Creating Internal Links To Improve Your Rankings!

bymick1976

8.5K followers

Updated 2 years ago

The creation of internal links is an important element in on-page SEO. One good thing about internal linking is that the site owner has complete control over the links. Internal links are a vital tool for the website owner to use if he or she wants to improve their Google ranking. So improve that ranking and put some quality links on your website.

Most important, internal linking between posts/pages will improve both your SEO efforts and your users’ experience on your website. So how exactly should you deal with internal links? Your internal links should be visible to your reader. A good practice is to use a different color for your links. After installing your link building plugin and having created some links, you will need to go into your Theme under Customize, select Colors, and change the color of you hyperlinks so that they will stand out. Update and return to your site to make sure your links are operating properly.

Here at Wealthy Affiliate, we have access to many Wordpress free plugins. We have a few which will help you to create your internal links.

Wealthy Affiliate Link Building Plugins

1. Internal Link Juicer
2. Internal Links Manager
3. Internal Link Building
4. Link Whisper Free

Note: Personally, I use the Internal Link Building free plugin. I found it to be very easy to install and use. Also, the Internal Link Juicer plugin has had some very good reviews on the internet. Keep in mind, it is a little more technical to use then the others but still a quality plugin.

What Actually Is Internal Linking?

Internal linking occurs when you link one of your keywords from one of your pages/posts to another page/post on the same website. That simple! In SEO terms, internal linking is a page with a hyperlink that leads to other pages under the same domain.

Keep in mind that it is wise that internal linking not be overdone. Link only when it is necessary. Do not link for the sake of linking as it will have a negative effect in Google.

One of the best examples of internal linking can be seen in Wikipedia. For every single entry on Wikipedia, they build hundreds, if not dozens of internal links to other results. What this does is, it helps Google and other search engines understand what the other pages are about.

The creation of internal linking is an important element in on-page SEO. One good thing about internal linking is that the site owner has complete control over internal links, so it’s vital to make the most out of them.

Apart from the SEO values, internal linking is also valuable to your user’s experience. Your job as an SEO marketer is to create a friendly site structure and use internal links to guide both search engines and users to the most valuable pages of your website.

There are 2 primary considerations you need to make when thinking about your website’s internal link structure:

1.) Users - Get users from where they are to where they want to go as efficiently as possible.
2.) Search Engines - How a search engine will view the internal links on your site and how they will pass their weight.

THE BENEFITS OF INTERNAL LINKING

1. Allows Readers To Navigate Your Website Easily

As a site owner, you have full control over the internal link building on your site. Therefore, you can design the exact reading path and navigation experience for the visitors to your site.

A readers lands on your website with very personalized intentions and needs. Some are there to look for information, some are looking for your product or service description, others may be finding ways to communicate with you.

There are 3 ways the user navigation and experience are affecting your website SEO directly:

• i) Time on page

If users find your website worth reading, they will stay longer at your site, thereby, increasing the chance that your page/post will convert a sale. Also, longer times on a page/post improves a website’s SEO.

• ii) Page View

Navigating users to a more accurate and relevant page within your domain will increase your overall page view at the domain level. A higher page view again will benefit your website’s SEO.

• iii) Bounce rate

When you hear about bounce rate, it is favorable for your SEO if it is a low bounce rate. Meaning your readers are spending significant time on your website. In short, make sure your internal linking is giving users’ a better navigation experience.

2. Architecture And Structure Of A Website

Internal linking builds the foundation of the architecture and structure of a website. Basically, website architecture refers to the way you structure your website to ensure you deliver a great experience for your users.

3. Spread Your Links EquallyThroughout Your Website

Every link carries equity and it’s called link juice. Link juicecontains a number of elements, mainly the value, trustworthiness, topic relevance and authoritativeness of a page. And this juice is transferable throughout the pages and websites via internal linking.

Links that passes its equity or juice is one of many signals that the search engine uses to evaluate and determine the page ranking in SEPRs.

4. Keep Your Readers Interested And Wanting More

The more time your readers spend on your website, learning new information and becoming more familiar, the better. Internal links lead to people spending more time on your site and decreasing your bounce rate. You should always strive for a low bounce rate. Bounce rate is a measure of the percent of visitors who leave your site after viewing a single page.

Keep in mind that the goal of internal linking is to keep your readers on your site. But for the strategy to work out, you have to link them to relevant and useful information.

5. Helps Google To Crawl Your Website

Search engines use crawlers to travel through your site and gather information to help them understand your content and pages. They are going to visit your website and follow all the links and pages that are easily indexed. Building a strong and smart internal architecture will help bots find deeper pages that are not always visited.

Internal links also help these crawlers navigate and recognize which pages are most important. They grab search engine bots by the hand and guide them down the path to find and index these pages.

Internal linking influences a better crawling and indexing experience for Google. The easier to crawl, the better a site’s rank on search result pages.

6. Keyword Ranking

Start by choosing the keyword phrase and page you’d like to rank for.

If you want a page to rank, you can point people to the page using the relevant anchor text. This sends a clear signal to Google that this page is relevant to search users typing in that phrase. By adding internal links pointing to the “page, you get a huge boost in your search engine results hence increasing your organic search traffic.

It’s important to use the right anchor text and avoid keyword stuffing. These days, Google is crafty enough to understand the content revolving around the anchor text that says more about the relevancy of a keyword.

7. Back Up A Point You’re Trying to Convey

Links are a great way to support the point you’re making, and this applies to internal links.

8. Send Traffic To Your Older Posts

Internal linking provides your audiences with further reading options. If you are writing about a new product or service, and you have written a great post in the past, link to it. It provides context for the reader and also promotes older content.

By doing this, the newer posts that are getting traffic will help you to flow traffic to the older posts and make an older post rank on the search engine.

9. Helps Build Your SEO

Without a doubt, internal links can build your SEO. When search engine spiders find your website, they follow links to discover additional pages on your site. Hence, a logical linking structure is both visually appealing and effective. You can also apply special internal linking SEO tools to make your content marketing more effective.

Conclusion

Internal links require upkeep and maintenance, so making regular site audits is necessary. At the moment, seeing the way Google operates, it’ll be a wise move to work on your site’s internal linking strategies. When it comes to the Search Engines, especially Google, internal linking is one of the major defining factors when it comes to ranking high.

SEO has swiftly become one of the most critical factors in nurturing an online business. If you haven’t got an internal linking strategy for your website, you’re probably missing out on rankings and potential customers. It’s the most neglected area of e-commerce SEO, and with the help of careful internal linking, you can make big ranking gains.

So get moving and get some internal links on you website. It is easy to do with the plugins available to us here at Wealthy Affiliate.