SEO Link Practices

You do everything possible to rank your website on Google, but internal linking often takes a backseat. Internal links help users to navigate a website effortlessly. They are vital to improving your website’s SEO.

In this blog, you will explore the importance of internal linking, best SEO link practices and how to create an internal link building strategies for your website.

What are Internal Links?

An internal link is any link from one web page of your website to another page on your website. Your users and search engines use internal links to discover content on your website. Internal links are also used to navigate through a website to find what they are hopeful to see.

Why are Internal Links Crucial?

Internal link SEO best practice is important for following main reasons:

Internal links assist search engines in understanding your website’s structure,
They help pass authority, and
They establish relationship with content.

Let us elaborate the points.

Internal links assist search engines in understanding your website’s structure

When you strategically integrate internal links to your website, you signal that page A is related to page B. Strategically placing links helps Google (and other search engines) understand the context of your web pages and their differences. A well-built internal link structure also helps search engines discover and index your site’s pages.

Google mentions in its guide as well- it is stated in the guide- “some pages are known as Google has already crawled them before. Other pages are found when Google follows a link from an unknown page to a new page.”

Here is how it works:

They help pass authority

Internal linking helps pass authority to your website’s other pages. Google uses the PageRank algorithm to measure a webpage’s importance. Let us assume that page A has an authoritative external link hinting at it. This concludes page A authority via PageRank. This authority can then be passed down to page C through internal links.

They establish relationship with content

Google crawls websites to understand the content available using a bot called Googlebot. After exploring the website’s homepage, the bot follows the first link. By following links, Google can understand the relationship between various pages and other content types. By following this method, Google discovers which pages on your site cover a similar subject matter.

To ensure Google understands the content on a site, make similar topics available. For example- your webpage is about content, and other similar topics will help redirect, such as “content tips.”

Steps to Build Your Internal Linking Strategy

Now that you know what internal links are and why they are essential. Here are five steps to get started with your internal link-building strategy:

Step 1: Identify Your Website’s Pillar Pages

Make a list of all the pillar pages of your site- i.e., main pages on a broad topic that link to more particular pages.

Your pillar pages will assist you in creating topic clusters, basically groups of content about specific topics. After figuring out pillar pages and topic clusters, building your site’s architecture will be much easier.

You need to consider your pillar page at the top of your marketing funnel. Pillar pages are meant for audiences who are curious and are exploring available details. Your site’s pillar pages must target high-quality and search-volume keywords rather than long-tail ones.

Step 2: Develop Topic Clusters Using Internal Links

Now that you have identified your topic/ pillars, the next step will be developing specific topic clusters for them. Think of your site’s pillar pages as the prime topic; clusters exist for support on more particular issues.

Let me explain by giving an example: suppose your pillar page is about “digital marketing solutions,” your clusters should include “what is digital marketing?” and “digital marketing tools.”

To further strengthen your link-building strategy, you can develop more (sub) clusters to support your cluster pages. For example, support your “branding solutions” cluster with other cluster pages on the topic surrounding branding solutions, such as “what is branding” and “personal branding.”

All these pages must be internally linked back to the prime pillar pages to represent topical relevance and show the authority of pillar pages. Map out all your site’s topic clusters and develop ideas for supporting pages. To ease your work process, create a spreadsheet for each particular topic cluster:

Step 3: Select the Right Anchor Text

You get full ownership over your site’s anchor text. Act strategically about your words and phrases to indicate their target page topics. Placing apt words on anchor text is necessary to assist both visitors and search engines analyze what a page is about.

Here is how an anchor text appears in a hyperlink:

Relevant anchor text is significant as it allows Google’s algorithm to understand a website’s structure and provides context for how pages are related.

An SEO-friendly anchor text is:

Precise: Keep anchor text brief and to the point so that it’s clear what the page’s copy is all about to users and search engines. We suggest keeping the anchor text between four to five words or less.
Make sure it’s relevant: Relevancy is the primary key. Avoid clickbait anchor text such as “buy now” or “click here.” Neither option assists Google in figuring out what the inked page is about or covers.
Optimize the anchor text: Optimization is a must! Do not try to over-optimize the anchor text by keyword stuffing.

Step 4: Identify Your Site’s Authority Pages

Next in line is strategically attaching authority to other pages via internal links. Your site’s authoritative web pages have high-quality backlinks (from external links) pointing to them. Now, Google witnesses’ backlinks as a source of authority. So, it becomes clear if a page has a lot of confidence votes like backlinks- some of that authority can be passed on. You need to focus on creating genuine and quality backlinks.

