Internal Linking For SEO: A Basic Guide
Introduction
We expect that anyone reading this article should be familiar with the concept of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), if you are not familiar with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), this article will enlighten more on SEO and SEO internal linking. What do Google map and SEO have in common? They both provide direction. Have you heard of the Breadcrumb story where a person ventures into a forest and leaves behind a trail of breadcrumbs or pebbles to find his way? These breadcrumbs have similar ideas to internal links. Internal links help provide direction for the users and even for the search engine. Internal linking helps guide the SEARCH ENGINE and visitors to the web pages believed to be important.
What is an Internal Link?
According to Terakeet, an internal link can be defined as a hyperlink between two pages on the same website. They pass PageRank(or SEO value) as well as context through anchor text and surrounding content. Basically, an internal link, as the name implies is a link from one part of your website, to another part of your website. It is quite different from external links that point from your own website to a different website, or Backlinks that lead from other websites to your own website. Most people seem to overlook internal linking. They lengthen all of their attention on backlinks and external links, this might happen because they do not understand the importance of internal links in Search Engine Optimization.
Importance of Internal Linking for SEO
- It powers your site architecture: internal links are quite important as they work like an organizational chart for your website. Related pages and sections are grouped together by internal links, just like departments are grouped together in organizations. Your HTML internal linking strategy needs to synergize with your website navigation and URL structure to support an SEO-friendly website architecture.
- It helps to funnel authority: Here, you have to combine backlinks with internal links, what do we mean? Pages on your website that receive the most backlinks from trusted domains have the most value (PageRank), to share, and pass along to other pages on your website. You must be strategic about your backlinks. If you have a page that has a lot of high-quality, inbound links, you can funnel the authority to other pages by adding relevant internal links to other pages on your website.
- It helps with content hierarchy: Generally, search engines believe that a webpage with a lot of internal links is an important webpage. Internal links help Google to understand and identify the most important pages on your website. Pages with more internal links are considered more important than pages with fewer links, especially when you link to these pages from the navigation bar, signaling to the search engine that you want customers to find them.
Is internal linking bad for SEO?
This is one of those questions that gets asked regularly. Many people are worried that internal SEO is bad for their Search Engine Optimization. NO, Internal linking is not bad for Search Engine Optimization. By adding the right internal links, you ensure that the search engine understands the relevance of pages, the relationship between pages, and the value of pages. Google crawls websites by following links, both internal and external links. By following links, Google is able to work out the relationship between the various contents, pages, and posts. As web crawlers move through your website, they get more information about your website and your content that influences whether they will promote your pages in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP)
Internal Linking Best Practices
Are you looking for the best practices in Internal linking for SEO? Do not worry, you are in the right place. Below are the best practices for internal linking that we will recommend to you.
- Link to important pages: When you link to pages on your site, you transfer Pagerank, authority to the pages. Although the internal links are not as powerful as backlinks from other sites they are still useful and helpful. You should find the best-performing pages of your website and then link from those pages to the pages you want to rank the most.
- Audit Internal links with the Google Search Console: You can use the “links” feature of the Google Search Console to check how your website’s internal links are set up. We recommend that you do an internal link audit two or three times a year. You can use this to ensure that important pages or high-priority pages get most of the links and low-priority pages get way less.
- Place links high up on your page: The best place to place your links is high up on your page. Putting your links high up on your page will help reduce your bounce rate and improve the time your visitors spend on your website. This helps your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because the longer the time your visitors spend on your website, the more signals the search engines get that your website is a great result for the keyword, which will lead to a bump in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP).
- Link your pages strategically from your homepage: Most times, the homepage is the most authoritative page of the website. Due to this fact, it is best to link important pages to the homepage, that way they can share from the authority of the homepage.
Conclusion
Internal links, although not paid enough attention to are very important for the ranking of any website. The importance of internal linking for websites that want to rank higher on the Search Engine Ranking Page cannot be overemphasized. If used strategically. Internal links send page authority, also known as Pagerank to linked pages. Internal linking is important and it should be paid attention to.
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