Internal Links for SEO: Your Ultimate Guide and How to do it Like a Pro

As many people continue to learn the amazing benefits of SEO, it will become increasingly difficult to rank because young but innovative web-prenuers are coming up fast.

To stay ahead of the rest and to ensure your site ranks, you need to learn not just basic SEO but all the technical details surrounding the subject.

Thankfully, you are not alone. I am going to show you how internal links will help boost your site’s SEO performance and ranking. For now, first things first.

 

What Are Internal Links?

Simply put, internal links are hypertexts or hyperlinks that point to different pages inside the same domain or website.

You can decide to interlink all pages of your domain, but if the site has many pages and posts, I tell you it’s not going to be a onetime thing.

 

The Difference Between Internal Linking And External Linking

While internal linking refers to pointing to different pages and posts within the same domain, external linking refers to pointing out to another site or a post that is on another domain.

In both cases, you are definitely going to hyperlink a text with a word or words that will lead your reader to the page, post or website you are referring to.

 

Are Internal Links Important to a Site’s SEO?

That is a good question. Moreover, you’d love to know if internal links are important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), how important are they?

 

They Help The Search Engine Understand Your Site

Internal links are important for SEO. In fact, they help Google, or the search engine for that matter, to understand your domain or site.

Upon a candid understanding of the website, Google or the search engine will index all the pages of your domain, starting, of course, with those linked internally.

According to Google, “Some pages are already known because Google has crawled on these pages before.

The search engine’s machines discover new and additional pages after following the new pages because they are linked to the older crawled pages.”

With that assurance from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, you now know why you need to continue designing those internal links.

Optimized internal links will definitely boost your site significance and efforts to interlink new pages to the already crawled pages will only make your site known to the search engine even better.

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Internal Links Pass Authority

If you master the art of interlinking your posts and pages like a pro, you are likely to signal to the search engine that you are an authority in the game thus, gain Page Rank also known as page authority.

Although PR is no longer a big deal because Google stopped updating this algorithm is 2016, PageRank still adds value to your site.

Understanding how important it was back then helps build a robust domain with unique and unwavering presence before the search engine.

For instance, if Page A has several relevant external and internal links pointing to it, the page will definitely have a higher and solid PR.

In turn, the authority and solid PR will be passed to other pages that are linking to the page internally. You see! That is a good strategy.

Therefore, if you think you will go wrong with internal linking, the answer is; internal linking or interlinking is key for your site’s ranking.

You only need to check on the pages that you are linking.

 

Internal Links Help Your Readers Navigate Between Related & Relevant Pages

User experience is key, and one major way of ensuring your readers find exquisite delight in this is by linking related and relevant pages.

As mentioned earlier, when a reader visits your site and finds quality information, which in turn takes him/her to other relevant pages, the readers will spend quality time on your site.

In certain cases, a reader can visit your site with an aim of checking on a piece of information, only to end up buying a product or service from your site.

It would be difficult to sell if the pages are not interlinked properly.

Therefore, when used wisely, internal links can be a surefire way of turning a reader into a purchaser.

Now that you know what internal linking means, the difference between internal linking and external linking, and the important of internal linking for SEO, it’s time to delve into the finer details of internal linking.

 

Different Types of Internal Links You Can Use

Although some vibrant savvies claim there could be many types of internal links, so far, you will find two main types, namely contextual, and navigational internal links. Let’s explore each of these internal links.

 

Contextual Internal Links

These internal links are placed inside the main body. You will find these links on the main part of a page or post. They are often used to link posts or products that are similar or have close relations.

For instance, if a post is talking about different ways of ranking a website, you may decide to link it to another page on your site that talks about a related story such as keyword research.

For contextual internal links to give you the most benefit, you have to place them strategically yet sparingly. You wouldn’t want to bombard your reader with clickable texts in every paragraph, for that may sound unprofessional marketing strategy.

Besides, it may appear that you are not interested in your reader knowing what you are telling them now but what you posted months even years ago.

While there is no harm to link to old pages and posts, the aim is to help your reader and Google have a better understanding of the current subject rather than drawing the reader’s attention from the latest subject.

 

Navigational Internal Links

Unlike primary internal links that are placed in the site’s main body, navigational internal links help your client locate what they are looking for in a website.

