How To Build Internal Links For SEO

What are Internal Links?

Internal links are hyperlinks on your website from one page or post to another post or page on the same website.When the hyperlinks refers to same website page it is called as internal link.When it comes from other website it called as external link.The internal linking between your post and pages plays a major role in search engine optimization(SEO).More the posts are linked to each other in a related way,the more it increases your chances of ranking in search engines.Each link is counted as a vote to the page you are linking to.It increases page value,page view time and decreases bounce rate.The average time spent by a user on your site increases due to these contextual links.Internal linking provides your site a hierarchy and proper site structure.This inturn gives you benefit in SEO.

How Google Crawls Your Website

Google stresses on the fact that internal linking is good for SEO.The way you link your pages creates a site hierarchy.It aids in easy navigation of your website.Also this provides more link value to your linked posts or pages.Google crawls your website through these links.It calculates value of linked pages based on the authority of these pages.It ranks pages based on this value.So if a page is deep within your site and not linked to any page,it might prevent Google to crawl it.But if you link the page,it will getdiscovered easily.This discovering of your posts by google is called  as indexing.Indexing will work more if the depth of pages being searched is less.So say if one of your pages takes 4 clicks to reach it and another one takes 1 click,the chances of getting indexed of the 1 click page is much higher.This depth of the pages is called crawl depth.The lower the crawl depth value the better chances of the page getting indexed.

What is link juice

Link juice is a SEO term that tells about the value each link on your website contains.The more authoritative a web page is on your site the more link value it has.This link value is termed as link juice.When you link this page to other pages on your site it passes a link value to the linked page which is called link juice.The more the link juice,the better for the ranking of the web pages.Suppose there is a page A on your website that is in the top rankings.So it will have more link juice.Linking to other important pages from here will pass the link juice or authority of the page A to the linked page. 

In case of external links like say Site1 gets links from 4 different sites and Site2 gets links from 3 different sites. Then the link juice passed will be more in case of site1.Getting multiple links from the same site is not so useful as getting links from different sites with good authority. In case you get multiple do follow links to your site the link juice is evenly shared among the links.

Why is Internal Linking needed.

Internal linking is needed to increase the presence of your important pages and inturn help it to rank in search engines.It gives your site a proper hierarchy.Your site hierarchy should be like where pages should be linked to one another from top to bottom. This systematic internal linking not only makes your site important pages more accessible and but also distributes link juice among the pages.This help in ranking higher in search engine rankings. 

Advantages of Internal Linking

1.Internal linking helps in linking the pages and posts so that website is well organized and has a proper structure.

2.Linking the related posts increases page authority by adding link juice of the linked posts.Thus it boosts search engine rankings.

3.It increases the page view time and decreases bounce rate.The more contextual posts are linked users may be more interested in related readings.This helps in retaining users over your site for a longer period of time.

Internal Linking Best Practices

There are certain best practices that you should while building internal linking.Internal linking done in the correct way will help boost search engine rankings.The more related content you have for a related post,the better it is.

1.Create more content

If you have a lot of content  on your website,you will have more chances of internal linking.You can look to create supporting content around your main content.This will help in giving complete idea to the users about the content you are publishing.Search Engines like those kind of contents.For this you can do a detailed keyword research and find out the keywords around the main idea that users are looking for.Also you can see in Google the kind of questions that have been asked around the main content.This will help in developing your main content as well as the supporting pieces.For this you can go to your keyword research tool like SEMRUSH.Generate keyword ideas for the main keyword like say best dog food.It will give you variations of the keyword that users are looking for.Also you get to know the questions asked around it.You can then plan your content accordingly.

2.Use Anchor text for interlinking content

We should be using relevant keywords while linking a post.This helps search engine in deciphering the actual intention behind linking the content.It gives an idea about the content that is being linked to.Do not stuff keywords into the link.You should use relevant keywords which tells what the content is about.Using long tail keywords or simple meaningful words is a good practice.Remember to not use same anchor text for two different posts or pages.

3.Choose your key contents and link to other content from there.

You should find out your key content and try to link to other posts from here.It will help in distributing the link juice for the new and less travelled posts.This will help them rank higher.

4.Consider adding a related posts section.

Adding a related posts section will help increase user time on your site.It decreases bounce rate too.This gives user a chance to get engaged with similar content and increases chance of conversion.

5.Try to link deep

Linking deep posts or pages that are nested multiple levels below the main page gives search engine a chance to index those pages.As these posts lie below in the chain linking them to popular posts gives chance to get indexed easily.

6.Always link to relevant content.

Whatever your posts and pages your are creating,remember to link them with supporting contents and only relevant links.This increases the value of the post or pages in SEO terms.Let us say you have a post on Best Dog foods.Then you have a post best dog food brands.As these are related these can be linked to each other as these are on the same topic.Adding such links adds to the value of the post.

7.Distribute Internal links evenly in the content

Whatever you link on the page try to place your links high up in the page keeping in mind that the content should have the linksplaced evenly.

8.Avoid sitewide Footer links

If you try to provide more footer links that is visible throughout the site,it will be termed as spam.Google algorithmic update in 2013 specifically terms these kind of links as spam.There was general fashion in early days to place many links in the footer to increase visibility and linking.This will be termed as spam.There may be some links but not like 100 or 50 or more.

9.Allow only the required number of internal links

Do not go overboard with links and place only the links that are relevant like 20 would be a good number.In case of lengthy posts it can be much less.

Conclusion

So if you follow these basic principles while building internal links,it will benefit in SEO.Also it will help you in having a simple site structure and will keep out the complications.