SEO is so much more than just optimizing title tags, or adding keywords and building links. The ultimate goal is to create the best possible experience for the user so the search engines know that your website has value to the user and in return ranks you higher.
This is achieved through internal links, competition evaluation, and content marketing.
When you optimize internal linking with descriptive anchor text links it helps Google to better understand your pages and which ones are most important based on what they are about. And when you strategically use internal links you gain page authority also referred to as page rank, which helps you rank certain pages higher in Google.
What is Internal Linking?
Internal linking is a link from one page on your website to another page on your website. These text hyperlinks play a significant role not only in the navigation of your website but also in what the page content will be about.
There are a few main purposes for internal linking has three main purposes:
- Helps with website navigation
- Represents the architecture and order of the website
- Aides in distributing page authority and ranking power across your site
SEO Importance Of Internal Linking
There is no secret that the listings on the first page of search results are because it drives more targeted traffic to your website, which potentially increases leads. These leads convert to customers and hopefully repeat customers.
But first, you’ll need to understand the importance of internal linking. If a user comes to your website but has a hard time finding their way around you’ll lose the user. The time a user spends on your website plays a major role in how your site is ranked.
But that’s not all.
Internal linking helps to improve the value of your website by creating an easy-to-follow path for the spiders to crawl your website. And when you strategically share page rank with pages that offer value you get those pages ranked higher due to prolonged sessions for users due to the valuable content and tight-knit network of pages and posts.
How To Build Internal Links For SEO
This isn’t a small task. When building internal links you will need to strategically build a plan. This plan will consist of high-quality content that is keyword-rich, and use it for deep internal linking.
Creating lots of quality content
The SEO copywriting internal link plan begins with keyword research and quality content is essential to your internal linking strategy. The longer your user stays on the page the more the search engines like you. Developing a killer content marketing strategy helps to give you linkable content and the more links that you have the better.
The goal is to create keyword-rich content that allows you to naturally link other pages within your website.
Proper use of anchor text
When using anchor text it’s essential that you are sticking with the content theme. Your anchor text needs to match the content of that page or post. However, you do not want to overthink this, just make this a natural sentence.
Deep Links
Deep links are natural links that are used within your content marketing strategy. They link to the structure of your website.
SEO Internal Links Plugin
WordPress SEO internal links can easily be added and managed using an SEO internal links plugin. They are easy to install, but it’s important that you’re choosing the right plugin for your WordPress site.
An SEO internal link WordPress plugin can act as a website internal link checker, scans your website content, and does an SEO link analysis to optimize your data to aid in creating internal links. Choosing an internal link building plugin is essential to improving your chances of the search engines easily crawling your internal links HTML.
Internal Link Analysis
One of the most important things you’ll need to do is an internal link analysis. This is crucial if you want to be indexed by search engines. The link architecture is what helps the search engines find your web pages when it’s crawling your site. It also is what helps users to navigate your site as well.
By identifying errors in your internal linking you’ll improve your linking and improve the architecture of your websites linking structure and therefore help the crawlers find your web pages and index them.
How To Find Internal Links To A Page
Want to know how to find internal links in a website, or how to fix internal nofollow links WordPress creates? One of the best tools that you can use is the Google Search Console or link analysis plugin for WordPress.
With Google search console internal links are easy to find and you can begin optimizing links to improve any broken internal links that it finds.
How To Fix Broken Internal Links
Broken internal links will hurt your page authority because the users and search engines are being sent to 404 web pages. This means that the pages do not exist. In order to fix this problem, you’ll need to remove the link entirely or replace it with a link that points to a live page.
An internal link audit will locate all types of internal link problems such as broken links, links that could be crawled, too many onpage internal linking, nofollow attributes in outgoing internal links, pages with only one internal link, and more.
Optimize Internal Linking
Optimizing your internal linking is essential to improving your Google internal links, and internal search marketing, as well as ranking higher in the search engines. Make sure all links are correct.
At Abstrax Web, we can develop an internal link building strategy for your website that will increase the time each user experiences and keep them on your site longer. We’ll create engaging content that will aid in boosting your SEO rankings, and improve the user’s experience.