For instance, if you intend to talk to your reader directly on your site, you might ask them to reach you via a tab such as ‘Contact Us’. Alternatively, you may want to sell them your services.

A good example is our Weekly SEO plan. This way, we help our readers find what they want fast.

Whichever way, navigational links DO NOT lead the reader outside your site.

It is the same with any other tabs and drop downs, which help your reader find the page or post they are looking for.

Navigational internal links are placed mainly at the top, sidebar, or on the footer to help readers locate fast what they want.

 

How To Set Up The Ideal Internal Link Structure

Take it this way; your website business is a pyramid in which the topmost carries the most important post or content.

The base of the pyramid is where you place what you presume is the least important content.

With this in mind, your homepage, or any other page you might name so, is your most important page. It should be at the top of the pyramid.

As you descend from the top of the pyramid, you will find some important pages that follow the topmost post or page closely. Such pages can be About Us, Blog, or Product/Services.

Evidently, when you follow this order, then you know that individual pages or posts will be next as you descend further down.

What is the point here?

You should only link to the most important pages. It is needles to interlink pages you deem less important. Better still, you can remove the pages if they do not have or bring any relevance to the domain.

Whatever you do, when interlinking, put relevance in mind.

One of the major interlinking strategies you can try is siloing.

 

What Is Siloing and How Does It Work?

Siloing is the art of putting together of pages or posts that are topically related using internal links.

 For example, suppose you had a website that speaks of countries of the world and their cities.

If you were to link two or more pages that are topically related, common sense dictates that you’d link countries and cities thereafter.

Alternatively, you can relate each country with its capital city and other cities in that country before you’d move to another country with its capital and cities below the capital.

For that reason, relating pages with the same topic forms content hub or topic cluster.

 

Benefits of Linking Pages Topically

Grouping pages with the same topic results in three main advantages, namely:

Like interlinking, putting together pages with the same topic helps users to navigate easily.

They don’t need to leave one page to find information in another page. In other words, your reader does not need to exit the current page to open another page.

Search engine crawlers will have a much easier time to do their job. The result is understating your domain quite well.

This helps you a lot because you will not incur many bounce rates. In addition, the search engine will now know what your site is about.

Your site will have more authority, which is transferred slowly from individual pages to main and consolidated pages, then to the whole site.

This makes ranking easier, and your site will remain on page one of Google for a long time.

 

How to Audit Your Site’s Existing Internal Links?

Unless you are starting a completely new site, chances are there are a few links on your site. If so, it is important to learn how to carry a comprehensive audit of the existing links.

If so, you need to know where to start from and how to go about the process. The aim is to improve your site’s internal links.

Before you touch any of your existing links, you’d better study the links carefully. Later, you’ll be able to know what strategic move you need to make.

One of the important tools you can utilize is the site audit tool. Thanks to the tool, you are able to know the state of the existing links.

With the tool, you are able to know the state of your site’s internal links.

The following are the likely results you’re able to notice:

Internal Links – on this section, you are able to see the number of pages that are linked and receiving links.

It is also possible to know the number of pages that are not receiving any links. Once you find them, it is now possible to separate the pages and see the pages that need most of your time.

Internal Link Issues – some of the issues you will notice include warnings, broken down errors, and any other internal linking issues that need to be addressed.

Pages Crawl Depth – with just a few clicks, you are able to see your site’s crawl insights such as, which pages receive the best crawling experience.

If your homepage is properly linked, chances are you will likely understand the site.

Internal Link Distribution – the probe also helps you identify weak internal links.

If you find this, you are also likely to find out why the problem is happening. Later, you can fix the problem.

Pages That Pass Most Internal LinkRank – unlike broken internal links, orphan pages, and internal link errors, you are also likely to see pages that pass the internal LinkRank.

Although this is good news to you, chances are you will continue to add relevant links to the pages that pass internal LinkRank.

 

The Importance of Conducting Internal Link Audit

You may think that conducting an internal link audit is a joke or passing time. More is involved.

Your internal link audit helps you know the state of your internal links. Once you see a problem, use most of your time to edit and rectify the state of your various pages.

