Alright, listen up, because I'm about to drop some serious knowledge bombs on you. You think SEO is all about external links, huh? Well, let me enlighten you about the unsung hero of SEO: internal linking. Yeah, that's right, those little links within your own site that nobody cares about but are actually crucial for your site's performance. Buckle up, buttercup.
What's the Deal with Internal Linking?
Internal linking is the art of connecting the pages on your website. Imagine a spider web where each page is a node, and the links are the threads. If your web isn't tight, you're not catching any flies. And trust me, Google is one picky fly.
💡 Pro Tip: An internal link is a link that connects two pages on the same website. For example, when Page A on yoursite.com/about links to Page B on yoursite.com/about.
Internal linking helps define your site's architecture. It's like organizing your pantry, so you can actually find the damn pasta when you're hungry.
Don't Confuse Internal Links with Backlinks
Let's clear this up because I know some of you are still mixing these up.
👉 Backlink (Inbound Link): A link from another site to your site.
👉 Outbound Link: A link from your site to another site.
👉 Internal Link: A link from one page on your site to another page on the same site.
Got it? Good. They all play nice together and should be used in harmony for maximum SEO juju. 😊
Optimizing Your Website's Internal Linking Structure
Defining your website's architecture with a good internal linking strategy allows you to offer a better user experience by making navigation easier. This practice also improves your website's On-Page SEO by facilitating navigation for search engine crawl bots.
Thus, Google’s algorithms will better understand a page’s topic if it benefits from relevant internal linking with anchor texts that include keywords.
Here's an Example:
Suppose you are an eCommerce business with a specific page for shoes. You should create internal links from other pages on your site to this particular page. For example, from the homepage, there could be a clickable link saying “Buy shoes.”
By varying the anchor texts and keywords, you help search engines better understand your page and improve its rankings for different terms.
Increase Your Conversion Rate
The primary beneficiaries of a good internal linking strategy are the users, who will find it easy to navigate through the various URLs and pages on your website. A user who lands on a "Our Services" page can, thanks to an internal link, visit a specific service page that interests them. This is the foundation of how a website operates!
They might find the information they need, which could push them to make a purchase. Internal linking thus helps offer a good user experience to your website visitors by organizing information hierarchically.
With internal linking, you encourage users to move from one page to another and stay a bit longer to discover your products or expertise.
Ideally, you should highlight the pages on your website that have a better conversion rate to increase sales.
Additionally, internal linking allows users to discover your deeper pages that don’t generate much traffic but could be useful.
On the contrary, a lack of internal linking will result in a high bounce rate: the visitor quickly leaves your site because they didn’t find what they were looking for.
Indexing Your Website’s Various Pages
Apart from users, the internal linking of a website also targets search engine indexing bots (Google, Bing, Ecosia, Qwant, Yahoo, etc.).
As mentioned earlier, anchored internal links, when relevant, enable better navigation between the various pages of the website. Indexing bots (crawlers) will use this structure to review all the pages on the site. Remember, a page that is inaccessible to bots (noindex) cannot be indexed in the search engine.
👉 Therefore, internal linking plays a very important role in any SEO strategy.
Links on the most popular pages will help share their popularity (internal PageRank) with the deeper pages. Naturally, links should not be created randomly. There must be some coherence between the linked page contents to optimize their SEO (avoid linking pages that have no logical connection).
How to Do Internal Linking?
There are several strategies for internal linking on a website, each with its advantages and disadvantages.
Note: The internal links on your site can be easily set up on any CMS: WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Prestashop, Shopify, Webflow, etc. It's a basic task.
At SEOBragger.com, we specialize in Wix and are SEO experts. We know exactly how to optimize a Wix site, so if you need quality support to boost your online presence, don’t hesitate!
Linking All Pages Together
The first way to do internal linking is simply to link all the pages of the website together. This basic strategy allows interconnecting all the pages so that they are accessible to both users and indexing bots.
💡 This isn’t the best method: it’s suitable for a site that deals with a single subject, with very few pages (less than 5).
The interest here is to give equal importance to all the pages of a website. But this can pose a hierarchy problem. As already mentioned, the goal of internal linking is to organize all the pages to build a good architecture.
The Family Tree Strategy
As the name suggests, this strategy involves constructing the internal links of a website like a family tree. Generally, you start from the homepage and link to pages on very important topics. These pages will then have links to other pages that address subjects of the main topics.
This strategy primarily aims to give weight to the main pages so they are better indexed since many links point to these pages.
💡 This internal linking strategy is suitable for medium-sized sites. It is very effective for showcase sites!
However, it is limited, especially on e-commerce sites. These often consist of many categories and subcategories before reaching a product page. With the family tree strategy, the e-commerce homepage becomes the most powerful. But for this type of site, it’s much more interesting to rank for a product query.
Silo and Topic Cluster Strategy
This is the most recent and optimal strategy for internal linking on a website.
The objective here is to link pages on the same topic. The principle is simple! Keywords are segmented by themes to define:
The main keyword for the main page of the website.
Long-tail keywords for intermediate pages to give more authority to the main page.
Ultimately, you get a pyramidal structure with three main levels. First, the top level covers the main topic of the website. Then, the second level includes categories/sections to address the main topic’s large themes. Finally, the third level contains articles that address the subject more precisely and thoroughly.
Thanks to this thematic compartmentalization, indexing bots (Google bot) will be able to identify the different categories of your site more easily.
This allows you to improve the indexing of your website’s major sections by giving them better visibility. It’s a method that also provides better positioning on competitive queries.
Looking for a top-notch SEO consultant to get your site to the top of Google? Don’t hesitate to contact SEOBragger.com! We have 100% satisfied clients.