This post may make you roll your eyes, but when they come back to the right position, make sure to try this out. Hahahaha.

There are quite a few metrics that can lead to posts ranking. One of those metrics is internal links.

Most of us remember to put an internal link in each post, and we definitely don't forget to add an affiliate link, but we might forget that when we're posting a new article, it needs links going to it.

What is an orphaned post?

Google measures the importance and relevance of your content partially based on how many times you link to it. If you have a post that you link to quite a bit, then Google would assume that out of all of the posts on your site, that one post is one of importance.

If you have a post you don't link to at all, it's called an "orphaned post" and Google would assume, it's not as important in context to your website.

Internal links are like navigation signs. Can you imagine what the airport would be like if there were no signs helping you get around? It's the same feel when we don't add internal links.

People can't get to the good content you have if they don't know about it, so add your links to be helpful to them. Take time adding your internal links to your posts so your internal linking is well thought out.

I Started Experimenting with Internal Links

Starting around Christmas 2019, I started going thru my articles and looking for "orphaned posts". At the time, I had well over 200 orphaned posts which is HORRIBLE!

It's like the posts I really like are the ones I'd add links to, but I'd forget to put links to other posts. After you have quite a few posts, you forget what you said in each one, and it gets harder to remember which post would offer relevant value to the reader.

Either way, I decided to go thru many of my orphaned posts, and see how my website rank would improve if I improved my internal linking plan. I believe this one change has contributed to some of the great results I'm seeing with my posts that are ranking.

I'm seeing drastic growth in search traffic month over month, and I'm way past the "sandbox" period.

Sarah Titus - Another Case Study Aside from Mine

Sarah Titus is a blogger who earns $300,000+ per month selling printables from her blog. She has massive traffic (like 1 million+ pageviews per month). She said one key that helped her break the glass ceiling with her traffic was internal links.

Like me, she had lots of posts and many of them were orphaned posts. As a result, she was seeing a glass ceiling with her traffic until she combed thru and added more internal links. Here's a quote directly from her:

" Even if you start with just the top 10 most popular posts on your site, you will notice a HUGE increase. On my most popular post on my site, I added 7 more links to it of my own content in a list form and depending on the day and week, it has gone up 5-10% in traffic to those list links!

That’s about 70-143 clicks a DAY for that ONE post. Doesn’t sound impressive? Think about it in terms of this:

143 more clicks a day is 4,290 clicks a month or 51,480 clicks a year. Even 4,000 clicks isn’t going to make you FLY, BUT…if you do this with ALL your popular posts, let’s say you have 60 popular posts and you take 4,290 x 60. That’s TWO HUNDRED FIFTY SEVEN THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED clicks a month!!!!! Get that?

It’s 257,400/month MORE just by simply updating your most popular posts."

This is Simple and Free

I personally decided to use a plugin called Link Whisper to help stay on top of this. If you're interested, you can see a demo of it on my Youtube channel (check my profile). Even without the plugin, you can do this for free, and it can be very simple if you don't have alot of content.

For Sarah, she said, this one tactic helped her reach 1 million pageviews per month. Of course, she has alot of content and with her math, you can see she had alot of traffic anyway, but this was a key factor that took it up a notch for her. She says it's one of the most important factors.

I know for sure that my posts with my highest number of internal links are doing amazing in the search rankings, so I believe what she's saying is a key factor that we shouldn't overlook.

Jaaxy Tells us how Many Internal Links other Sites Have

Nowadays,when I'm doing my keyword research, I analye my competitors pretty closely. I use the Jaaxy Search Analysis feature (that not many people talk about) and analyze how many internal links my competitors have when I'm trying to compete for a keyword. It lets me know how many relevant articles they think they have on their website, and helps me to see what I may need to do to claim a ranking.

Of course, this isn't the only factor, but I do believe it plays a huge role in improving the user experience, time on page, and overall winning a spot on the first page in search.

My Warning to You

I'd recommend you go thru your posts and see if each of your posts has a link to it. The ones that don't have a link to it, add one (if you have enough relevant content). If you don't have enough relevant content, consider making more relevant content, so you can get rid of those orphaned posts.

Avoiding orphaned posts is another reason why "niching down" is a good recommendation considering it's a key ranking factor. Just maintaining my internal linking plan has made me niche down more.

This is probably something that should go into your calendar for weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly review (depending on your publishing schedule and other time commitments).

Take more time when you're writing your posts to think about all of the relevant content you have that could add value to the end user. Don't rush this portion of your publishing process because this is what keeps people around, and it's what takes 1 pageview to 2, and so on.

When you have more customer satisfaction => more time on page and pageviews => more repeat visitors = > more traffic => more ranking.

Conclusion

Internal links isn't something we talk about much, but since it's contributing so much to my rank improvement, I thought I'd share. I've been trying to find every factor I can to improve my results, and this one has worked for me (and many others), so I hope it works just as well for you.

Best wishes on your site growth.