You can use tools such as Semrush to identify your site’s most authoritative backlinks.

Step 5: Support Your New Pages

A robust internal linking is crucial if you have yet to earn authoritative backlinks. Pick a new piece of content or a web page that you would like to perform better. After finalizing a web page or content, identify the opportunities for relevant interlinking. Perform a search to discover related pages on your site that target the page’s chief keyword.

Bonus Step: Maximize Digital PR campaign impact with proper internal links

Digital PR is the main tactic utilized to earn backlinks. The PR team is responsible for creating linkable articles, assets, and other essential resources. You can integrate a PR strategy to increase your internal linking efforts.

Common Internal Linking Issues and How to Fix Them

Broken internal links

The problem: Broken internal links send users and search engine crawlers to web pages that don’t exist. This can result in 404 errors.

How to fix it: Explore your site’s broken links under the “Errors” section of your Internal Linking report. Afterward, either remove or replace the connection with one redirecting to a live page.

No follow Attributes in Internal Links

The problem: You don’t want “no follow links.” Follow links use the rel=” no follow” attribute to indicate that Google does not pass authority to the linked web page.

How to fix it: You can find no follow links under your internal linking report’s “warnings” section. Then, remove the rel=” no follow.” You can take help from the developer if needed.

Start Practicing Internal Linking

With good links, your website can rank! With a powerful internal linking strategy, you can show search engines what your site’s content is about. Follow the blog guidelines to understand your site better, enhancing your chance of ranking.

FAQs

What is an internal linking strategy?

An internal linking strategy is a deliberate approach to link web pages within the same website. It aims to improve site navigation, user experience, and SEO by establishing relevant connections between related content and distributing link authority effectively.

What is the best internal link building strategy?

The best internal link building strategy involves creating valuable and relevant content that naturally connects related pages. Utilize descriptive anchor texts, maintain a hierarchical structure, and focus on user experience. Regularly audit and update internal links to ensure they align with SEO goals and enhance website navigation.

What is internal linking in Seo?

Internal linking in SEO refers to the practice of creating hyperlinks within a website, connecting one page to another. It aids in better site navigation, distributes link authority, and enhances search engine crawlability and indexing.

What are link building strategies?

Link building strategies involve various methods to acquire backlinks from other websites. They may include guest blogging, content promotion, outreach to influencers, creating link-worthy content, and participating in industry directories or forums.

What are the types of link building strategies?

The types of link building strategies include guest posting, content marketing, broken link building, outreach and relationship building, social media promotion, participation in industry-specific communities, and creating link-worthy resources like infographics or guides.

Why is link building strategy important?

A right link building strategy is necessary to enhance a website's authority, search engine rankings, and visibility. Moreover, quality backlinks from reputable sources drive organic traffic, increase brand credibility, and improve online presence, leading to business growth.

To understand why a company/brand needs to adapt a particular strategy or trend it is essential to know how it functions and will it help your brand for growth, because the ultimate goal of any action taken is to achieve success. Therefore, in this blog we will focus on elaborating the best SEO link practices and how it benefits your content digitally.

Google has recently announced its own version on the Link building best practices. When evaluating the relevance of pages and seeking out new pages to crawl, Google employs links as a signal. Learn how to optimize your anchor text so that both people and Google can understand your material, as well as how to make your links crawlable so that Google can find additional pages on your site via the links on your page.

Links are crucial in the process of SEO, whether they are third-party links or links within your own website because they make the content piece interactive, engaging, and they help build a direct association between the quality/quantity of links to your website and how much search traffic your site obtains.

In simpler words, links are the fuel you need to drive your brand’s vehicle towards its targeted success in the wonderful universe of SEO!

Link building can either be done by naturally obtaining them with the support of exemplary research or by creating engaging content highlighting your brand; at the end, more links result in a higher ranking in SERPS!

Let’s take a look at the link building best practice suggestions from Google:

Crawlable Links

The new google documentation says: “Generally, Google can only crawl your link if it’s an <a> HTML element (also known as anchor element) with an href attribute. Most links in other formats won’t be parsed and extracted by Google’s crawlers. Google can’t reliably extract URLs from <a> elements that don’t have an href attribute or other tags that perform as links because of script events. Here are examples of links that Google can and can’t parse”

Not Recommended:

Note from Google: “Make sure that the URL in your <a> element resolves into an actual web address (meaning, it resembles a URI) that Google crawlers can send requests to, for example”:

Recommended (Google can resolve):

Not recommended (but Google may still attempt to resolve this):

Anchor Text placement

Use rich anchor text links, per Google’s request. They can learn more about the linked page from this.

