Internal Linking and SEO

I recently learned about the importance of Internal Linking. It helps my blog in 3 ways:

1. It makes it more reader-centered and -friendly
   
2. Adding internal links increases SEO
   
3. Making changes increases SEO, too

After all, these are what we are working toward, aren't they?

What Is An Internal Link?

Internal links are when you.link up one page within your blog to another, also within your own blog. External links happen when you link to something, like a product or other information, that is outside your blog, on some other website.

What you do is you click on this symbol that appears above your content:

The first thing you will get is a space to enter the url of the place you want to link to. Don't use that one. Instead click on the gear to the right, to open up more advanced options. Here you will have two things to do: one is to click to open up in another tab.

You want to do this, with all your links, so your reader can navigate to the new page without losing his place on your post. That way he can easily come back to get the rest of your content.

Then, most of the time, your website will fill in, with a list of your posts. If not, then put in your web address and allow the postings to fill in for you. All you have to do is click on one to select where you want to link.

I'm going to talk a bit about how these links help your SEO. But first I want to be sure to emphasize how important it is for your links to be relevant to your content.

Our readers are on our posts to get information they are looking for. If we send them willy-nilly in all kinds of directions that are not completely relevant to the words that are linked, they will not appreciate it.

Many of them will leave and never come back. This is definitely NOT the result we are looking for.

What is going to drive more and more, and repeat, traffic to our blogs is providing content that meets the needs of our readers. We need to keep the focus on communicating with them at the forefront of our work.

Google and other search engines like internal links - a lot.

When we use them well, they attest to relevance of content, something the search engines are looking for in giving rankings. They also demonstrate that the blog is not just a tool to try to get sales and make money, but a service to the readers.

Content and links that demonstrate reader-orientation get kudos from the search engines. SEO stands for Search-Engine-Optimization, and good results mean better placement when a reader searches for information using our keywords

SEO is also improved when we make updates and improvements to past posts. Each change gets noticed by Google and helps our optimization in rankings!

RECOMMENDED - Take the Time

I hope this post encourages you to take the time to put in relevant internal links. There are many benefits. I went back over all of mine, to make sure I had many.

It took a few days, of working on that instead of putting up more posts. Based on the training and knowledge I am getting here at WA, I know the time I just invested will benefit my readers and my rankings.

Go ahead and spend some time honing your blog with good internal links. Let's all succeed by helping one another with what we are learning and implementing to make our businesses thrive.