How to Use Internal Linking to Improve SEO Effectively
Want your website to rank higher and attract more organic traffic? It all comes down to building authority. But, that authority doesn’t happen magically.
You need to implement smart strategies that help Google see your website as a trustworthy source of information. Learning how to use internal linking to improve SEO can give you a competitive edge.
While backlinks often take center stage in the SEO world, you have more control over a very important factor: internal linking. These links live within your website’s content. They connect one page to another.
If you’re looking to enhance your website’s SEO with effective internal linking strategies, Infintech Designs can help. Contact us today to learn how we can improve your site’s performance and visibility.
Table of Contents
Why Are Internal Links Important for SEO?
Think of internal links like bridges connecting different parts of a city. Just as these bridges streamline transportation and economic flow, strategic internal linking ensures smooth navigation. This is true for both users and search engines.
OnCrawl highlighted the importance of website structure. It showed pages closer to the homepage are crawled more often. A well-structured website helps Google quickly understand your content. It grasps relevance and value for searchers. This leads to higher search rankings.
How Internal Linking Improves User Experience
User experience goes hand in hand with SEO success. Google prioritizes websites that cater to user needs. These sites provide relevant and valuable content. It’s delivered in an easy-to-navigate format. This is why understanding how to use internal linking to improve SEO is so important.
When done right, internal links create valuable pathways. Users can explore further. They can get more into interesting topics. Strategically placed links prevent dead ends. Plus, they improve engagement.
For example, let’s say you have an e-commerce site. It specializes in coffee brewing equipment. A user lands on your blog. They’re reading “The Ultimate Guide to French Press Coffee.”
A well-placed internal link could lead them to a product page. This page would feature French press coffee makers. This seamless transition enhances user experience. It encourages product discovery and keeps visitors engaged.
The Role of Internal Linking in Building Website Authority
Websites with strong internal linking structures send positive signals. These signals are sent to search engine crawlers.
When a page on your website receives numerous relevant internal links, what do search engines think? They perceive that page as being important. It’s a signal that other pages on your site consider the linked page to be high-value and informative.
Internal linking helps pass authority to other pages on your site. This authority is also known as PageRank. The practice spreads link equity. This is a measure of authority passed from one page to another.
So, how do you get that authority flowing? You need to think strategically.
You can use a tool to pull a report on your top pages. Tools include SEMRush (paid) and Ahrefs (paid). You can also use Google Search Console (free). These tools provide insights into your backlink profiles. They show which pages have the most backlinks from external sources.
Let’s say you find a high-performing blog post. It has tons of backlinks from reputable websites, indicating high authority. Now, let’s imagine you also have another blog post published more recently. However, it’s shorter. It hasn’t earned as many backlinks yet.
This newer page covers a similar topic. But, it goes into less detail, which is perfectly okay. This newer content simply offers a different perspective. It appeals to a different segment of your target audience.
By strategically linking your high-authority blog post to this newer post, some of that hard-earned link juice will get passed along. Pretty cool, right?
Internal Linking Helps Your Content Get Indexed
Imagine for a moment that Google is on a mission. They want to index all of your website content. This allows it to be served to your target audience in search results.
You’re thrilled and want to help. You want to ensure a smooth process. Google has a friend that can help expedite this process, but you need to make sure they have a clear map for optimal navigation. That helpful friend comes in the form of something known as crawlability.
Crawlers analyze new content. They want to determine its value. The goal is to ensure your most important pages are easily discoverable. These pages need to be indexed. This prevents them from getting lost within a website’s complex structure.
Strategic internal linking helps crawlers discover, categorize, and index your content for SEO success.
How to Use Internal Linking to Boost SEO
By now, you already know how to use internal linking to improve SEO. But it bears repeating: strategic implementation is key. This means thinking carefully. Which pages do you want to rank for specific keywords? Then, you need to build a network of internal links that support those goals. Here’s how it’s done.
1. Optimize Your Website Structure
Having a website architecture that makes sense just makes sense. A website’s structure impacts user experience. It also impacts SEO. A logical site structure ensures your content can be found by both search engines and humans.
When thinking about how to structure a website, imagine a pyramid. Your homepage is the top. The middle section represents categories of content. The bottom showcases specific articles or product pages.
Your highest level pages should live at the very top. This is the cornerstone content. It’s what attracts the most backlinks from external sites. As you move down, content becomes more niche. It dives into more specific subtopics.