 

Common Internal Link Problems

Although we have already talked about the results you are likely to find after conducting an internal link audit, it is important to know what problems that are likely to crop up. Upon finding out the common problems, you need to act.

The following are some internal link problems you are likely to discover:

 

Broken Internal Links

Why This Happens – you will know, a site has broken internal links when users and search engines are redirected to non-existent pages. In many occasions, the non-existent pages come up as 404 or 502, which otherwise do not open.

How To Fix The Problem – the first thing that comes in mind is to fix the broken link. If you are not able to fix the link, you can replace the link or even remove it completely.

 

Links That Cannot Be Crawled

Why This Happens – in most cases, this problem occurs if you have misspelled your site’s or page’s URL.

While you may be careful, when typing your page’s URL, you may make a mistake if you decide to copy it manually. If you do, your page URL may carry or include some funny characters.

How To Fix The Problem – the moment you identify a page with a broken link, a typo, or a funny character on the link, fix it fast.

In addition, format the link and confirm by clicking on the link.

 

Orphaned Sitemap Pages

Why This Happens – this is not a problem persay but since you are conducting a complete internal link overhaul, you might realize that some of the pages are not linked to any pages whether internally or externally.

One thing that you need to know about orphaned pages is that they CANNOT be crawled by the user or the search engine.

In addition, search engines will not index orphaned pages at all.

How To Fix The Problem – one thing that an internal link audit helps you realize are orphaned pages. After identifying orphaned pages, you need to fix them. From the above section, you now know that neither the user nor the search engine will crawl orphaned pages.

As such, you have two options:

1) If the pages are valuable, you can link then to the homepage or any other important pages on your site.

If you link orphaned pages, you would enable them to be crawled by the user and the search engine.

2) If the orphaned page does not have any current or future value to the user or the search engine, you can decide to remove it completely.

Instead, add a new page that you deem valuable and link it promptly.

 

Page Crawl Depth of More Than Three Clicks

Why This Happens – The term page Crawl Depth of More than Three Clicks refers to when it takes the user more than three clicks to find the page that is linked internally. If this happens to several important pages, it is disastrous.

Look! How many of your readers will be patient enough to click on a link that leads to another link and another before finding the page they were looking for?  

The fact is very few people have the luxury to do that.

Besides, search engine crawlers find it hard to crawl over a hidden important page.

Think about it this way: if indeed a page is important, as you may want the user and crawlers to believe, why give them a hard time finding the page?

It should not be like that. Instead, the user and the search engine should be directed to the important page after clicking on the first internal link.

How To Fix The Problem – make sure links pointing to the main or important page are quick to find.

Help your reader and the search engine to find the important page fast without necessarily going through a process of links.  

Do not include more than one link to an important page. Your reader should only click on the first link and he/she lands on the page that is linked internally.

 

Permanent Redirects

Why This Happens – this refers to the passing of several or all internal links going through permanent redirects.

The effect is a reduction of crawling budget when it comes to larger sites that otherwise would receive much traffic.

How To Fix The Problem – update all internal links. This will eventually help users and the search engine to locate the internally linked pages.

However, if there is a redirect that still attracts much traffic, it should be left.

 

Pages with Only One Internal Link

Why This Happens – try as you may, there will always be pages that will have few or just one internal link.

While this is not a big deal, it may lead to missing ranking opportunities. Besides, it is not good for UX or SEO.  

How To Fix The Problem – identify key pages that you can link internally. If you find an important page, link it to all other less important pages, such that priority is given to the main page(s).

It should not be a problem for your readers finding the main page through less important pages.

 

Nofollow Attributes in Outgoing Internal Links

Why The Problem Happens – this is a more technical problem where a link does not redirect the search engine or the user to where the link should have directed to. The ‘nofollow’ attribute is embarrassing, especially if the hypertext is juicy.

In the end, no matter what the text says, the nofollow attributes restrict Googlebots to do their work of crawling and following through.

How To Fix The Problem – once you identify the problem, it is time to remove the rel = ‘nofollow’ attribute. Removing the rel = ‘nofollow’ may pose technical challenges thus if possible; you can contract a web developer who is versed in solving such problems.

 

Too Much On-page Internal Linking

Why This Happens – although there is no rule on the number of internal links on a page, it is common sense that too many internal links on a single page will be seen as overloading or overdoing it.

