Internal linking on a website is critical to SEO
Most people know that using certain keywords in your content will help to boost your site’s SEO. These keywords will attract people who are searching for these terms. Equally important, is the use of internal linking on a website to provide SEO benefits.
What Are Internal Links?
Internal links are links within your website that connect pages to each other. For example, in addition to the navigation menu, you might have a link on your front page that takes visitors to specific topics on your blog.
Internal links aren’t there only to help visitors navigate your site and find other content, they also help Google crawl and index your site. The internal links communicate to Google your site’s architecture, which pages are linked to which, and the hierarchy of your site.
Why Is Internal Linking Important for SEO?
Since internal links are URLs and are related to your site’s architecture, they have a major impact on SEO. Studies show that they can have as much as a 40% impact on traffic to a website. Internal links tell Google what your website is about so that it can send the right traffic to you.
Optimize Your Site’s Internal Links
A simple way to optimize these links so to add keywords to the anchor text. Anchor text is the text the visitor clicks to visit another page. It’s often a different color than the rest of the text. For example, a link to your ‘About’ page might say, “Learn more about us here.” Use your keywords naturally in this text.
Example of an anchor text for an internal link:
Click here to Learn more about a Strong SEO Strategy
Site Architecture and User Experience
Internal links also provide SEO benefits by giving your visitors a good user experience. When people stay on your website longer perhaps looking for additional information, it tells Google that your site is worth sending traffic to. Alternately, if people immediately bounce off your site, this means it’s not delivering on its promises.
A clear and intuitive internal linking structure makes your site easier to use and people will stay on it longer, reading and interacting with the content they find.
For this reason, you should create as many internal links as possible. Add links to other pages in any spot where it’s natural to do so. For example, if you have a blog post that mentions one of your products, add a link to the product page. Or if you describe a customer’s experience, link to their review on your testimonials page.
Internal Linking and Your SEO Strategy
Are your internal links optimized for search engines? If not, this is something to fix right now. A significant part of your SEO strategy needs to be optimizing internal links so that Google knows what your site’s about, how it’s structured, and which searches to send to it.
Want to learn more about how you can choose the right keywords for your content?
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