pages with insightful information.

 

Importance of Internal Linking

Allows Users to Navigate Easily

It helps in using user-friendly links that are easy to find and uncluttered to link your homepage. Internal lining enables an easy navigation experience for users. It makes it easier for users to find pages that you want them to see which is highly relevant. As a site owner, you can design the navigation experience for users. 

The viewers visit your websites for their personalized queries. Search engines appreciate websites with highly relevant content. It helps in boosting your SEO efforts. 

Navigating users to the more relevant pages within your domain can enhance your overall page view. You can add contextual links as well. It boosts your SEO strategies. If used properly, such links can be a great advantage to the optimization of the site. 

Establishes Architecture or Hierarchy of the Website

Site structure and internal linking are key foundation elements of SEO strategy. It is important to understand how the site structure can enhance organic search performance. 

One of the crucial elements of building a logical site structure is internal links. Internal links help in the discoverability of the page. It helps both users and search engines. It helps with the flow of equity a page has to build up. Website architecture refers to the way you organize the structure of your website. A well-structured website delivers a good user experience. 

Having strategic internal linking is a great advantage. It helps in building a great hierarchy or architecture of the website. Establishing a well-planned structure for your site is important as you are establishing a stronger foundation.

Spreads Link Equity Throughout the Websites

When your website receives a link to the homepage, the link value gets passed to internal pages. It is link juice. Internal linking spreads the strength of the site to the internal pages.

It helps to rank higher on the search engine results page. The more organized the website structure, the better the site will function in search results. 

Link juice consists of various elements. It comprises value, topic relevance, and authoritativeness of the page. It sends various signals. It helps the search engines to evaluate and determine the page ranking of the page. Learn to control link equity to enhance your SEO efforts.

Keep Readers on Your Website

Internal links help in decreasing the bounce rate. It improves time on site. It can lower bounce rates. Bounce rates refer to a viewer who leaves the website after viewing a single page. 

You can aim for a low bounce rate. Retention of viewers can happen if the content which is internally linked is of good value or insightful.

Retaining visitors for a longer duration can have an enormous impact on your rankings. As per sources, 70% of visitors use internal recommendations for where to head next. Provide good quality content and educate your audience. 

A bounce rate is an important number as it has an enormous impact on rankings. Most importantly, the goal of internal linking is to keep your readers on site. 

Help Google Crawl Your Site Easily

Building a strong and smart internal architecture of the website will help the crawlers to perform indexing effectively. Search engines visit our websites and follow links and pages that are easily indexed. Building a solid internal architecture will help bots find deeper pages.

Internal links will give a boat to other pages and help you rank higher. These links help crawlers to navigate easily and recognize more important pages.

They help search engine bots to find and index pages. Internal linking creates better indexing and crawling experience for search engines. The easier to crawl, the better the site will enhance rankings. 

Drive Users Towards Conversion

Internal linking helps to improve user navigation. It ultimately drives your target audience towards a sale. With relevant content, you can bring your audiences deeper into the funnel and drive conversions. If the content is compelling and CTAs are powerful, you can enhance conversions. The audience moves from initial awareness to becoming leads and customers.

Internal linking provides more SEO value. The more visitors you can drive to a high converting page, the more conversions you can have. Optimize the content for the right searches. Internal linking can drive the audience towards your website or page.  It helps in enhancing or increasing conversions. 

Internal Linking Will Supplement Link Building

You have complete control over internal linking. You can master anchor texts, quality of the page, links, and location of the landing page. You can determine which keywords to use in-text anchors. You can precisely select the pages that will issue links.

You have control over the authoritativeness of the website. It eases the process of choosing the target pages according to each keyword. It enhances the understanding of your site by search engines and improves rankings. It gives you the authority to choose the pages that you want to boost. 

By putting in place relevant keyword suggestions, most e-commerce websites can improve their website visibility by search engines. You can create many internal links corresponding to the user’s request. The ROI of internal linking is high.

How to Do Internal Linking: tips and strategies

Add Relevant Anchor Text 

Use keyword-rich anchor text. Search engines use anchor text to understand what the page your linking is all about. It is essential to have good, relevant anchor text for internal links. It is a great opportunity for your page to rank higher for relevant keywords.

Search engines count on the first link of the page. It needs to be good, keyword-rich with relevant anchor text to perform better. For a better navigation experience to your highest converting pages, you need to ensure that your links get positioned at the top of your page. 

These links help users to stay on your site longer, reducing your bounce rate. It tells the search engines that your content is relevant and will enhance your rankings. The best strategy is to use internal links where they feel natural and required. Use unique and relevant anchor text to improve rankings.

Create Relevant Content

The first step for a good internal linking strategy is a killer content marketing strategy. When you create lots of content, you will have lots of linkable content. When making your selection, focus on keywords that have a high search volume.

With internal linking opportunities, you can use long-tail keywords to improve rankings. You can use tools like keywordtool.io or longtail pro to find long tail keywords.

Choose your keywords wisely. It is a great way to improve your link building. You can include links to pages or articles to rank higher in search engines and improve traffic. Build a keyword map for internal linking for better ranking. 

