When talking about link building strategies, most people think about getting their links on other websites, which is the so-called “external link building.” However, a solid internal linking strategy is just as important for your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Internal link building strategies consist of hyperlinks pointing to other pages on your site, creating a navigation route through which your clients can easily explore your platform.
Indeed, internal link building plays a vital role in website optimization with measurable results. For instance, it improves user experience while helping you score a better evaluation from search engine crawlers. Here’s what you need to know about internal link building and the most effective strategies.
Table of Contents
The What: Understanding Internal Link Building
Internal links are hyperlinks pointing to other pages on your site. This way, your readers can easily find related content without having to go back to the homepage or search manually. Indeed, internal links are essential for your website architecture. They improve user experience (UX) and navigation through related pages, bringing several benefits to your SEO strategies.
Firstly, a clever internal linking structure increases your website’s relevance. Most pages that users would never find via search engines are accessible via internal links. It means that without internal links, some corners of your website may never be visited. Additionally, your internal linking structure will tell search engine crawlers what pages are the most relevant for your readers, improving your search engine rankings.
There are mainly five types of internal links:
- Navigational links are usually found on headers, footers, sidebars, and menus. As the name suggests, they help users navigate through your website.
- Text links: they can be placed anywhere there’s text and lead to different pages on your site.
- Contextual links: they appear on the body of the text, connecting different parts of the same page.
- Categorical links: Similarly to navigational links, you can place them on headers, footers, sidebars, and menus. They can group together several pages covering the same or similar subjects.
- Image links: This kind of internal link is included in banners and images, making them more interactive and engaging.
The Why: The Awesome Benefits of Internal Link Building
Internal links make your website more interesting and engaging for readers, creating a seamless user experience throughout your content. It results in better search engine metrics, increased conversion rates, and online visibility.
Improved Crawling and Indexing
Internal links guide not only your visitors through your site but also search engine crawlers. Indeed, a solid internal linking structure helps crawlers index each page on your website according to its content and relevance. So, search engines will know which page to show for each relevant query. In other words, internal links help search engines understand your site.
Enhanced User Experience
Your readers don’t have time to waste. According to research published by Nielsen Norman Group, most visitors won’t spend more than 20 seconds on a page looking for what they want. This means you don’t have much time to strike an excellent first impression. A solid internal link structure can help you in this task, showing what your readers may also want to read without them having to look for it. Guide users through your content and keep them engaged with a killing internal linking strategy.
Distribute Link Equity
Link equity is another crucial factor that’s closely related to your internal linking structure. When high-authority internal links point to less authoritative pages on your site, they share some authority, raising the low-authority page’s rankings. It means you can use your strongest pages to increase the authority of other pages. This concept is also called “link juice,” and should spread some of it across important pages.
Reduced Bounce Rate
The bounce rate measures how many users click on your website and bounce right back because they didn’t find what they wanted. So, a high bounce rate is a pretty negative sign. Internal links create new avenues for your readers to explore, so instead of bouncing back, they can explore the rest of your website. That’s why it’s advisable to use them on pages that show high bounce rates and encourage visitors to explore more pages.
Boost Page Authority
Ultimately, an effective internal linking structure improves your page authority. Indeed, pages with more internal links pointing to them tend to receive higher authority scores. You can use internal links to guide your visitors to specific content, improving navigability, relevance, and engagement. The result is a better placement on search engine results pages (SERPs). Additionally, internal linking best practices strengthen the ranking potential of specific pages.
Common Misconceptions About Internal Linking
While internal links can improve page authority and other measures, you shouldn’t overplay your hand, that is, clutter a page with internal links. Too many links on the same page can make content look confusing and spammy. It affects your bounce rate since users will most likely leave the page immediately.
For the same reason, you must avoid including irrelevant links that don’t consider user intent. Irrelevant links lead to a poor user experience, playing against your best SEO efforts. Typically, such internal links are inserted through abrupt changes in the topic, which is frustrating for users.
While adding internal links to top pages is an efficient strategy, you should refrain from always linking to such pages. Remember, internal linking isn’t only about increasing authority. It’s also about creating seamless navigation routes to other pages on your site.
Finally, ensure your page redirects are fresh and updated. It’s not advisable to have too many of them. Google crawlers have what’s called a “crawl budget,” which is the time they’ll spend analyzing your site. If your redirects lead to pointless pages, you’ll be wasting a chance to show your best to Google crawlers.
The How: Creating an Effective Internal Link Building Strategy
The development of efficient internal linking strategies requires a combination of tactics. Above all, they should improve the quality of your website for your target audience. Here are the main aspects of a successful internal linking strategy.
