If you want your activities on the Internet to bring profits, you should opt for the optimization and positioning of your website. One of the important elements of working on the website is internal linking. It does not require a lot of work, and at the beginning allows us to gain in the eyes of search engine robots and the user. It consists in creating such a structure of the website so that you can easily reach all of its sub pages. Thanks to the proper architecture of the site, Google’s robots know where and why they should follow, and users will stay on your site for longer. You want to see what to avoid and what to do to make linking right? We encourage you to read the article below.
Linking random phrases
The above sentence is an example of linking an accidental phrase that will not give any SEO effect, although it will be clear and legible for the user. If you want to succeed on both levels, then for each sub page you should have selected keywords that you want it to be visible on. If you want to position yourself for example on the phrase “lawn mower” then you should arrange a blog article or other text in such a way that it contains just this keyword and it should be placed in it.
It is also good practice to put a link in the form of a full URL address, where the key word is contained in it, ex domain.com/key-word
A small number of links leading to an important page
When using internal links, not only is the quality and the linked phrase important, but the quantity is also important. It is safe to say that the more the better. Especially if we talk about important for you.
If you run a blog, you can put in it articles describing your product, its use or advantages and disadvantages. In this text you can easily add a link to the product. This has an impact on Google’s robots – they get a clear signal of what site is important to you, as well as users who will be more easily able to navigate your site.
No optimization of the old content
This is a very important element that most page owners forget about. At a time when Content Marketing is the King, it’s important to not only create new, valuable content. It is also important to return to previously written articles and update them.
Refreshing may involve the extension or addition of content, as well as the inclusion of internal links in new articles. This is important for several reasons:
– the older the page the more trustworthy it is from the search engine’s side;
– greater confidence = more power of SEO, which it transmits.
If we do not do it, we will not strengthen the newer pages and the old ones will become outdated. And as we mentioned above – the more links, the better.
First Link Counts
Also, do not fall from extremes to extremes and create articles with only internal links in the content. First of all – it looks bad and unnatural, and secondly you can harm yourself. If you place a link to this page, e.g. a search engine three times, only the first link will be considered. That is why we recommend that for 2-3 to 4000 characters, there should be 2-3 internal links with different addresses.
No rule 3 steps
The website user must move around freely. He will not want to look for a given product or category in the thicket of links, especially when he goes to a specific sub page from the search engine. It happens that the user will visit the website and completely does not know where he is located, and the URL in the browser instead of indicating / category / product, displays random characters (which means that no friendly URLs are used).
That’s why – especially in the case of stores, try to use the 3-step rule, which assumes that you can reach every page on the website with 3 clicks. One example is the following layout: domain.com -> category -> product or domain.com-> category -> subcategory -> product
This structure allows the user to quickly move to the category or product he is interested in, without wandering around the site. It is also an activity that has a positive effect on the operation of the search engine robot, to which we indicate the right way and lead it from the home page, through the category to the products. This speeds up indexing of the page, so the changes introduced on it will be faster.
Lack (extension) of the website structure
The development of the website structure has a positive effect on internal linking as well as general SEO activities. When publishing articles and creating new subpages, linking can be used in two directions. From the new content, link to older articles and vice versa – from old articles, link to those that have just been created.
Hide links from robots and users
At the end, we warn against the use of the procedure, which is to hide the links. We mean, for example, giving the same color to letters as the page background. It also hides text behind the image or setting the font size to zero.
We realize that some people can do it unconsciously, but remember that punishment can be the case. It is often associated with the removal of the page from the search results.
It may seem that the examples we provide are overwhelming. And in addition there is more opportunity to make a mistake than to succeed. Finally, we would like to give you 4 practices that you should follow if you want your internal linking to be correct:
- The links should have the “dofollow” attribute;
- Linking should be diverse, e.g. from a blog to a store, from a product to a category;
- Linking entries and articles thematically related to each other;
- All links must be the same either with WWW or without WWW – for search engine robots are two other sites.
Picture credit: geralt