Several years ago, the search engine would flag down any page that has more than 3000 links.

Although attaining 3000 links is not a joke, some website owners thought it was the only viable way to make the search engine aware of the page.

As such, they would do whatever they could to ensure the page or site they deemed important had as many internal links as possible.

The latest Google update does not mention the number of internal links a page needs to have.

Nonetheless, you wouldn’t want to overload a single page because you think it is important.

Besides, if you continue adding internal links oblivious of user-friendliness, you would plunge your site into a hub of links instead of providing essential information for your readers.

How To Fix The Problem – audit your site to see if there is any overloaded page. In the event you find a single page with over 3000 links, remove the extra links.

It is always prudent to remain with a reasonable number of links.

When you decide to remove the surplus links, do not remove those that link to other important pages.

Only those that link to small or less important pages should be removed.

 

Links on HTTPS Pages Lead to HTTP Pages

Why This Happens – the problem is that URLs mistakenly direct your readers to HTTP pages on what may be seen as a secure site but tend to cause redirects that are unnecessary. Remember that these redirects are not secure.

How To Fix The Problem – if your site isn’t big (one that cannot give you headache), you can update all unsecure HTTP redirects to secure HTTPS.

However, if you are dealing with a big site, contact a web developer, who, using more technical tools, can help in the updating and redirecting.

 

Redirect Chains and Loops

Why This Happens – internal links that trigger redirect chains are a mess to the user and the search engine.

In addition, they create poor UX. They are likely to happen if the links are broken and often redirect the links to the wrong page.

How To Fix The Problem – make sure all internal links are up to date and link to the correct pages that are live.

Remove all intermediary redirects that take place in a chain.

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Best Interlinking SEO Techniques You Should Try

As you may beware for now, internal linking can dramatically drive more traffic to your site, ultimately helping it rank high on Google plus other search engines.

While driving valuable traffic to your site is the most important thing, internal linking helps in many ways, a site to stand out.

Therefore, do not underestimate the power of internal linking.

If you are not careful, you may fall into the trap that has messed many webmasters – wrong interlinking. Thankfully, you do not have to stay in the mud.

Here are genuine SEO internal linking practices you can try with assured result:

 

Use Keyword-Rich Anchor Text

An anchor text is simply the clickable text on a web page that directs readers from one webpage to the other. An anchor text anchors two webpages.

Although anchor texts link webpages, they also encourage downloads and further give links to online documents such as PDFs or the files contained in Google Drive.

If you look at some of my webpages, for example, there are some clickable texts.

By hovering your mouse over these texts, you will notice they provide links to the pages I choose to link to.  These are my anchors in this case.

The words you choose to include in your anchor text is crucial for some reasons.

First, it tells people what they should expect before clicking on the anchor. Again, Google algorithms utilize anchors to ensure we don’t engage in illegal SEO practices.

But any word doesn’t make a good anchor text. Some words can make our anchors seem spammy or generic.

When using anchors, I would advise you to use keyword-rich anchor text. Such an anchor proves you are providing useful internal links.

A keyword-rich anchor text succinctly and clearly explains the targeted webpages.

It effectively directs your readers to relevant content on the pages you are directing them to.

But using keyword-rich anchor texts isn’t about using the same anchor over and over. Instead, have a variance in your anchors. I have shared with you some secrets to coming up with a keyword-rich anchor text.

1) Use longer keywords – using longer keywords can help you increase the rankings for your target page or pages on your site. 

If you are selling fitness products, for instance, a good example of keyword-rich anchor text to use include Top 5 Best Weight Loss Supplements, other than using a generic anchor text like weight loss supplements. 

The keyword-rich anchor is written in a way that people genuinely search for specific terms for their target information.

2) Diversify your anchor text – a keyword-rich anchor text uses a variety of words where possible. 

But don’t vary your text so much lest it prevents you from optimizing your webpages for specific keywords.

3) How relevant is your anchor? – A keyword-rich anchor text is relevant to the content on the linked webpages.

It gives meaning to your webpages without them losing relevance.

I suggest you use a performance report by Google Console to get suitable keyword-rich anchors.

The report will give you suitable suggestions based on the attention your pages are getting. With the right anchor, Google will get more precise knowledge about your links.

