Links - Part I. Internal Linking Strategy

Summary: This is Part I of a series of articles I'm writing on Linking Strategy for your site. In this introductory article, I briefly review hyperlinks for beginners, and describe Rules of Thumb for internal links (gleaned from SEO masters). No matter your skill level, you will appreciate this segment.

Future articles will introduce "section links", for those who have graduated from their "newbie" phase; and discuss appropriate link type and placement for specific areas of a structured page. Later, I explore somewhat sexy variations on link text, and set us up for a final and more advanced post, in the series, on the current thinking regarding Strategic Link Building with both external and incoming pointers.

Introduction

A link (aka "hyperlink") uses anchor tags to make clickable the text or image which the tags surround. The click can take you to another page, or it can take you to a different section on the same page.

Anchor Text and Keyword Relationship

Say you have a site targeting the "Do It Yourself" home improvement market, and a page focused on the keyword, “DIY tubular skylights”. Any links to that page within your site, will ideally use anchor text that either matches, or is related to the target keyword for the linked page. Like this:

<a href=“http://example.com/tubular-skylights-you-can-install-yourself”>DIY tubular skylights</a>

( Jargon alert! The "a" tag stands for "anchor". Think of it as a boat anchor, anchoring the boat or ship to the lake bed or sea bottom. The anchor tag anchors
your page to the page on the other side of the anchor. It links related thoughts together; providing more information or context to the reader. Text inside the start and end tag is most commonly called "anchor text" or "link label". )

Simple Rules of Thumb for Internal Links

• Internal links should be absolute (except to css, image, or script files).
  BECAUSE: absolute URLs insure proper crawling of your entire site.
  And BECAUSE: your absolute URLs will be the same as the URLs used by external sites linking to you; adding to the quantity of links to that identical address.
  An "absolute URL", with the complete address:

  http://example.com/tubular-skylights-you-can-install-yourself

  
  A "relative URL" – "relative" in this case to the home directory:

  /tubular-skylights-you-can-install-yourself

  Use the absolute URL, for internal links to pages and posts!
  
• Anchor text should add weight to a keyword for the destination page.
  BECAUSE: page rank of an inner page can increase based on the context of your internal links to it.
  In our introductory example of anchor text, we used "DIY tubular skylights":
  

  <a href="...">DIY tubular skylights</a>

  Assuming that "DIY tubular skylights" is the keyword for that page; we could change this up and use a related keyword for the anchor text, instead, like this:
  

  <a href="...">Do-it-yourself tubular skylights</a>

  Notice, this time, I spelled out DIY, as "Do-it-yourself"—related, but not identical.
  
• Limit links on product pages to the products and possibly a review. Remove all links in the masthead of product pages, too.
  BECAUSE: the potential buyer stays focused. This is the tip of your sales funnel.
  
• "Title" attribute is the title (or a related keyword) of the linked, internal page.
  BECAUSE: related context supports what the audience is seeking.
  See how a title attribute is now added to our DIY tubular skylights link:

  <a href=“http://example.com/tubular-skylights-you-can-install-yourself” title="Save by installing your own tubular skylights">DIY tubular skylights</a>

• Permalinks: omit numbers and dates from a permalink URL.
  BECAUSE: dates and numbers may change over time; but you want your url to reflect an evergreen approach (e.g. always relevant)
  For example, instead of Top-10-table-lamps,
  set the page permalink to Top-table-lamps.
  Use the editable permalink at the top of every post and page on WordPress.
  
  
  
• Avoid changing an indexed URL, at all costs.
  BECAUSE: the age of a post matters—one of the few places where the older you are, the higher your perceived value. ;)
  And BECAUSE: all kinds of people may have linked to that exact URL. Change it, and you lose backlinks, thus authority, and therefore, possibly page rank.

Conclusion: No matter your skill level, it's worth your time to study the links on each page on your site. Feel free to print out these Rules of Thumb, and ask the question regarding the links on your page, "Does everything mesh, here?" Make adjustments, as needed.

A note to beginners and those inexperienced with code: Don't be afraid of a little link. Even if you were to miss a quotation mark or equal sign, it's easy to fix. You don't need a plugin to make links.

The way to put this into practice in WordPress is to create links yourself. You will use the [Text] tab in the WP editor, to edit the internal bits of the link code; once you have placed your links via the [Visual] tab.

Links are, and have always been, the building blocks of the web. It is therefore essential for your business to completely understand how to implement links—standing up, sitting down, doing a handstand, on one foot, and every other virtual manner of existence (just about).

© Copyright 2016, Fran Corpier

NEXT: Part II will briefly discuss "section links"; and then cover link type and placement rules of thumb for each section of the page: masthead; body copy; navigation; sidebars; footer; product pages; cart; more.., next and previous links; categories; and filenames.

Resources

Mozilla Developer Network (updated Feb. 3, 2016) Creating hyperlinks, sec. A quick primer on URLs and paths. -
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Learn/HTML/Int...

Wikipedia (updated Mar. 29, 2016) Anchor text. Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_text

Web Page Mistakes (updated Jan. 30, 2013) Internal Link Building Strategy. Web Page Mistakes. - http://webpagemistakes.ca/internal-link-building-s...

Gray, Michael (Aug 24, 2010) How to Silo Your Website: The Content. Graywolf's SEO Blog. - http://graywolfseo.com/seo/how-to-silo-your-websit...