Internal Linking

Your SEO strategy should be two part:

• Content
• Inbound links

After creating a blog post, you work on driving traffic to it.

Part of your strategy should include:

• Internal linking
• Your website’s other pages giving value to your new page

Start by figuring out:

• Which high-authority pages should link to your new page
• How to build link authority for your website

This is called internal linking.

What is internal linking?

Internal linking is using hyperlinks to link web pages on your website to each other.

This helps:

• Keep visitors on your website for longer
• Boosts your website’s SEO authority

Internal linking makes it easier to rank for difficult keyword phrases because you share your best content’s authority with your new content.

Why Internal Linking Is Important

A search engine’s goal is to show the best web pages about a topic.

And most link builders and SEO specialists focus on:

• Inbound links
• Linking from other sites

Often overlooking how important internal linking is.

So, read to find out why.

Internal linking and SEO

Each web page’s internal link tells Google that your website’s page is more important.

Internal links and links from external high-quality sources:

• Improves your search engine authority
• Improves your rankings

Inbound links are other website’s votes of confidence for your content, telling search engines about your content.

And internal links are votes of confidence by you and also telling search engines about your content.

It is better for people voting for your content than just you.

But voting for your own content, still shows search engines your web page is one of the best.

Internal links are also valuable because these links pass on their link authority.

When each web page’s link authority is shared into your website with internal links, search engines notice:

• Your blog’s value
• Other linked page’s value

Internally linking web pages that rank and bring traffic to your website also pass on SEO benefits.

Setting up an Internal Link Structure

For valuable pages on your website, think about how to explain that value to search engines.

A quick way is to internally link to it.

A search engine determines the value of an internal link by looking at:

• How many of your website pages link to that page
• How they link to that page

If every web page of your website links to a web page, it must be important like:

• Your homepage
• Your blog’s homepage

If your ‘About Us’ page links to your blog and not your homepage or your website’s main navigation, this tells search engines your blog is not strong.

But, if your website’s main navigation links to your blog, this tells search engines like Google it’s one of your top pages.

This works for blog posts too.

Link your blog posts to phrases in other blog posts to tell Google your web page is valuable to your readers.

Start internal linking by:

• Auditing your website’s main pages
• Find where you can link between pages

But remember to only link naturally to other blog posts and pages.

Improve Your Website’s Internal Linking

To make sure you are using the authority of your internal pages, do the following:

Draw a map of your website

Start by:

• List the main pages in your navigation
• Note down the links on each of those pages

This will help you know:

• The links your website already has between each page
• How you’ve linked these pages together in the past

Visually seeing your whole website helps to see:

• What’s been overlooked
• What’s working

You will find the reason your best pages rank well when you built links to them from your other content.

List topics written about frequently

When you write alot about a topic, you should have a dedicated page on your website dedicated to that topic.

And each post on that topic should link to the main subject page.

If your main subject page has a call-to-action, using internal linking will drive your traffic to click your call-to-action.

More things you should consider include:

• Where the page is in your navigation
• Is it worth linking to, from your homepage

Even linking to a blog post or page from your website’s main navigation might help.

For example, a page explaining your business to new visitors would make a good blog post.

Think about other pages to link to your ranking page

Your main topic page should reference and link to topic pages related to it.

For example, for a main topic page to rank.

You need to regularly write about topics related to the main topic.

Then have at least one link in each of those posts pointing to the main topic page.

And this also helps your related topic pages to rank as well.