Besides getting the perfect keyword-rich anchor text, also ensure the anchor is optimized for SEO.

By optimizing your anchor, I am talking about one of Google’s best practices. Optimizing has nothing at all to do with using the anchor to your favor.

It means leveraging your anchor to create a great experience for the average Google user. 

 

Link to Important Pages

Now that I have walked you through using keyword-rich anchor texts as an effective link building strategy, I will now walk you through linking your pages.

But when I say linking, I mean linking to the right pages, or rather the most important pages. In SEO, these pages are referred to as hub pages.

A good internal linking strategy is based on identifying the pages that help site owners to build out topic clusters.

Topic clusters are vital for enhancing a site’s architecture. Important pages usually target keyword-rich anchors with high monthly or daily web searches.

Most of us site owners underestimate why the relevance or importance of a page on a site matters.

When I look at my site, for instance, some pages drive more traffic to my site than others. In other words, these are my hub pages in my case.

Your strategy should start with analyzing your important pages. Come up with a list of the most important pages.

These include pages that Google has scrawled previously. Let’s say you have a new page that you would like to link to another existing page on your site.

I would advise you to think about the page you are linking to.

Now the designated page shouldn’t be any page on the site. Instead, it should be one of your most searched pages on Google.

When you link your new page to an important page, it notifies Google that the new page is related to the existing page.

The new page automatically becomes visible on Google searches.

This internal linking strategy generates authority among your pages, ultimately improving rankings.

Your most important pages should be the pages that are optimized for the specific keywords you want.

If a page isn’t important or doesn’t add value to your site, it isn’t worth linking another page to it.

Readers won’t find that page from their respective search results. So embark on auditing your website to identify the important pages you can link new pages to.

 

Don’t Use The Same Anchor Text For Two Different Pages 

Over the years I have done internal linking, I have witnessed a common mistake that site owners make in their internal linking efforts.

The mistake is using similar anchor texts on different pages. This is terrible as far as SEO is concerned.

I advise site owners, especially marketers, to embrace randomness while using anchor texts.

Google consistently searches for anchor texts through Google algorithms.  The search engine uses anchors to judge the quality of the content on websites.

By using similar anchors on two different pages on your site, Google won’t hesitate to punish you.

To them, this malpractice amounts to manipulating algorithms. Again, Google knows that some domain names contain keywords.

In the SEO world, we call such domain names exact match domains.

Although there are 70% chances of being discovered by Google if you are using similar anchors, they are instances when the search engine will accord you a reprieve, especially if they think your anchors are branded other than being an exact match.

Let me remind you that Google keeps deploying new updates and algorithms all the time.

I wake up someday to realize Google has a new update it has used to detect similar anchor texts in my content. I would warn you from using similar anchors on several pages.

Furthermore, make sure all the anchors are relevant. The anchors shouldn’t be over-optimized either.

Keep then unique and tailor then to provide a great experience for your readers.

 

Put Links High Up On Your Page

Now you know the important pages to link when doing internal linking. But those new to link building always ask me which is the right place to put links on their pages.

I advise them to put links high up on their pages. When you put internal links high on your designated webpages, your bounce rate will reduce significantly.

Bounce rate is essentially the amount of single-engagement visits to a site.

A high bounce rate means more visitors view your site but leave without reading any webpage. By placing links high on webpages, your bounce rate will lower significantly.

When internal links are placed high on webpages, people have something they can click on.

Simply put, they spend more time on sites that have links at the top of their pages.  I place links in the introduction section of all my blog posts.

As such, my readers don’t struggle to get the content they want.

I see no harm in placing several links on your pages. However, I would discourage you from overdoing it. A couple of links are enough.

Plus, the links should be high up on the page and the links should be precise and relevant to your site.

 

Dofollow Links

Dofollow links may sound new to SEO novices. However, the concept behind these links is easy for site owners to comprehend.

Before Google introduced this concept, the SEO world was chaotic at its best. Website owners and bloggers used to engage back linking malpractices to acquire more traffic.

The malpractices entailed adding links to websites.  But today, this act is impossible. We now have Dofollow links.

These links are part of HTML used to authorize search boots to monitor and follow links. Google uses these links to find the number of visitors visiting a specific webpage. 