Audit Existing Links
The first step to internal linking optimization is running a careful internal link audit. Before planning the inclusion of new links, you need to ensure the existing ones are working properly. You can divide the auditing process into four steps, as follows:
- Analyze your website: Crawl your pages as if you were one of Google’s spiders and see how it performs. Look for broken internal links, outdated links, and cluttered pages.
- Apply improvements accordingly: Once you have audited your internal linking structure, it’s time to fix and reinforce its weak points. These can include top pages with few links and pages lacking internal links. Additionally, pay attention to the so-called “orphan pages,” which are those that can’t be found by crawlers or visitors.
- Check out your third-party data: You can use data from external sources, like Moz and Ahrefs, to gain a more comprehensive insight into your website’s performance.
- Add new links: After completing the first three steps, it’s time to add new links. Choose anchor texts carefully and take advantage of high-performing pages, but avoid over-linking.
Identify Key Pages
It’s vital to understand which pages are performing well and which aren’t so that you can work towards link equity. You can improve underperforming pages on your site by spreading link juice. Distributing link juice means using top-ranked pages to increase the authority of other pages with lower rankings.
The juice analogy is quite straightforward since more authoritative pages can improve less authoritative ones, like a liquid flowing in a pipe between two tanks. That’s why it involves at least a top-performing page and an underperforming one. After the auditing process, you’ll be able to determine which pages need more link juice.
Keyword Research for Anchor Text
Choose your anchor texts carefully based on complete keyword research. More importantly, you’ll want to create a “rich anchor text” or an anchor text including relevant keywords. Ideally, the anchor text should be concise and fit naturally into the content. Anchor texts are contextual links that lead users and search engine crawlers to the destination you want.
Your anchor texts must contain relevant keywords and clearly describe which page they link to. Choose a concise and click-worthy anchor text to optimize your chances of getting the clicks you need. It must also be relevant to the content where it’s inserted, without sudden changes of topic or misleading text.
Establish a Linking Hierarchy
If you want to make the best out of your internal linking strategy and keep the link juice flowing, you’ll need to establish a hierarchy for your links. It means organizing the pages on your website according to importance and relevance. For instance, the homepage must be at the top since it’s the entrance door to your content. Then, you’ll need to organize other links according to their content: blog posts, category pages, product pages, etc.
It’ll also help you create a content hierarchy, organizing the pages on your website in a structure that allows visitors to explore other corners of the platform. This results in a superior user experience, increased conversion rates, and more online visibility.
Use a Content Map
Your content structure should seamlessly lead visitors to your final goal: conversion. The best way to do it is to create a “buyer’s journey” from the moment they arrive at your page to the buy button. You’ll do so through a “sales funnel.” Before drawing your map, there are some important points to consider.
For instance, 89% of Google users are searching for products or services. Users also like to compare prices and features across different providers before making their decision. An efficient content map will guide users through those steps, from the first click to the final purchase. Your internal linking structure is the stepping stone paving the way for users to access your products.
Best Practices for Internal Link Building
Internal link building is just as important as external links for SEO. The great news is that internal linking, unlike external links, depends only on you. It all starts with the choice of anchor texts: they must be concisely descriptive and fit naturally into the content. Above all, the anchor text must make clear what it’s linking to.
Indeed, you’ll need links pointing to your homepage, but internal links should also point to other pages. Enter the concept of deep linking: links that lead to specific corners of your website, like case studies, blog posts, pricing pages, etc. Deep links improve navigability for visitors and crawlers alike, resulting in better placement on SERPs.
Your internal linking structure should focus on balance and link equity, or “link juice.” A natural flow of link equity optimizes the performance across all pages on your website, where top pages lend their authority to less visited ones. It also improves your website’s search engine rankings as a whole, resulting in better performance on SERPs.
Like leaves on an ornamental bush, your internal links also need to be trimmed from time to time. This means checking up regularly for broken links and links with outdated content and replacing them with fresh and relevant internal links. Crawlers pay special attention to your internal links and downrank your website if they’re broken, outdated, or simply irrelevant.
While internal links are essential for your website structure, you shouldn’t overplay this card. Yes, there’s such a thing as over-optimization. More links aren’t necessarily better than fewer links if they make the content feel cluttered or confusing. As a rule of thumb, use no more than six internal links on any page.
Internal Link Building for Different Types of Content
Your internal links should be contextualized and integrated naturally into your blog post. Avoid using long-tail anchor text or anchors with too many words. Instead, pick one or two click-worthy words, like “this post” or “here.” It’s also a great opportunity to include deep links so that visitors can be presented with other content on your website. Remember the rule of thumb for the number of links per page to avoid cluttering.
Remember to use internal links to take visitors to related products and categories on your website. This will increase the authority of those pages and lead your visitors straight to the sales point. Besides, Google crawlers read a linked page on the website’s menu as relevant content.
