Internal Linking

What is an Internal Link?

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 the 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  Google understand and rank your website better

Code Sample

<a href=”http://www.same-domain.com/” title=”Keyword Text”>Keyword Text</a>

Optimal Format

Use descriptive keywords in anchor text that give a sense of the topic or keywords the source page is trying to target.

Advantages of using internal links in a domain:

• User friendly and easier for navigation: Proper placing of internal links allows readers easy navigation through the website. It also helps them in finding relevant content and articles.
• Increase of pageviews and reduction of bounce rate: By placing relevant internal links, readers spend longer amounts of time on the website navigating through the different pages created. This in turn increases the pageviews. One of the biggest advantages of internal links is the dramatic reduction of the website’s bounce rate.
• Improved indexing and crawling of the website: Search engines would find it easier to crawl and index the website based on the internal links. Indexing becomes more convenient by use of internal links.
• Increase in PageRank: High quality backlinks placed in one page of website will act as backlink for other pages in same site if internal links are well established.This in turn would help in increasing the pagerank for the website.
• Improvement in search engine rankings: With improvement in page rank, the backlinks and the internal links help in improving a website’s search engine rankings.

Why Internal Linking Is Good for SEO

• Helps Google index your site — if your website has strong internal linking, the Google crawler has an easier time finding new content you publish. Improved crawling and indexing can boost your SEO
• Increases backlink-earning potential of deep content pages —  a lot of backlinks links send users to your homepage. Too many home page backlinks are bad for SEO. We call this over-optimizing, and it should be avoided. If you create a strong internal linking structure, you can boost the link juice earning potential of the internal pages, by creating clear click paths and indexation throughout the website. 
• Internal Linking spreads the strength of the site to internal pages — When your website receives a link to the homepage, some of the link value is passed on to internal pages. This is often referred to as “link juice.” If Page 1 then links to Page 2, the “link juice” flows from Page 1 to Page 2, helping it rank higher in the search engine results page (SERP)

• Internal Linking with optimized anchor text Is good for SEO — Anchor text improves the value of the link by adding keywords and content to the linking process. Google isn’t just looking at an A HREF tag. They are also looking at the anchor text that is part of that link.
• It provides value to your users — Internal linking on a site increases the value of each piece of content by backing up claims and leading the user to related information. While it may not drive conversions directly, internal linking does have a place within the marketing funnel — carrying people to a target destination.

SEO Best Practice

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.

But how is this accomplished? The best way to do this is with internal links and supplementary URL structures. For example, they internally link to a page located at http://www.example.com/mammals… with the anchor text “cats.” Below is the format for a correctly formatted internal link. Imagine this link is on the domain jonwye.com.

In the above illustration, the “a” tag indicates the start of a link. Link tags can contain images, text, or other objects, all of which provide a “clickable” area on the page that users can engage to move to another page. This is the original concept of the Internet: “hyperlinks.” The link referral location tells the browser—and the search engines—where the link points.

The following best practices underpin the SEO strategy

• Integrate SEO into your content strategy

When you keep SEO top of mind as you develop your content strategy, you naturally create content that’s ideal for internal linking. Think about your personas, their pain points, and the journey they take along the path to conversion.

How do your customers think about their problems and possible solutions? Which terms do they search in Google? What’s the intent behind those keywords, and what format should your content be presented in?

Publish content that aligns with your audience’s immediate needs, and anticipate their evolving questions as they progress through the funnel. Then, add internal links strategically to capture their interest at the precise moment they’re thinking of the next question.

• Use topic clusters and pillar pages

We can take the above concept one step further by using topic clusters. Not familiar with how they work? I explain what topic clusters are here, and they’re fundamental to our internal linking strategy.

In short, topic clusters are related buckets of content that collectively cover broad concepts. Each group has one pillar page and many supporting cluster pages. If you’re imagining something like a Ferris wheel, you’re exactly right.

The reason topic clusters are so effective in an internal linking strategy is because they form hubs of relevant content.

Each pillar page overviews a high-level topic and it introduces various subtopics. Then, pillar pages link out to more detailed blog posts about those subtopics from appropriate subheadings. These blog posts are called cluster pages, and they link back to the main pillar page in return. Cluster pages also link to each other where appropriate, and even link to other pillar pages.

Topic clusters help to demonstrate expertise and breadth of coverage to Google. More importantly, they organize your content into bitesize subtopics and passages which is precisely what Google is investing in right now. Google recently announced that they made a breakthrough in ranking which allows them to better understand the relevancy of individual passages from your pages, and even index them separately.

• Link out from authoritative pages

Some people make this harder than it needs to be. As long as you have access to a tool like Moz or Ahrefs, you can assess the relative authority of the pages on your website based on the strength of their backlink profile.

There’s no need to sculpt PageRank, or use algorithms. Just make sure you add internal links to relevant pages with lots of great backlinks. The more backlinks it has, the more links you can add without diluting their value too much.

• Use keywords in internal link anchor text

Some SEO experts recommend that you go easy on the exact match anchor text or you might get penalized by Google. I absolutely disagree.

It’s inconceivable that Google would ever penalize a great website because they linked to their own content from their own domain using appropriate, keyword-driven anchor text.

It’s your website. You’re allowed to do whatever you want. Just don’t pack keywords in unnaturally, and don’t overuse them if you’re building backlinks from other websites. As long as your internal links and anchor text make sense contextually and they’re intended to help users, don’t worry about it.

Here’s what Google says about anchor text:

• Mix up your anchor text

Anchor text matters — a lot. Google uses it to understand what’s on the other end of a link. Anchor text influences your rankings, so why not use that to your advantage?

I’d be willing to bet that when you publish content, you probably want it to rank for more than the main head term, right? You’d expect the page to rank for hundreds, or even thousands of long-tail keywords that collectively drive massive amounts of traffic.

A great way to influence your rankings for those lower volume terms is to use them in your internal links. If a page has a lot of internal links with exact match anchor text, mix it up. Consider using broad match variations as well, especially if they help convey the context or search intent of your target keyword.

• Add internal links from old content
• Fix broken internal links
• Use dofollow links

If you’ve been in the business for a while, you’re probably familiar with PageRank sculpting. Back in the day, webmasters would nofollow internal links to stop PageRank from flowing to unwanted URLs. This would effectively concentrate the flow of link juice to money pages while still allowing links to function for users.

Well, that’s no longer the case. PageRank now “evaporates” through nofollow links. It doesn’t pass through to the destination page, and it doesn’t get redistributed to other links on the page. It just goes away.

In short, use dofollow internal links — unless you have millions of low-value pages you don’t want Google to discover.