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When people decide to focus on growing a website, many concentrate on getting external links. This is a colossal mistake because they completely neglect their site’s content. Internal links often play a vital role in efforts to enhance search engine optimization (SEO). Additionally, internal links are much easier to build because they are already part of your website. However, if done incorrectly, they can have a negative impact on your SEO. In this article, I will answer key questions that are raised concerning this topic.
Why Internal Linking Matters
Because of internal links, various pages of your site receive different weights that help Google determine the pages to showcase in a search query. For example, let’s say your company sells mountain bikes and practically every page of your site has some sort of information about the topic. A Google search on “mountain bikes” will display the page from your website that has the most internal links. If your website’s content has a lot of correctly placed links, then users will click on them; your user behavior characteristics increase, so you’ll receive more customers. In turn, Google will also see this and compare your website with other sites in the same category. If your behavioral flow is greater than your competitors, your search engine results pages (SERP) position will rise.
Basic Rules of Placing Internal Links
These rules are not complex, but you will need to practice to get the hang of them. For most, it will be tough at first to get used to placing the links in this new way. Nevertheless, once you master this technique, you’ll be unstoppable.
Here are some ground rules:
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- Users should clearly understand what awaits them after clicking the link.
- The content behind the link needs to give information that is relevant to the hyperlink, but doesn’t completely outweigh the content from which the link was created.
- The link should be placed in such a way that, without it, the reader still understands the context.
- The link must compel users to click on it.
- There should be no more than one link per screen.
- The link must consist of multiple words to increase the click-through rate.
- One of the words or phrases should be the main anchor for the material behind the link.
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Good vs. Bad Links
To completely understand the ground rules list above, I have made several examples comparing good internal links to their bad counterparts.
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Bad links |
Explanation |
Good links |
Explanation |
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You can get the company address here. |
It’s unclear what is waiting for the user when they click on the word here. As a result, a lot less people will click on the link. |
You can get the company address on the contact us page. |
It’s obvious exactly what lies behind the contact us page link. Since the text is much clearer, visitors will actually click on this link. |
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In our store you can find mountain bikes, a large selection of backpacks, and pro helmets that are required by law. |
If there are many links bunched together, a person’s eyes begin to wander around and they lose the urge to read the text. Moreover, they won’t even bother to click on the link. |
In our store you can find mountain bikes, a large selection of backpacks, and pro helmets that are required by law. -Mountain bikes -Backpacks -Helmets |
If you have multiple links, it’s best to save them for the end. This way, the text will be read and links will be clicked on individually, according to the user’s specific needs. |
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This article is the continuation of a previous publication in our blog, “Secrets of Internal Links.” |
The link is in the phrase “in our blog,” which is logical to assume that it will lead to an article. However, the name of the article is listed after this phrase. Therefore, people are less likely to click through this type of link because it’s placed awkwardly. |
This article is the continuation of our previous blog post, “Secrets of Internal Links,” which we highly recommend for you to check out before diving deep into understanding its content. |
This is a great link because the user clearly understands what is waiting for them before they click on it. Also, there’s an explanation of the link’s purpose, which further persuades the user to follow it. |
How is Page Weight Measured?
Page weight is an abstract value that does not exist outside of the cyber context; however, for the purpose of gaining a better understanding, I will associate it with numeric values in this article. Let’s imagine that your website has a main page and 10 other pages. The weight of each page is equal to one. When a page is linked to another, it gives up half of its weight. If all ten pages were linked to the main page, then the weight of the main page will be six and the rest will be one-half each.
If there is a link from the main page to an inner page, the situation changes and the main page now has a weight of three. The inner page will also have a weight of three, while the rest of the pages have a weight of one-half each. This is exactly how you can control the weight of pages and show Google which pages are most important.
What if your site has many links? Between the menu, logo, and text, sometimes it’s simply not obvious which pages carry the most weight. More often than not, this is especially the case when we talk about the contact us and purchase pages. They have the most weight because many site links lead back to them. I think it is clear that this completely kills the structure of the site, confuses Google, and throws off your search optimization.
There are various instruments available on the web that will help you see the weight of your overall website. I recommend the free program called SiteChecker.
Maximizing Anchor Text
When conducting link building through outside sources, it is imperative to be very careful with your anchor text. If the majority of your links contain a keyword, then Google will most likely notice this. In the worst-case scenario, all resources will be banned, and you will have to manually erase all previously added links. With internal linking, the rules are not as strict, so you can use anchor text with keywords more freely. As an expert in this field, I would go as far as to endorse doing this.
A Personal Tale of Rebuilding Internal Links
Once, a client approached us with a project to increase his site traffic. He had a great site with fantastic content and many awesome blog articles. The site, as a whole, had more than 650 pages that did not receive traffic from search queries to any pages. After technical analysis, we understood that the main problem was that, in the eyes of Google, all the pages were essentially the same. We took 45 of the best blog articles that could potentially receive the most traffic and created a complete semantic core for them. Then, we took the rest of the pages and built out proper internal links for these 30 pages. In less than three months, the site began receiving organic traffic.
For some projects, this method is ideal. It is also worth mentioning that our copywriters spent a considerable amount of time on this project!
Common Mistakes to Avoid
It is important to take proper action and not make mistakes that could be detrimental to your site. I did my best to compile a list of the most common internal linking mistakes people make.
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- Links that point to themselves
- Too many links on one page
- Links that no one clicks on
- Text links that are too bright or the same color as the rest of the text
- Picture links of something else, not the text
- Several links on one page which all lead to the same page
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Conclusion
You don’t need an SEO specialist to do internal linking. In fact, you can do everything right now on your website in a matter of hours. If you do everything correctly, I guarantee that you will achieve pleasantly surprising results.