Your visitors may also be interested in case studies, special reports, white papers, or services related to the content they’re browsing. So, it’s advisable to include internal links pointing to this kind of content, improving page authority and relevance.
Additionally, you can enhance your user journey by including internal links to informational pages. Unlike promotional content, informational content aims to educate the audience within a niche, including relevant statistics and studies. Informational pages aim to answer your target audience’s most pressing questions, boosting your brand relevance in your field.
A Little Help: Tools to Aid Internal Linking
The first blogs appeared in the mid-90s and weren’t much more than online diaries with very few resources. Thankfully, the blogosphere is much friendlier now, and there are plenty of plugins to help you manage your website. Plugins like Yoast SEO for WordPress can be handy partners in your SEO efforts.
It can help optimize the website’s content and structure, organizing your data to make your website more visible on search engines. WordPress has other valuable plugins, like Squirrly SEO, Rank Math, SmartCrawl, Slim SEO, and The SEO Framework.
There are also plugins that suggest high-quality links that match your content while you write your content. Link Whisper is one of the most famous options for this task, but there are other options, like LinkBoss, Linksy, and Linklo. Don’t forget to take advantage of free tools like Google Analytics to track your link performance.
Content management systems (CMS) come with a long list of plugins that help you improve your website structure, content relevance, link building strategies, assess your performance, etc. WordPress.org is the most popular option by far, and it’s behind by over 40% of all websites out there. Still, there are many other high-quality options, like HubSpot or Joomla, for example.
Measuring the Success of Your Internal Link Building Strategies
The price of success is constant vigilance. You’ll need to monitor your website regularly, tracking metrics like performance, navigability, links, etc. Google Analytics is your best friend in this task, since it’s a free and high-quality tool provided by Google itself. Above all, it’s vital to monitor your website’s traffic measurements to adjust your SEO and marketing strategy accordingly. This information will give you a picture of users’ behavior and preferences.
There isn’t a single metric for analyzing page performance. Instead, you’ll do so by combining several metrics, covering different aspects of your website. They include traffic sources, bounce and conversion rates, average time on page, and exit rates. Your page rankings may be affected by aspects like content quality and relevance, mobile-friendliness, and backlink profile.
Additionally, you’ll need to evaluate link equity distribution, ensuring your link juice is spread effectively. The importance of link equity has been previously discussed, and you can see how your link juice is flowing by checking page authority, link relevance, and other ranking factors.
The way to increase organic traffic involves a flexible approach toward your SEO strategies, adapting them according to the situation. More importantly, you need to be aware of what users and search engines qualify as “relevant content.” This means that your SEO strategy adjustments must be backed by solid data. Thankfully, there are many ways to inform your decisions.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Internal Link Building
Creating internal links isn’t enough to boost your performance on search engines; it requires regular maintenance. Run regular checks for broken internal links and fix them accordingly. Broken internal links can negatively affect your evaluation by search engine crawlers. Likewise, you must check for orphan pages, which are internal pages with no links and include links to relevant supporting pages.
You can also improve your internal link structure by using varied anchor texts instead of always using the same exact match anchor text over and over again. Search engines read repeated anchor texts as a manipulative tactic, causing your site to be downranked.
Indeed, there are many different types of internal links, and it’s advisable to use them all. Options include descriptive anchor text, phrase matches, branded anchor texts, brand name, keyword branded, and page URL.
Mobile devices are everywhere these days. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’ll miss out on a massive audience. Over 95% of mobile owners use their devices for navigation, and even with best internal linking, a page that’s not scalable and optimized for such devices will certainly scare users away.
A solid internal linking strategy never loses sight of what matters the most: user intent. Indeed, your most important internal links must meet the interests and needs of your target audience, guiding them through the most relevant pages on your website. Neglecting user intent can have a hefty cost for your online visibility.
How Buzznberry Can Help with Internal Link Building
We provide customized internal link building plans to suit your needs and budget. You can also request a content audit to see how your internal linking structure is performing. Buzznberry is an industry leader in link building, providing content in over 70 languages and dialects that will resonate with your target audience at local and global levels.
You can count on our team of specialists for regular monitoring and adjustments if necessary. Better still, our native writers come from varied backgrounds and fields of expertise, ensuring your content will always be written by a native specialist, boosting your brand visibility and authority.
Conclusion
Internal link building is an essential part of any link building strategy. However, it goes much beyond how many internal links you have. Several aspects must be taken into account to develop a strong internal linking structure. Nevertheless, neglecting the importance of your internal links can deeply impact your online visibility.
Consider outsourcing link building services to give you an upper hand in the online arena. Contact Buzznberry today and learn about everything we can do for you. Here, you’ll find the professional support you need to make your brand shine on search engine result pages.
