Featured image of post Guide to Using Internal Links for SEO

Guide to Using Internal Links for SEO

Links within a website that direct users to other pages on the same domain are known as internal links. To learn how internal linking can improve your website’s SEO by assisting Google in discovering your content, check out this helpful article.

Google can easily find your web pages and blog posts when they are linked from other sources on the internet. Your content is connected through internal links, which also help Google understand how your website is organized. They can help you establish a hierarchy for your site so that your most crucial pages and posts have more link value than less important ones. As a result, your SEO can benefit from following a reliable internal linking strategy guide.

Internal vs. external links: Both internal and external links can be found on every website. Pages and posts on your website are connected via internal links, whereas external links take users to other websites. The significance of internal links for SEO has been the main topic of this guide. Read our articles on link building if you’re interested in learning how to attract more external links to your website.

When you launch a new webpage, it’s important to link to it from other parts of your site. Google won’t know a page exists if it isn’t in your sitemap and doesn’t have any backlinks because web crawlers won’t be able to find it.

Google can find, index, and comprehend every page on your site with the aid of internal links. Using internal links strategically can also increase the page authority (also known as PageRank) of important pages. Therefore, internal links are essential for SEO and for any website that wants to rank highly on Google.

Connections Between Content

Google uses a bot known as Googlebot to crawl websites and follow both internal and external links. When this bot lands on a website’s homepage, it begins to render the page before clicking the first link. Google can determine the connections between different pages, posts, and other content by analyzing links. Google uses this method to identify the pages on your website that discuss comparable subjects.

For instance, links to the “Content SEO” category as well as the “Internal linking” and “Site structure” tags can be found in this post’s sidebar. These links let Google know that the information on those pages is pertinent to the subject of this post.

Along with comprehending the connections between content, Google distributes the value of links among all of the links on a webpage. A website’s homepage typically has the highest link value because it has the most backlinks. Every link on that homepage will be given a share of that link value. The links on the following page will be divided up among the links on that page, and so on.

Your newest blog posts will therefore receive more link value if you link to them from the homepage rather than just the category page. Google will also index new posts more quickly if they are linked to from the homepage.

Understanding the value of using internal links for SEO will help you realize that the more links a post receives, the more valuable it becomes. Since Google gives more weight to pages that receive a lot of high-quality links, you’ll have a better chance of ranking higher.

Internal Linking SEO
Internal Linking SEO

Regular evaluation and enhancement of your internal linking strategy should be a part of your SEO plan. You can make sure Google understands the relevance, relationship, and value of pages by including the appropriate internal links.

The Best Format

We always advise website owners to picture their website as a pyramid, with the most important information at the top. We refer to these articles as cornerstone content. Numerous links to the most important content should originate from topically related pages in the pyramid, giving those pages the most link value. You should, however, also include links from those top pages to related subpages. By internally linking to related content, you can show Google which pages contain details on comparable subjects.

An Illustration of How to Link Your Cornerstone Content

Google will recognize that the cornerstone content article contains the most information about this specific keyword if you include internal links from other pertinent articles. As a result, Google will rank the cornerstone content higher than other, shorter posts about keyword research.

Adding links to your main content on your homepage or top navigation, in addition to links to related posts and pages, can increase its authority. By doing this, the most crucial posts or pages will receive a lot of link value. They will therefore appear more authoritative in Google’s eyes.

Adding internal links to the taxonomies that a post belongs to could be advantageous if you maintain a blog. By including links to the category and tags, you can make it easier for visitors to find related posts and help Google understand the structure of your blog. At Yoast, every post’s sidebar always includes links to the corresponding categories and tags:

Google and your users can better understand your website if you link to taxonomies.

We’ve already covered how internal links to related posts can help Google comprehend the structure of your site. Adding one or more links to related posts at the conclusion of your article can also be beneficial. Complete related post sections to your posts are added by a number of plugins and modules. If you decide to use one, we advise determining whether the posts that are related are actually the best matches. It is probably preferable to manually link to posts (or use our internal linking tool, which will be covered in more detail later) if you’re unsure.

The final choice to discuss is to include internal links on your website that point to the most well-liked or recent posts. These work best in the sidebar of your blog or the footer of your website so that they appear on every page and post.

Because link value is transferred to the linked posts from numerous other pages and posts, a popular or recent posts section is advantageous to you. Additionally, posts will be simpler for visitors to find, which will increase traffic. A good internal linking strategy and more visitors to your website are also positive indicators for SEO and Google.

You probably also have links that aren’t important for SEO on your website. For instance, you wouldn’t want to lose link value to your login page if your homepage had a login link for your customers because that page doesn’t need to rank highly in search results.

You could once prevent unimportant links from losing link value by giving them a “no-follow” tag. With a “no-follow” tag, you’re essentially asking Google not to follow the link, preventing the loss of any link value. Now, you might be thinking, “I’m going to ’no-follow’ less important links to give the most important links more link value.” Google has gotten smarter, even though this worked in the past. It appears that adding a “no-follow” tag to a link now causes the entire page’s link value to vanish. Therefore, it makes more sense to have fewer links on a page as opposed to “no-following” some of them.

Adding a “no-follow” tag does not prevent the target pages from appearing in Google’s search results. Give pages or posts a “no-index” tag if you don’t want them to show up in search results. The content should not be rendered by Google or given a place in the Google index to appear in search results, according to the “no-index” tag.

Text of Anchors

It’s critical to select the appropriate anchor text once you’ve decided which links should appear on a page and which pages should receive link value. The anchor text refers to the text that users can click on. For instance, the anchor text for the two internal links in the following example is “link schemes” and “paid links”:

Your website may suffer harm if you optimize anchor text excessively. And by over-optimizing, we mean keyword stuffing. You could once raise your website’s ranking for a specific keyword by using the same keyword in all of your anchor text. Google is now sophisticated enough to recognize that the context surrounding anchor text is more indicative of a keyword’s relevance than the anchor text itself. As a result, make sure the anchor text in your copy appears natural. Keywords are acceptable, but avoid using the exact same ones in every link’s anchor text.

With the aid of the internal link suggestion tool in the Yoast SEO Premium plugin, you can strengthen your internal link structure. Additionally, it assists you in locating related posts to link to. By dragging the link into the editor, you can instantly link to a related post when you’re writing a post. The plugin also has the option of designating your most important articles as cornerstone content, which instructs the suggestion tool to display those articles first so you never forget to link to them!

A useful tool called the text link counter can also be found in the free version of Yoast SEO. The number of internal links in a post and the number of internal links pointing to a post are both counted by this tool. This makes it clear which posts might benefit from additional or more links. You can use this to strategically enhance the structure of your website.

Summary

Your content won’t be found if you don’t use internal SEO links! You can demonstrate the connections between your content as well as which pieces of it are your articles are most informative and valuable by using a strong internal linking strategy. Your website will be easier for both Google and your users to understand if you adhere to the advice in this post, making internal links essential for SEO and any website that wants to rank highly on Google.

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