Everyone knows that links are important for your SEO ranking. But the focus is often on backlinks to your website. While building up your backlinks is certainly an essential part of a strong SEO strategy, looking a little closer to home can also pay dividends when it comes to improving your search engine ranking.
Internal linking is something that people tend not to use to its full benefit. Maybe that’s because it might seem complicated, or you’re unsure how it relates to your business and website. While it can be complicated to get it 100% right, there are lots of ways you can improve yours without getting a second degree.
Here’s a brief guide on how to whip your internal linking structure into shape and give your SEO a boost.
What is an internal linking structure?
An external link directs people from a different website to a specific page on your website. When a customer looking for an electrician clicks a link on a local business directory, they will be directed away from the business directory site and onto your website.
An internal link directs people from one specific page on your website to another one. When they click the anchor text, they will be directed to a different page on your website.
A good internal link structure allows customers to navigate your site easily, helps you set your website hierarchy, and means that you can distribute page authority and ranking power across multiple pages.
How to get started
First things first – you need content to develop an excellent internal linking strategy. If you don’t have much content at the moment, consider creating a blog, or increasing the frequency of your blog posts.
Of course, the content you create should be valuable and relevant to your audience. Don’t create content purely for the sake of it. Instead, consider what kind of information your clients or customers might be looking for – and then deliver it to them.
The more high-quality content you have, the more opportunity you will have to link to them from other pieces of content. If you have plenty of high-quality content already, you can move on to the next part of the strategy.
Make the links highly relevant, and use good anchor text
Every link you create should make absolute sense to the reader. When you put a link into other content, you’re indicating to both the search engines and the reader that the linked content is highly relevant to the topic of the content they are reading.
For example, if you’re reading a blog post about rewiring your home, you wouldn’t expect to click a link in that article and be directed to a blog post about indoor plumbing. However, an article about re-plastering, or appropriate safety measures when completing electrical work would be highly relevant.
The anchor text is the text that you attach the link to. You don’t need to overthink this, but the anchor text also needs to be relevant. In this article about improving your SEO, I might want to link to an article discussing how your website’s out-of-the-box SEO features aren’t enough to build a great SEO strategy. The anchor text I’ve chosen there makes it clear what information you will find when you click the link.
Sometimes the best anchor text is one word, sometimes it’s several words. Just make sure that like the links themselves, it’s very relevant to the reader and signposts what they can expect to find when they click it.
Don’t make lots of links to your homepage or contact pages
It’s tempting to always link to your homepage or your contact page, but try and avoid over-using these two links.
If someone likes what they’re reading and wants to get in touch to find out how your business can help them, they will easily find your contact page. Most websites have the contact page clearly listed in their website menu, and customers won’t struggle to find it.
Your homepage will often already be the page with the highest ranking. By linking to deeper, more relevant pages, you can help boost their ranking – giving you more chances to rank overall.
Keep it to a reasonable number of links per post.
Internal links are great but don’t get too carried away and put dozens of unnecessary links in one blog post. Google recommends keeping links to ‘a reasonable number’ but don’t specify what a reasonable number is. However, they’ve suggested that there is no penalty for over-using internal links.
But before you go wild, remember that your primary concern should be the user experience, and too many links can affect that. Aiming for 3-4 links for each piece of content is a great place to start. The key is to remember that any links must be relevant and to avoid putting in links that don’t add value for the reader.
Of course, implementing all of these tips can take time and effort, and an SEO expert will be able to help you devise a great content strategy to build out your internal links. They can also help you tackle any other ‘under the hood’ changes you could make to your website and avoid common SEO mistakes to improve your search engine ranking.