When it comes to drive quality traffic to the website then we adopt different strategies like social media marketing, PPC and SEO. These three are the main techniques to drive traffic and visitors to the website. PPC is definitely a better option, when it comes to drive high amount of traffic in a short period of time, but due to high cost and risk small and medium web design & web development company don’t include PPC in their marketing strategy they just rely on social media marketing and SEO. In the arena of digital marketing, SEO is a reliable and powerful weapon, top notch SEO services boost visibility, traffic and ranking of the website.
In SEO, we follow smart and effective on page SEO techniques to double search traffic, but while doing so many SEO professionals make one blunder, they ignore and overlook the value of internal linking. Literally, internal linking is a safe and great way to drive quality traffic to the website. A good linking structure on the website not only user friendly, but also perform better in organic search. So, in this blog we will discuss about internal link in details.
Definition of Internal Linking
To increase the usability of the website and provide the most relevant content to the readers, internal linking is the technique of search engine optimization, where one page is connected to another page of the same website with relevant information by means of a hyperlink.
Why internal linking is the favorite SEO technique?
There are a number of reasons that internal linking emerge as a favorite SEO technique among many SEO professionals, here are the following reasons
- It is white hat and safe SEO technique recommended by Google.
- It boosts the ranking of the website.
- Internal linking make a website look more professional and make the content more useful to users.
- It enables the webmaster to understand the website more accurately.
Why Internal linking is must for all types of website?
Internal linking helps indexing- When you include internal link on the web page, then Google crawler identifies the link within the page content and follow them to index more pages. In the absence of internal linking the crawler will read the page and leave immediately. In short, the more internal link on the page will make your website more professional and provide relevant content to readers.
Defines the web page- Sometime it is very difficult to convince the search engine about the web page, even on page SEO does not work. In this scenario internal link defines the web page and tells the search engine that what a page is about. By utilizing the anchor text and title tag you can define the page more accurately.
Provides more relevant information- Internal linking not only justified for search engine but also for the visitors and readers. It provides relevant information to visitors and readers. They know that if they click the link, they will get relevant information which they are looking for.
Proper navigation– Intuitive navigation is important for the successful website. Internal links on the page helps the visitor to access another page of the website through them. It also enables visitors to navigate through blog posts.
White Hat and professional SEO practice- We have already mentioned in title that internal linking is a great and safe way to drive the quality traffic to the website. It is a type of rumor among a large group of people that internal linking is harmful for the website, but a page with properly inserted internal links looks more professional. We think “ Wikipedia” is the best example of internal link so here we are just taking an example of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) from Wikipedia.
Take a closer look on above screen shot and see link with the keyword in the anchor text and frequency of internal link. In the above example, you will find 16 internal links with 219 words of text. After this example, we hope that you will have no more confusion on internal link. Literally, it makes the content more relevant so it helps users to find out the desired information without any hassle.
Reduces bounce rate- People often complain about high bounce rate of website. In this scenario, they always look for a solution to reduce bounce rate of the website. Internal linking is the great way to reduce the bounce rate of the website. Good internal links with high quality content will impel visitor to visit more than one page in this way the visitor will stay on site for the long time and will help reduce the bounce rate of the website.
Best practices for using internal link
You can say that internal linking is the smart SEO strategy. It reduces bounce rate, brings more traffic and enhance ranking of the website and it is not as bad as “external link”, where higher risk of getting penalized, so here we will learn how to use them more effectively.
Use proper anchor text – While writing this blog, we select an example from Wikipedia, where we highlighted the anchor text by the red line. Literally, anchor text makes your internal link fair in the eye of Google and this is also helpful for the readers, in this way readers get a certain idea that what the link open up for them when they follow it. Use proper anchor text, especially keyword anchor text, use them according to need. Avoid over experiment here, in short, it will be better if you have a mixture of both keyword internal links and non keyword internal links.
Make internal link such a way that can satisfy users as well as search engine– Experts always suggest that, either you design a website or make link always think for the users, not for search engine. This is not so difficult, actually this the way to go. If you are careful about what you are writing, then adding an internal link will no more difficult task that will useful for the user as well as for the search engine.
Never add internal links in the sidebar or below- Always add internal links to the main content of the page this is a sign of good internal linking. Never add them sidebar or below, sidebar links are not taken seriously into account.
Avoid cloud tag- Google doesnot count cloud tag as good internal linking, remove them all. It will be better for the website and SEO.
Link the maximum number of pages- To reduce bounce rate of the website and enhance the traffic, it will better if you link the maximum number of pages on the website. Literally, people links the important web pages, but forget the rest, somewhere this is a blunder. For the better indexing, link the maximum number of pages and for this there should lot of content on the website. You cannot go for link building when there is only seven to eight content on the website.
Make your links relevant- Here try to understand our point carefully, because we just mentioned that, “link the maximum number of pages”. Here our point is a bit different, definitely internal linking is a good SEO practice, but add links when it matters, in other words links should be relevant. If the text on that particular page does not have high quality and punchy content then don’t go for linking.
Anchor text can be used as the page title- If you are unable to find the right word to link the particular page, then anchor text can be used as the page title. This is a handy technique. For example: If we want to link our most shared blog, How to use WordPress and we are unable to find the right word to use then we could just write: Read my previous blog: “ What to do & what not to do when using WordPress” and link to it without any problem.
Fix the broken links- Each thing has two aspects, either it is good or bad. Same applies to internal link. There is a chance of an unwanted broken links, when you add it manually. To ensure the function of internal link use free online checking tool for broken links.
Final thought- Here in this blog, we shared best practices of using internal link. And we try to keep our point very clear. Internal linking is a smart & safe SEO technique to drive quality traffic to the website. It is like other SEO technique, so to get the best result avoid over experiment.