I suggest you get more of these links since the more you have, the more credible your pages will be.

Dofollow links are an indication of credibility by search engines like Google. With these links, your pages will rank high.

Dofollow links are good. But remember Google cares about the source of these links. Getting your Dofollow links from a spammy or malicious site can earn you a penalty from Google.

Even though a Dofollow link can be genuine, it can potentially affect your ranking if it is deemed unfit by Google.

 Luckily, site owners can strategically use Dofollow links to boost their pages. 

These links have enabled me to enhance the authority of my pages in my internal linking efforts.  All of my most authoritative pages have plenty of Dofollow Links.

The opposite of Dofollow Links is the NoFollow links.  The latter requests Google not to consider the link when evaluating the SEO value of webpages.

Since early 2020, Google has been using NoFollow links to determine a site’s suitability in SEO. Then there are sponsored links, which are also popular in SEO. 

Such links notify Google that the link to a certain page was gotten through an agreement between the site owner and the link provider.

 

Use Internal Links To Help With Indexing

Other than using an internal link to generate traffic to your site and certain pages, I would encourage you to utilize internal links to help with indexing.

Internal links are pages that direct readers to webpages located on the same website, rather than another different site on the web.

Internal links enable Google to find, index, and analyze all the webpages on a website.

Once used strategically, these links can boost authority to important webpages, which is known as PageRank in SEO.

I recommend a few easy ways of using internal links for Google indexing.  Here are things I insist you should keep in mind when using these links for indexing:

1. Consider using keyword-rich anchor texts.

2. Ensure your internal links are all linking to the most important pages on your website.

3. Use different anchor texts for different webpages.

4. Audit your internal links using Google Search Console.

Remember Google indexes and finds all crucial pages on websites on its own. 

Nonetheless, site owners with tons of webpages may be disadvantaged. For these site owners, Google will just index a limited number of pages.

For successful indexing when you have multiple pages, use plenty of internal links to help Google locate these pages with ease. 

If you have several pages, you would wish to index, use several internal links to link to the pages you wish to index.

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Link Strategically From Your Home Page

Just like external links that point your web page to another domain, internal links direct your audience from one page to another in the same site.

These are usually brushed off as non-essential, but they are very predominant in developing your site navigation. Internal links are also beneficial to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to understand your website anatomy.

With the help of these links, SEO can find and index your site pages. Internal links also stream the site’s authority between the pages and assess each page’s quality and importance.

To successfully link strategically from your home page, here are six simple steps that you can follow and reap the benefits of internal links for SEO.

1. Make a list of pages you want to link. Out of this list, optimize your primary keyword. Target simple keywords that are highly searched rather than long-tail keywords that are unlikely to be searched.

2. Map our relevant pages to generate results. Start with the main hub page with a particular topic. Any other related page will come in handy to add weight to the main topic.

3. Choose a short exact anchor text for your internal links. An anchor text is the clickable hyperlinked keyword, which you are interested in ranking. Google Webmaster will not penalize you for using a match anchor text in the internal linking strategy.

4. Identify your website’s authority pages. Authority pages allow external linking. Leverage these pages within your website and consider the quality of the links instead of the quantity.

4. Increase the ranking of target pages by using internal links. You can use your website’s authority pages to rank other pages. Identify opportunities to pass the link authority to other pages with less link authority.

6. Always optimize fresh content using the internal links. This strategy works out well for you if your site has not earned many links. Authoritative pages can help you to identify relevant interlinking opportunities for maximum search performance.  

 

Avoid Automation

The best practice for building internal links for your SEO is to do it manually.

Create a list of the pages you want to link and map out the relevant pages. Choose your anchor text correctly.

The anchor text should be relevant, precise, and one with a high search volume. I recommend that you patiently follow step by step on how to build internal links without automation.  

Internal links automation comes with several setbacks that are likely to pull back your SEO marketing strategy.

Some of the reasons why you should avoid automation of internal links are:

1. It isn’t easy to strategize internal links for your home page. Internal links require that you tactically build and link them to your home page. One of the tactics is to choose the best carriers to link.

2. Automation plugins and tools do not come up with any specific list. They randomly pick pages and keywords without any formula. That is likely to mess your site big time.

