SEO - Internal Linking

The internal linking of your site can increase your web site’s ranking at search engines. It may not be the most important SEO tool, but it is certainly a contributing factor and easy to do.

What does a first-class internal linking structure offer?

• Search engines can spider all of your pages
• It builds significance of pages to anchor text or keyword phrases
• Increases the page position of internal pages

Internal Linking and Search Engine Spidering

When the spiders can read all of your internal pages, it will increase your rankings because more content and keywords are available to the spider. Avoid using navigation images because the spiders cannot attribute significance of the image to pages it links to. It will just assign the image as a link in the your site’s hierarchy.

Some navigation scripts make proper spidering of the web pages difficult. If you have a java script menu then consider anchor text linking from your home page and other pages as well. Get rid of frames, as the spiders cannot read them.

Internal Linking and Page Relevancy to Anchor Text

Decide what pages should be targeted for certain phrases. The home page should have the most important phrases since you want to drive the most traffic to your index page.

Rather than using terms such as “main” or “home” to link to your home page, make use of more descriptive keywords for instance, when you have a plumbing company you can link your pages to your home by “plumbing overview.” The same applies to the other pages, because you want to tie the relevant keyword to those pages for instance, “plumbing supplies” indicates exactly what the page is about and forms a relevant anchor text when you link it to your products or supplies page.

Internal Linking and Page Rank Increase

Each of your pages has a rank in the web site’s structure. If your homepage is on the Number 1 level and it links to 3 pages on Number 2 level and those pages link to 4 pages each on the Number 3 level, then the structure has three levels. Pages that are higher up in the structure have more weight. Since you cannot link to all your pages from your home because it will assign equal ranking to all your pages, you need to target the most important pages with keyword phrases. Don’t target pages such as “contact us” or “terms” because you want visitors to land on content rich and important products, services, and information pages.

Methods to Improve Internal Linking

Left Hand Navigation

Search engines spider your navigation on the left panel first. Try to include the main keywords in the text links but don’t force too long phrases, since your site will face penalization for spam. Try to connect at least every third link by using relevant phrases, for instance when your home page is “plumbing” and your second link is “contact us”, then the third link should be “plumbing supplies” in order to establish relevancy to the main page.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the clickable text that is displayed for a particular link. You can use keyword phrases that target specific pages in your web site. Use the text links in context to provide optimum results. This will also increase your page rankings with search engines.

Footers

Don’t overuse the footer area. It should be clean with only the main keyword phrases otherwise it reduces the value of each link. Include a sitemap link for spiders and users alike. Use the sitemap to link to all of your pages, as it will ensure that each page is found.

Menus

Use easy navigational menus so that the spiders and users can read and find their way around your site.