How to Leverage Internal Linking for Better SEO Results

Internal Linking

Internal linking has emerged in SEO as a crucial strategy for boosting your blog website’s visibility and ranking. When done right, internal linking can be a powerful tool to enhance user experience and help search engines understand the structure and content of your website.

In this comprehensive guide, you will dig into the world of internal linking, exploring:

  • What is it?
  • Why you should use it?
  • Its importance, and
  • How to implement it to improve your blog website’s SEO effectively.

What is internal linking?

Internal linking refers to the practice of connecting one page on your website to another page on the same website through hyperlinks. These hyperlinks are often found within the content of your web pages and can point to related or relevant information elsewhere on your site.

It is the pathway for users and search engines to navigate your website’s content.

Example of internal linking

Why should you Interlink your Content?

Your website should have a clear and logical structure. Only then can you maximize the benefits of internal linking in your blog websites. Here are some key points why you should use internal linking in your website.

  • Helps users navigate your blog website making it user-friendly.
  • Keeps your users engaged and encourages them to explore more of your content
  • Defines the architecture and hierarchy of your blog site
  • Provides the spiders (search engine crawlers) with a structured path
  • Helps link juice (ranking power) and page authority

The importance of Internal linking

The internal link is recommended by one of the top search engines i.e. Google for your blog website’s structure, ranking, and user experience.

As Google states in its guide “How Search Works” – “Some pages are known because Google has already crawled them before. Other pages are discovered when Google follows a link from a known page to a new page.

How Google discovers web pages

Source: semrush

There are many reasons why internal links are important for your blog website. It is a key to your site for higher ranking in search engines like Google.

  • Internal links help search engines understand your site’s structure.
  • They pass the authority or PageRank to other pages on your site. And just to remind you PageRank is an algorithm Google uses to measure a webpage’s importance.
  • By strategically using anchor text, you can optimize your internal links with relevant keywords, which can boost your SEO efforts.
  • It helps you organize your content logically, making it easier for your users to navigate and find the information they need.
  • Internal links improve your site’s experience (UX) by helping visitors find related content.

Internal Linking and External linking

While Internal linking connects pages within your blog website, external linking involves linking to pages on other websites.

Both types of linking are important for your blog SEO. When used together strategically, they can provide a holistic approach to SEO that enhances your website’s authority and credibility.

Types of Internal links (The way you can use them)

  • Pagination

Pagination is a method of separating different digital content into different pages on your website. When you use the internal link in pagination, it becomes the navigational type of internal link.

Navigational internal links are the most important as they make up your website’s navigational structure.

These links often can be used on the top menu or sidebar and cover product categories, services, or main content topics. They help your users easily access important sections or pages of your site.

  • Anchor Text

Anchor Text link in your website is different than other text (e.g. colored or underlined) so the user knows it’s clickable.

When you use your internal link as an Anchor text, you have to understand that it is a contextual type of internal link.

These are links embedded within the content itself, often as part of a sentence or paragraph.

They provide context and relevance to the linked page. Bloggers like you often use these types of internal links in blog posts to point readers to related, relevant content and to help Google understand how your site pages relate to each other.

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  • Footer links

You can use internal links on the footer of your website. These links are a type of navigation links But they appear at the bottom of the page instead of the top.

These links should point to other pages on your site that the user may want to visit. Some examples are Contact Us, About Us, and other reference pages.

More ways of using Internal Linking in your blog site

  • Related posts, Popular posts, Read More..

At the end of your blog post or article, you can suggest related content to readers, encouraging them to explore more of your website.

You can use your popular post or important post in your internal link so that you can increase your readers’ engagement in your blog site.

Similarly Read More is another way of interlinking your related or relevant blog posts to each other.

  • Images

This is another way of interlinking your pages within your website. This is something that lots of bloggers overlook when it comes to internal linking. You can use your logo, animation, infographics, or any other form of image for interlinking.

How to Interlink Your Content?

Building an internal linking strategy is one of the ways to improve the SEO and fitness of your website.

There are several things to consider when it comes to internal linking strategy. By adding strategically right internal links to your blog site, you are going to make sure that search engines and your user understands –

  • the relevance of pages
  • the relationship between pages
  • and the value of pages

So, it is up to you how you go about internal linking. It depends on your blog site and goals. It also depends on your site structure, and how you structure your blogging site.

The ideal structure of a website

When your blogging site has a clear and logical structure, you can maximize the benefits of internal linking to your website.