3. Automation plugins and tools can create numerous match anchor text within a few hours. That leads to anchor text spam, which triggers the Google spam filter. Google Webmaster will penalize you for spamming.

4. Automation ignores your audience’s needs. Natural internal links are meant to help your audience find related information easily on your site.

5. Automated internal links skip the relevant and essential links because it picks and adds links randomly. That can also mislead users by leading them to the wrong links.

6. Automation leads to limited navigation within your website. The internal links may not land the user in other categories.

After taking a keen look at the setbacks automation is likely to cause your site, it is evident that SEO experts void it like plague. Yes, link automation is bad for SEO.

 

Add Internal Links to Old Pages

Internal links are often ignored, but they boost traffic to your site by over 40% compared to the sites that do not have them.

What this means is that they are vital for your SEO success. If your old pages do not have internal links, then they are called orphan pages.

It is important to note that Google does not find orphan pages: neither can pages that are not ranked be transferred through internal links.  

The pages cannot link your visitors to other relevant pages. A website that does not have internal links is not detailed, and it does not have enough content for your visitors.

Let us navigate through some reasons why you should add internal links to old pages:

1. The more internal links your site has, the higher the Google ranking. Internal links pass these rankings from page to page within your website.

The rankings or credibility, also known as authority, help many pages in your website to receive authority, hence getting a higher ranking in SEO.

2. Internal links help your site visitors to navigate old pages extensively.

The visitors can find relevant content, and at the same time, leave the impression that they got the help they needed. That is evident when they click on Call To Action (CTA) buttons.   

3. When Google crawls through pages on your site, these become known instantly.

Interwoven relevant content is discovered through the links that show the relationship between two pages. The ranking increases and a vast audience are hooked to your site.

 

Check Mobile Version of Your Website

Checking the suitable mobile versions of your website is a significant move. It helps to show which mobile version is compatible with your website.

It would be great to make sure that your website is mobile user friendly because not every user has access to a computer.

These easy steps can ensure your website is user friendly, especially to those readers who use phones, thus finding it easy to navigate the various pages:

1. The mobile version design should be simple and easy to use. 

2. Make the buttons suitable for the mobile version. 

3. Features like font type and size should be large enough to enable a click using a finger.

4. Restrict yourself to standard fonts.

5. Leave text blocking ads and pop-ups out.

6. Enhance the speed of your website to avoid delays in loading up.

7. Make information easy to find by the click of a simple button.

Internal Links for SEO: Your Ultimate Guide and How to do it Like a Pro Click To Tweet

 

 First Link Priority

First link priority is specific to internal linking. It is a rule that says that Google ignores page links after the first link. That means that Google Webmaster will not add many anchor text links into your website’s content.  

If the search engine finds two links in your website, pointing to one page will only consider the first link and ignore the second one. That is potentially bad news for your SEO. However, this can be fixed.

The only way to fix first link priority is through a technical approach. These three technical methods can prevent Google from ignoring consequent links:

1. Internally link to deep pages only. Avoid duplicating links to your pages and focus on internal links to deeper pages of your website. That is beneficial in that visitors will read and index deep pages.

2. Use hashtags within your internal links. A hashtag will be treated as separate pages in your site, and so Google will not filter that as a consecutive link to the same page.

Another benefit of a hashtag is that it will bring visitors to the familiar and relevant pages on your website.

3. Position the side navigation menu below the content in the source code. Google will not notice the consequent link if they are placed on the navigation menu.

The third approach is very technical; therefore, you might require a knowledgeable web developer who is keen on details of a navigation menu. Any slight mistake can lead to a wholly messed up website. 

 

Final Thoughts

With a good internal linking strategy in place, your content will dramatically rank high on Google.

Whether your content is old or new, internal linking could be the real deal if done properly. I can assure you that this isn’t a complex strategy.

I have seen people becoming excellent at doing internal linking in weeks. Unlike external linking, which requires you to study someone’s site, internal linking isn’t as demanding as such.

Again, you have control of each step when linking your pages internally, since you already own the site and thus no authorization is required.

With the internal linking techniques I have shared with you today, you are a step ahead in rolling out a sound internal linking strategy that will pay off big-time!