To illustrate the effectiveness of building internal links that are beneficial to your website’s SEO success, consider this example: suppose you own an ecommerce business. It focuses on outdoor and survival gear. Let’s say some of your top-level pages may include:
- Camping Equipment.
- Survival Tools.
- First Aid Kits.
- Navigation.
When linking internally within the page discussing Emergency Shelter, for example, it’s advantageous to create a link to the top-level page “Camping Equipment.”
Why? Because the relationship between the pages is clear and natural for the reader. You can create these interlinking relationships naturally with well-written content. How? By using highly relevant anchor text.
2. Perform a Content Audit
Before you go around randomly adding links, take a step back. Ask yourself: Will this internal link be valuable for readers? Are you making the connection clear? Or are you just trying to tick off an SEO task on a checklist? Your readers (and Google) will know.
Here are some questions to ask yourself when auditing content for internal linking opportunities:
- Does this page have at least one internal link to a higher-level page on my site? Ideally, this page has more authority.
- Are any internal links pointing to outdated content?
- If I had a specific product or service to recommend to a reader of this blog post, what would it be? And does an internal link currently exist to that product or service?
- If this page was ranking for the specific keywords I want, would the internal links point my target audience in the direction of valuable resources? Would it lead toward a purchase if relevant?
- Does this piece of content include too many or not enough internal links?
You want the answers to these questions to be a resounding YES. This strategy makes learning how to use internal linking to improve SEO more than worth your time, energy, and effort. But there’s more you can do to create a top-notch strategy.
3. Use Descriptive Anchor Text
Just like you wouldn’t expect your website visitors to find a specific article using vague keywords, you also want to avoid being lazy with anchor text. The clickable words within that anchor text should describe where the link is taking readers.
A good rule of thumb is to keep your anchor text to no more than four words. For instance, linking a blog post discussing “Internal Linking for Ecommerce Websites” with the text “click here” offers no SEO juice. Why? Because anchor text can have a notable influence on a web page’s ranking for particular keyword searches.
That’s not to say there’s no place for exact-match anchor text. Just like many areas of digital marketing and SEO, striking the perfect balance between creativity and strategic thinking often yields the best result.
When optimizing a website, remember that backlinks, too, must follow similar rules. While you may have complete control over your internal links, that isn’t always the case with external ones.
This distinction is why you always want to approach SEO with Google’s guidelines in mind, including best practices around manipulating external anchor text, to avoid potential penalties.
4. Prioritize Natural Language
In a recent 2024 analysis by Cyrus Shepard of ZyppySEO, Cyrus analyzed losing and winning websites. This analysis focused on sites impacted by major algorithm updates. Cyrus noticed losing websites tended to over-optimize anchor text.
As Google’s algorithms get more sophisticated, stuffing content full of unnatural language may even negatively impact your ranking potential.
Remember when you were just starting in digital marketing and SEO? Back then, you thought you could rank a page easily. You thought you could simply add your target keyword phrase hundreds of times.
This included adding it to the content and metadata. Yeah…those days are LONG gone (thank goodness.). Today, Google can spot these outdated, keyword-stuffing techniques from a mile away, even when applied subtly. So, what is the best approach?
Years ago (2009 to be exact), Google’s former head of webspam, Matt Cutts, stated something important. He stated that it’s a good practice to keep total links on a page below 100.
This concept can also be applied to anchor text variations. Why? Search engines are getting better at detecting attempts to game the system. While there isn’t always a black-and-white answer when it comes to SEO, staying current on industry best practices and Google algorithm updates will work in your favor.
It’s one of those “better to be safe than sorry” situations where avoiding penalties that negatively impact ranking can cost businesses thousands, if not millions, in lost revenue and require even more marketing dollars to attempt to recoup.
5. Regularly Audit for Broken Links
If you have an extensive website or haven’t audited internal and external links for quite a while, this can quickly become a time-consuming task if done manually.
The good news? Just as several tools on the market help automate external backlink research and analysis, a variety of resources can streamline the auditing process for internal links, making your job as an SEO expert that much easier.
According to SEMRush, 42.5% of all websites have broken internal links. You can run an audit in SEMRush, Ahrefs (paid tools), or Google Search Console (free).
Conclusion
Now you know how to use internal linking to improve SEO and supercharge your organic visibility. But, the truth is Google rarely shares its algorithm secrets (and for good reason.), making it even more critical to implement tried-and-tested white-hat strategies to get ahead of the competition.
You’re now equipped to weave together an intricate network of strategically placed internal links that boost engagement, provide additional value to your readers, and catapult those all-important pages to the coveted position of page 1. And that’s how it’s done.
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