You have to group related content into categories and subcategories, creating a clear hierarchy. Then you can use internal links to connect pages within the same category or related categories.

It will be wise to include a well-structured sitemap that links to all the important pages on your site. this can help users and search engines navigate your content effectively.

Here is an example of an ideal site structure with internal links.

Ideal website structure with internal linking

Now, Let’s look at some strategies for internal linking.

Strategy one

  • Identify key Pages

In this process, you should determine which pages are the most important or have the highest potential for ranking.

You can take the page or pages that are performing well in search engines from Google Console and link to other pages so that you can pass link juice and page authority to the new page.

For example, Look at my best-performing pages on Google. Whenever it seems suitable I will interlink with that page to a new page or from that page to a new page with keyword-rich anchor text.

Google Search Console Presentation of high performing pages for internal linking
  • Use Descriptive Achor Text

When you are creating internal links, you should use keyword-rich descriptive anchor text that clearly indicates the content of the linked page. You should avoid generic phrases like “Click here”.

Quality descriptive anchor text helps your users and search engines determine what a page is about before they click on it. Relevant anchor text allows Google’s algorithm to better understand your blogging site’s structure.

  • Monitor and Revise

Regularly review your internal linking strategy and make adjustments as needed. You have to ensure that links are still relevant and that they enhance the user experience.

Strategy 2

  • Find out your cornerstone or pillar pages

A pillar page in your blogging site means the pages that come on the top of your marketing funnel. These pages should target broad keywords with high search volumes rather than more specific long-tail keywords. For example: Keyword Research, Keyword Density, Washing Machine, etc.

  • Use topic clusters using internal links

After finalizing your pillar pages, it’s time to create more specific topic clusters for each of them.

Pillar topic is your main topic and cluster topics are the supporting topics, more specific topics that are your cornerstone topic.

Here is a very good example of clustering the main topic from SEMRUSH.

A model of clustering topics

Next, the Steps are the same as strategy one in this strategy too. That is:

  • Choosing the right keyword-rich descriptive anchor text
  • Passing the page authority by identifying your blogging site’s best-performing authority pages
  • Supporting your new blog posts and pages
  • Finally, monitor and review your internal linking performance

Both strategies look similar except for the wording and language. As already discussed, the internal linking strategy depends on your blog site’s structures and goals. Choose wisely and apply any strategies for your best SEO results and User experience.

Best Practices of Internal Linking for SEO

  • Put Links High up On your Page

Putting internal links towards the top of your page can reduce your bounce rate and improve Dwell time.

Besides, when you put internal links high up on your page, it gives your readers something to click on the right way. They will spend more time on your site.

  • Use Do Follow and nofollow tag carefully

When you do internal linking on your website always use do-follow links for your PageRank. You should take care of the nofollow tag and do-follow tag when internal linking.

  • Use Anchor text Wisely

Using Anchor text for internal links is the best way. But you have to choose the anchor text wisely. Quality, descriptive, and keyword-rich relevant anchor text gives you a better result. Don’t use the same anchor text for two different pages.

  • Avoid Automation for internal links

Automation tools do not give you strategic internal linking.

You should not use automation because it gives you anchor text spam with exact match text.

You should understand that internal links are not just for SEO, it for your users’ experience. Most automation tools ignore the users.

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  • Add internal links to Old pages and Orphan pages

When you find old pages without internal links, don’t miss the opportunity to interlink with other pages. Similarly, orphan pages by definition are the pages that don’t have any links. If you have pages like this, add the internal links to it.

  • Don’t Go Overboard

Internal links are great. But at a certain point (at about 100), links on a page don’t pass as much value. Too many links on a page can confuse Google’s crawlers. Additionally, when your users see hundreds of internal links on a page, they will be confused to identify which likes are important. That’s why, Less is more in terms of internal linking.

Final Words

Internal linking is a valuable SEO strategy that can boost your website’s

  • Visibility
  • Improve user experience
  • Helps search engines better understand your content

It is the only type of link in your blog website, in which you have full control. You can use it wherever and however in your blog posts and pages.

By creating a logical website structure, strategically using internal links, and keeping your content up-to-date, you can harness the power of internal linking to achieve better SEO results.

So, why don’t you start implementing these techniques today to enhance your website’s performance and drive more organic traffic?

That’s it for this blog post.

Did I miss something on this topic? If you have more knowledge and resources then don’t forget to share in the comment box.

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