Rank jacker
Internal Linking Best Practices
By: [su_tooltip style=”tipped” position=”north” size=”2″ title=”Rank-Jacker” content=”Posts by Rankjacker Team”]Rank Jacker[/su_tooltip] ∣ Updated: October 20, 2021
Internal Links are ideally built to help a site’s users surf across a website’s resources through relevant links on any blog/article. A powerful internal linking SEO means avoiding crawlability issues existing due to a malformed URL or broken links that adversely impact the rankings, as it signals Search bots of the poor quality of content on one hand and displaces the audience on the other. SEO has its long term benefits too which you ought to know.
A well laid internal linking structure based on relative content and setting up a proper customer life cycle chart can help send your users into the prospecting funnel. The importance of choosing the right anchor text is crucial and can’t be undermined either.
Importance of Internal Linking
Link building is one of the most important aspects of SEO, but the external links take all the limelight over internal links when it comes to SEO. Some technical SEO facts that may assist you for good. Although internal linking is ignored often, let me show you how important it is to focus on internal linking as well to define a website’s SEO well-being.
Top Three Purposes of Internal Links:
- Assists in website’s navigation.
- Comprehends the planning, building, and ultimately the site rankings.
- Helps Search Engines better understand your content.
Setting up an Internal Linking Strategy
It is important to simplify- how Google finds, values your content through internal linking.
The basic internal linking structure reinforces your SEO further and value of the entire site. Even your content should offer quality too, some tips are here for you. Meeting up with the user’s expectations and requirements, it also provides a clear route for search bots across a tight-knit network of posts and pages, and most importantly helps users to stay on your site for longer sessions which ultimately add to positive user experience.
But how to achieve it? Here are our SIX-worthy commandments!
#1. Identifying Your Site’s HubPages
Keeping the first things first, it is important to determine the navigation and the time a user needs to spend on your website.
To make the architecture of your site straightforward. Hub pages are often targeted as specific broad keywords that have high search volumes, rather than narrowing down the scope and long-tailed keywords that offer few monthly searches.
The end goal is to drive people to “CALL TO ACTION”, generating high revenue with innumerable traffic. To do the internal linking in the right way, a business needs to target your main keyword and compile the top-rank pages by using a keyword research strategy.
Pro Tip: Try not to create many hub pages, as you will end up being too niche. Instead, take one Hub Page and articulate topics around that content. Further, it will help you to support and connect the content internally.
WHAT Can Be Called A HUB?
[su_list icon=”icon: close” icon_color=”#ff0000″ indent=”2″]
- Did page rank on top for long-tailed keywords? NO
- Did page rank on top explaining a narrow concept in detail? NO
[/su_list][su_list icon=”icon: check” icon_color=”#009f05″ indent=”2″]
- A page on top having a broad keyword with various aspects? Yes
[/su_list]
#2. Creating Topic Clusters Using Internal Links
It is important to have a lot of internal links, to link internal pages. Hence, choosing a powerful and authentic internal linking strategy means choosing a powerful and authentic content marketing strategy and both of them go hand-in-hand.
It works in a simple way:
With more high-quality content, more options to link, the quality of internal linking strategy will rise.
As you have identified the hub pages, the topic cluster process starts with the making of the silo, usually the primary page of a specific topic. All the other content will add up either to be a supporting arm or add depth to the concept.
More internal links to a main or homepage will determine its authority and represent it as an authoritative source.
The simplest and the quickest way to organize all the content is to make it a part of an excel spreadsheet. I have attached an image only for your reference:
| Top Hub Pages | Supporting Page Level 1 | Supporting Page Level 2 |
| Car Finance | Bad Credit Car Finance | IVA Car Finance |
| CCJ Car Finance | ||
| Used Cars | Used Ford Cars | Used Ford Focus |
| Used Ford Fiesta | ||
| Used Volkswagen Cars | Used Volkswagen Polo | |
| Used Volkswagen Golf |
#3. Choosing the Right Anchor Text
“DO I NEED TO INCLUDE MY MAIN KEYWORD IN THE ANCHOR TEXT ALL THE TIME?”
#4. Identifying Your Site’s Authority Pages
As you know, not all the pages have the same authority, try to use this as an advantage to create authoritative pages. Use your higher authoritative pages (must be linked via external sources), to direct internal content and build effective links to strategically pass the link equity.
Imagine the pyramid of your site (Shown below) and stick to your level of hierarchy to put the efforts to lift the lowest content above.
#5. Using Internal Links to Increase the Ranking of Target Pages
Connected to step 4, step 5 is all about getting high-quality links. You need to go through pages having the most powerful and valuable links. Look at this as an opportunity to link your other valuable resources to them to give a boost to your page rankings.
#6 Using Internal Links to Optimize Fresh Content
If your website has not been able to get innumerable links, start the approach with a view to optimize the newly updated, recent, and fresh content first. Try to add contextual links to your new content with the help of existing ones.
One way to go with it is to randomly search your query using original keywords and look out for the related results that can be used to internally link the content. The results shown by google are listed and can help to boost your page ranking in no spam of time.
For instance, if you want to look for articles related to internal linking posted by Rank Jacker.
Try using it in this way:
Rankjacker.com: internal link
Syntax: <sitename> : <topic name or keyword>
Internal Links- These are hyperlinks that direct you to the point at (target) the identical domain as that existed on the (source) link. In simpler or layman’s terms, an internal link directs you to another page or post that exists on the same website.
Conclusion:
Internal linking strategy can be undertaken with these six commandments as a cinch. These strategies are part of internal linking SEO. They might look challenging and effortful at first but if done repeatedly they aren’t complicated or overwhelming.
The internal linking SEO only turns out to be a powerful SEO tool if done consistently and correctly. It is even useful to back and audit your previous content and connect them via internal linking For further help, Feel free to Contact Us Today!