Internal links are to your website same as meditation is to your soul.
That said! Internal linking is a crucial part of your SEO strategy and your website’s success. Creating good content is just one part of the story; another is internal linking to make sure you are driving as much traffic to it as possible.
What Is Internal Linking, By The Way?
Well, it is a process of linking one page of your website to another page of the same website. It helps users navigate through your digital content and give search engine crawlers information about how your website works or in other words, provides Google with a structure of your website. If you’ve created a great blog post or landing page content, you’ll naturally want to work on making sure you are driving content not only to that particular page but also to other pages of your website. That’s what internal linking helps you with. Internal linking enables other pages of your website to contribute value to your new page.
Let’s further understand it with an example: if you’re working on a new campaign, then it’s absolutely crucial to link one of your great, high-authority, and obviously, relevant pages to your new page. Also, determine what ongoing efforts you can continue to build link authority for your site over time.
In a study by Ninja Outreach, they explain how using internal links helped them boost organic traffic by 40%.
In this post, you’ll learn how internal linking is essential to SEO, its advantages, and best practices.
Why Is Internal Link Important For SEO?
Whenever you create an internal link for a page, it becomes more important in the eyes of Google. It’s like the internal link is the hero of the story; it helps Google to discover new content. Suppose you published a new web page and forgot to link to it from elsewhere on your site. Now if we assume that the page isn’t in your sitemap, and doesn’t have any backlinks, then Google won’t know it exists. That’s because their web crawler can’t find it.
Here’s what Google has to say about it:
Google constantly searches for new pages and adds them to its list of known pages. Some pages are known because Google has already crawled them before. Whereas to discover other pages, Google follows a link from a known page to a new page.
However, if you don’t have any links on your page, then they are often called orphan pages. The more internal links a page has, the higher its page ranks. And that’s a big deal! Also, it’s important to note that it’s not all about quantity; the quality of the link also plays a major role. Learn how you can establish a successful link structure.
How To Establish An Internal Link Structure
If you have created great content that you are sure can provide excellent value to your website as well as to the users. Then you should be thinking about how you are going to explain this to the search engine. The best way to do this is by creating an internal linking strategy around it. If one page of your website is linked to the other pages of the same domain, then the search engine will automatically understand its value. If every page of your website links to something, like your homepage or your blog’s homepage, then it must be important to you and your users. And search engines will definitely understand that!
However, if the blog on your website is only linked from the ‘About Us‘ section and not from your homepage or your website’s main navigation, then Google will get a strong impression that your blog is not very strong. On the other hand, if your blog is in the main navigation on your website, search engines like Google and Bing will treat it like one of your top pages. Moreover, if you are writing an extensive blog that talks about strategy or trends in your industry, you can link phrases in follow-up blog posts to it to prove to Google that this page is valuable to your readers.
You can carry out an audit of your website’s main pages and determine where you can interlink between them. That’s how you can leverage internal linking to the fullest.
5 Benefits Of Internal Linking
With the frequent changes and updates in Google’s algorithm, it has now become impossible to stick to the system. As advanced as the algorithm is, there are still simple changes that will give you an immediate boost in SEO without the need to trick the search engine. Internal linking is one of them!
Here are the benefits of internal linking:
1. It Helps Google Index Your Website
Google’s bots regularly crawl the web looking for fresh content and following link paths throughout the internet to find and index websites. If your website content has strong internal linking, then crawling becomes quicker, and your content easily gets indexed. Improved crawling and indexing can boost your SEO.
2. Strengthens The Site As Well As Internal Pages
When the landing page of your website receives a link, some of its value is passed on to the internal pages. This is often referred to as link juice. Let’s take an example of pages 1, 2, and 3. If page 1 is linked to page 2, the link juice will flow from page 1 to page 2, helping it rank higher in the search engine results. The more tied a website’s structure, the better the overall site will perform in search.
3. Provides Value To Your Users
This is the most crucial point of all. Internal linking is more than an SEO technique. It’s ultimately useful for the users. Internal linking on a site enhances the value of each content by backing up claims and leading the user to related information. Although it doesn’t drive conversions directly, internal linking does have a place within the marketing funnel, carrying people to a targeted destination.
Internal Linking Best Practices.
1. Links To And From Content-Heavy Pages
If suppose you are reading about the amazing benefits of regular skin care, you’ll naturally want to learn more about the tips for proper skin care. That’s where internal linking comes into play. The best internal links are those that connect one article to another. This creates a strong internal linking structure deep within the site.
2. Add An Appropriate Number Of Links Per Page
Whenever you write new content, you must include at least five or more links to old articles. This is an important practice in your internal linking strategy. This is how search engines review and rank your content. Google detects the ‘freshness value’ in websites and uses it as a part of its ranking algorithm.
3. Create Loads Of Content
The more content present on your website, the more internal linking you’ll be able to do. The best way to have a healthy internal linking structure is to have loads of internal pages. With more linkable content, you can effectively put your internal linking strategy in place.
Summary
Internal linking is a vital part of SEO strategy. When done right, it enhances the user experience and helps rank your website in search engines. While internal linking can make your website powerful, it’s important to note that internal linking should be done wherever it’s relevant. Find the best ways to include internal links in your content to ensure you’re getting the most out of your it.