There are various methods to make your searches worthwhile. Choose keywords that rank higher to improve SEO efforts and better internal linking strategies. 

Update Old Articles with New Internal Links

Updating old content along with internal linking will get you the most power and advantage of ranking better. When you update the old content, it will increase your rankings. When the content is updated, the Google crawlers see it again, index it, and enhance the rankings on the search engine results page.

We suggest you keep updating your content regularly. 

You can add a new paragraph explaining your new update. Every additional paragraph can explain the new updates. It is a beneficial internal linking strategy. Refresh old posts to add new and relevant links.

Older content has value, and updating them is useful. It provides a measurable ranking and traffic boost.

Use Search Engines to Find Relevant Internal Links

One technique to find relevant internal linking opportunities is to use Google’s site search options. It helps to identify various relevant content on the site. You can edit various pages to include a link to a new page as well. It will help search engines to discover and index pages.

Go to Google.com and type – keyword site:yourdomain.com

For e. g. Take a look at this screenshot.

Add links where it makes sense. You can use WordPress plugins to detect suitable and relevant links. Use links that are natural and appealing for the reader. 

Use a relevant and reasonable number of links. One of the benefits of internal linking is that it improves user experience. Offer informative links to the user that truly matches their content and makes them click on them.   

Make Sure Links Aren’t Broken

Ensuring that links aren’t broken will help to strengthen your content. While removing links, ensure to track the health of the existing links.  It is one of the strategies to remove internal links from pages of low relevance. To emphasize the right pages.

Do you want to reclaim “link juice” and enhance the user experience? 

Then it’s time to fix your site’s broken links. It will certainly create an impact on your rankings. It is important to replace bokeh links with live links. It is crucial to remove all irrelevant links. It can be a pretty mundane task, but it is worth the time.

You can use tools like Netpeak Software, Ahrefs & Deadlinkchecker to check dead links.

Take Site Navigation and Architecture into Consideration

Site navigation and internal linking are two elements that go hand in hand. Internal links define the site architecture and hierarchy of the website.

Performed by creating funnels that direct users through the website. It is important to offer a user-friendly and good navigation experience. It plays a prominent role in rankings and boosting traffic. This will create a huge impact on how long viewers will stay on your website. In addition, they help in reducing bounce rates. 

When building your internal linking strategy, consider the most relevant and useful content of your site. If you have a piece of cornerstone content, then add more internal links to it. 

Create a Recommended Reading Link Box

Adding a list of recommended reading articles is one of the most used tactics or strategies in internal linking. It helps in boosting the rankings of the most important pages. 

You can highlight the list of posts that gets maximum attention from users. For e. g. take a look at this section from our blog.

The most important page is linked internally from the main page. It is a commonly used tactic in SEO to boost rankings. 

Add the appropriate number of links per page. This is an important internal linking strategy. It tells how search engines are going to view your content and rank. 

Websites with fresh and insightful content get ranked better, and search engines use them as a great ranking algorithm. Overstuffing your page with irrelevant links will impact your SEO efforts in a negative way. 

Integrate SEO into Your Content Strategy

Keeping SEO goals at the top will help you strengthen your content strategy. You will naturally create content that is ideal for internal linking. Publish content that aligns and meets your viewer’s needs. Anticipate their questions and progress towards the funnel.

Create content that enhances your ranking. Then add internal links that strategically capture their interest. The aim should be to provide a good user experience. 

You can use topic clusters and pillar pages. 

Create a resource page with all links organized. There are various methods to create pillar pages. They are fundamental to the internal linking strategy. 

Create an Ultimate Guide

Make a manual lists of posts you want to link to. You can create a manual list of internal links as well. Internal linking plays a pivotal role. You can create posts that push higher traffic and better search engine results. You can explore more contexts from the well-performing posts that drive more traffic. 

Traffic will start coming from the well-performing posts, which will have the edge over others in the ranking and provide a breakthrough in bringing the traffic. It will bring SEO benefits and to your website with increased internal linking. 

Content guides can provide short summaries into a full article to link them all together. 

Things to check before you start working on your ultimate guide post.

1. Make sure the article topic is broad
2. Make sure you cover the chapter from multiple angles
3. Go for the topic with high search traffic
4. Do an in-depth research
5. Include attractive images/videos.

Make Internal Links Prominent

This is one of the finest and most useful strategies which will boost your rankings and traffic. It is another tip that you will find pretty useful. Choose descriptive anchor texts for your internal links. Focus on the architecture or hierarchy of the website.

Try to add internal links with relevant content. It is a core part of your solid SEO strategy. It helps in enhancing the user experience. It can help you rank higher in SERPs. Update old articles with fresh internal links. Always link to high converting pages. Always make sure to link internally to these pages. 

Internal links are a part of a strong website design. When done right, it enhances the user experience and boosts rankings. 

For e. g. take a look at this prominent internal linking done in Style Factory Productions.

Make sure to use optimized anchor texts and a good structure for the website. Add internal links to the relevant content to make the best out of it. I hope the tips and strategies will enable you to perform effectively.