Internal Linking Tutorial
Internal linking is all about getting your webpages interconnected with each other. The world wide web is made up of links – you navigate from webpage to webpage through links. You recommend another webpage through links. But internal linking is more than just about navigation and recommendation. This is a Tutorial for Internal Linking.
More than just directions
Internal linking (or interlinking as I’d like to call it for short) is one method that SEO specialists use to distribute good, relevant Pagerank to each webpage that are related to each other’s content. Interlinking your webpages inside your website does not only help people find relevant content in the webpage they are reading, it also helps search engine spiders have an easier time crawling your website and seeing the relevance with each page.
Take this for example: You go to a comic store which has lots of other branches. You’re looking for the Ultimate Spiderman series – but they told you that they only have volume 1 in this store and the other volumes are in the other stores which you have to find out for yourself. Ain’t that a bummer? Why do you have to go to all the other stores just to find the other volumes when they own all of those volumes anyway? And why can’t they direct you to the other stores instead of you having to look for it yourself?
A website with good, interlinked webpages makes it easier for its users to find out good, relevant information within itself. It also helps the search engines to crawl it with a better ‘big picture’ of what your website is all about and how it is structured and related with each other.
The Power Within
Inbound links are a great way to rank better. We all know that. The more backlinks/inbound links you have, the more Pagerank juice you have flowing inside your website. But you have to take note that links will be links whether it is inbound or it is internal.
The beauty of interlinking is that you have full control of your anchor text and anchor title. These will help the search engines better know what a certain webpage you have is all about. Having the best anchor text and title assigned to a link is very valuable – even when the link comes from another webpage within the website.
Interlinking can be a bit of a hassle since it falls under the bracket of ‘nitty gritty details you have to fix before publishing’ but there are plugins you can use for that such as SEO Smart Links. This will automate your interlinking as you indicate it in the plugin’s database.
Tips for Keeps: Just be mindful of all your entries and webpages as you publish a new one and if any relevant, older ones come to mind, link to it. Interlinking isn’t hard – it’s can just get tedious as you increase your webpages. But that isn’t a bad thing.
This entry is part of the SEO Hacker School series: Complete On Site Optimization Tutorial
