SEO and Internal Linking
Internal linking is one of the most important SEO factors to consider. Good internal linking enables search engine spiders to freely roam and index your site, clearly understand the site structure and generally make sense of the entire website. By neglecting your internal linking structure you can affect not only your ranking for important key terms but also how many pages are ranked and for which key terms you rank for. The following tips aim to provide some basic to ensure that you have properly thought through your internal linking.
- Homepage
Make sure that the homepage links to all major pages (if not all pages) of your website. This can be done by having a clearly organised navigational menu as well as offering links in the page footer and in the homepage content. The homepage is your most important page (and probably most optimised) so ensure that it offers users and the search engine spiders a clear funnel to your sites most important pages.
- Key words
It is integral that you use key terms valuable and appropriate to your business in your links. Ensure that you have carried out extensive Key Words research and then use these words to link to internal pages. Use key terms that are the same to the destination page name.
- Footer
It is now common practice to place a summarised site map at the footer section of each page throughout the site with the aim of enabling users and spiders to reach all other major parts of the site. This provides good and relevant links with valuable key terms. Don’t list every page in your entire site, just major ones like home, product categories, contact, about, faqs, blog etc.
- Navigation Menu
A highly optimised navigational menu will be clearly organised and categorised and should (naturally) contain important key terms. Ensure that the navigational menu is placed on each page, and don’t be tempted to over repeat key terms. Ensure that more important pages are placed towards the top (if vertical) or left (if horizontal) of the menu.
- Links in Content
Another way to build internal link structure is to use in-text links. These can be placed in text content on the page. Be careful not to appear spammy and use the in-text links only if they point users to valuable information. In-text links can also be used to strategically cross sell products or services in your site.
- Other strategies
There are other creative ways to build internal linking. You can use bread crumbs to improve navigational usability and to provide additional links. These are links that usually appear on the top left of the page showing the user what folder they are in. Another way is to provide a key terms cloud on each page or a list of links to similar internal pages that may be of interest to the user.
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