According to the documentation: “Anchor text (also known as link text) is the visible text of a link. This text tells people and Google something about the page you’re linking to. Place anchor text between <a> elements that Google can crawl”.

Good:

<a href=”https://example.com/ghost-peppers”>ghost peppers</a>

Bad (empty link text):

This link could be better since there is no anchor text, which is why it doesn’t aid their algorithm in determining the topic of the page. Google will use the title attribute if an anchor text is empty but a link has a title attribute. Here is an illustration of that:

This demonstrates how Google uses the title properties in links to determine how to rank a page. They just prefer that you use links with rich anchor language like:

<a href=”https://example.com/ghost-peppers”>ghost peppers</a>

Additionally, they encourage the usage of alt text for photos, using it as the anchor text when appropriate. Here’s an illustration:

Make sure the alt text for your photographs is informative. In this manner, you can increase visitors from Google image search.

How to write good anchor text

Google added yet another new area in the recent doc: “Good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page that it’s on and to the page it links to. It provides context for the link, and sets the expectation for your readers. The better your anchor text, the easier it is for people to navigate your site and for Google to understand what the page you’re linking to is about.”

Here are a few examples for that:

For a full list of cheese available for purchase, see the <a href=”https://example.com”>list of cheese types</a>.

Google also mentioned that they don’t want you to write long and lengthy anchor texts, for example, this is too descriptive & not recommended by Google:

<a href=”https://example.com”>Knitted Cow invites local residents of Wisconsin to their grand re-opening by also offering complimentary cow-shaped ice sculptures</a> to the first 20 customers.

Rather you they prefer something like this:

<a href=”https://example.com”>Knitted Cow invites local residents of Wisconsin</a> to their grand re-opening by also offering complimentary cow-shaped ice sculptures to the first 20 customers.

In Google’s policy, keyword stuffing is mentioned as a prohibited practice. Thus, in order to succeed, you don’t need to include too many keywords in the anchor text. Additionally, one word anchor texts are too general and don’t benefit Google sufficiently.

Internal Linking for SEO

No set number of links is required, according to Google, which says: “You may usually think about linking in terms of pointing to external websites, but paying more attention to the anchor text used for internal links can help both people and Google make sense of your site more easily and find other pages on your site. Every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site. Think about what other resources on your site could help your readers understand a given page on your site, and link to those pages in context.”

External Linking for SEO

According to the doc: “Linking to other sites isn’t something to be scared of; in fact, using external links can help establish trustworthiness (for example, citing your sources). Link out to external sites when it makes sense, and provide context to your readers about what they can expect.”

In simpler words, google does not want them too close or similar to each other, for example:

I’ve written about cheese

<a href=”https://example.com/page3″>times</a>

<a href=”https://example.com/page5″>year</a>.

For them, it is not ideal.

You should space out your links by at least a few words, if not a sentence or two. Here is the more suitable illustration that they provided.

I’ve written about cheese so many times this year: who can forget the

<a href=”https://example.com/blue-cheese-vs-gorgonzola”>controversy over blue cheese and gorgonzola</a>, the <a href=”https://example.com/worlds-oldest-brie”>world’s oldest brie</a> piece that won the Cheesiest Research Medal, the epic retelling of <a href=”https://example.com/the-lost-cheese”>The Lost Cheese</a>, and my personal favorite, <a href=”https://example.com/boy-and-his-cheese”>A Boy and His Cheese: a story of two unlikely friends</a>.

In short, Internal and external links are encouraged by Google since they aid in the decision-making process for how to rank websites.

Google still encourage you to utilize rich anchor text, for instance, when you use internal links to link to other pages on your website.

They make it clear that the anchor language ought to be understandable enough for users to understand what they are clicking on and the purpose of the linked page.

Google is in the same position. They should be able to comprehend the purpose of the connected page from the internal link’s anchor text as well.

Conclusion

Google advises you to create links like mentioned below if you want to rank well:

Strong anchor text enhances your rankings because it contains keywords.
Short anchor text is preferred because Google doesn’t like extensive anchor text.
Use alt text; it takes the role of anchor text for images.
Use title attributes because Google uses them to identify anchor text.
Spread out your links; ideally, there should be a few words or even a few lines between each one.
Use internal links. While you shouldn’t disregard external links, which are the focus of most SEOs, internal connections are a simple approach to improve your ranks.