Internal Links And Structure

Internal links are links that go from one page on a domain to a different page on the same domain. They are commonly used in main navigation. 

These type of links are useful for three reasons:

• They allow users to navigate a website.
• They help establish information hierarchy for the given website.
• They help spread link equity (ranking power) around websites.

Why are internal links important for SEO?

Google now uses natural language processing (NLP) to better understand one in 10 English search queries. But, algorithms are far from perfect. They need context to understand what a page is about, it’s relationship to other pages, and how important it is on your website.

That’s the true value of internal links. They power your site architecture, convey meaning, funnel authority, and much more. 

Website structure

Internal links are a bit like an organizational chart for your website. They group related pages and sections together like departments in a company. This reinforces context and relevance as well as your depth of coverage on a topic.

Your html internal linking strategy works together with your website navigation and URL structure to support an SEO-friendly website architecture.

Internal links are most useful for establishing site architecture and spreading link equity (URLs are also essential). For this reason, this section is about building an SEO-friendly site architecture with internal links.

On an individual page, search engines need to see content in order to list pages in their massive keyword–based indices. They also need to have access to a crawlable link structure — a structure that lets spiders browse the pathways of a website — in order to find all of the pages on a website. Hundreds of thousands of sites make the critical mistake of hiding or burying their main link navigation in ways that search engines cannot access. This hinders their ability to get pages listed in the search engines’ indices. Below is an illustration of how this problem can happen:

In the example above, Google’s colorful spider has reached page “A” and sees internal links to pages “B” and “E.” However important pages C and D might be to the site, the spider has no way to reach them—or even know they exist—because no direct, crawlable links point to those pages. As far as Google is concerned, these pages basically don’t exist–great content, good keyword targeting, and smart marketing don’t make any difference at all if the spiders can’t reach those pages in the first place.

The optimal structure for a website would look similar to a pyramid (where the big dot on the top is homepage):

This structure has the minimum amount of links possible between the homepage and any given page. This is helpful because it allows link equity (ranking power) to flow throughout the entire site, thus increasing the ranking potential for each page. This structure is common on many high-performing websites (like Amazon.com) in the form of category and subcategory systems. There is no limit for a internal link quantity but it’s important to not over do its, If you have too many internal links, you’ll dilute your PageRank and your content will look spammy

Content hierarchy

Internal links help Google to understand the most important pages on your website. Search engines consider pages with lots of internal links to be more important than those with fewer links. That’s especially true when you link to those pages from your navigation because it tells Google you want users to find them.

Context

Google needs context to understand both search queries and web pages. On-page SEO elements like page titles, H1 tags, URLs, and subheadings all provide search engines with more context about a page. But, so do internal links. And it’s not just the anchor text that offers context, either. The context of the link within the sentence, paragraph, and subheading of the referring page also provide invaluable clues about what’s on the other end of that link.

Authority

The final piece of the puzzle is authority. Whether you call the metric link juice, PageRank, Page Authority or URL Rating, it’s all the same concept. Pages on your website that receive the most backlinks from trusted domains have the most value to pass along to other URLs on your site.

Simply put, if a page has tons of high quality inbound links, find opportunities to add relevant, internal links to distribute that authority to other pages on your website.

Internal links improve user experience and conversions

Internal link building is an excellent way to deliver a premium user experience while moving potential customers deeper into your conversion funnel. As users consume your content, they’ll have more questions. When you anticipate those questions, you can guide their thought process. Then, by strategically adding internal links to your content, you’ll prompt action.

When you serve users what they want, they’re more likely to remain on your website instead of returning to Google for answers. This amplifies brand awareness, builds trust, fosters brand loyalty and increases sales.

Search engines use links to crawl your site

Links are the most effective way Google discovers new content. If a URL doesn’t have any internal links or backlinks, it could take Google much longer to find it.

Googlebot and other web crawlers literally travel the web from one link to another. The more links a new page or new post has, the more likely Google will encounter it.

Internal pages without any links are called orphaned pages. It’s always worth checking your website to make sure every page you care about has at least one internal link.