As previously discussed in our SEO Post Optimisation guide, links are important for SEO and internal linking is something you can directly improve as you create more content, as well as by updating older posts.
What Are Internal Links?
Internal links are when you use a URL on one page of your site that leads to another page also on your site. The links on your homepage, menu’s and the links to each post on your blogs feed are all internal links, however you can add even more within the body of your content too. These links re called contextual links, as they should link to relevant and related content to what you’re talking about. For example, at the top of this post I linked back to a broader SEO optimisation post which is relevant to you if you’ve not already read it but want to know more about SEO and internal linking.
How Are External Links Different to Internal Links?
External links are when you are linking out to another website, or you could be thinking of backlinks which is when another website is linking back to your website. Both external links and backlinks are important to your SEO too, however internal links are the ones you have the most control over as you directly edit your pages and so this post is focusing on them.
I will be creating more posts about exteral links and link building for backlinks and why they’re important at a later date.
Why Use Internal Links?
Search engines need links to be able to find other pages on your website, which is why a sitemap is used by Google Search Console as it links to every post on your website. Contextual links are important as search engines often see more incoming links as a larger indicator of importance. So, getting up to speed on Internal Links on your website is vital for your SEO.
Internal links aren’t only useful for search engines, but also for your users. It allows easier navigation for your audience, and helps keep them on your site reading or watching relevant content for them. This is often more helpful than your homepage, which may have a mix of content which isn’t always what that user is looking for, and so similar to categories and tags it niches down the content.
Your categories and tags mapping actually helps to form a ‘hierarchy’ of links based on keyword indices that search engines can read, which is why that step is also important. Further internal linking builds on this hierarchy where a single post may be deemed more important or a “hub” of information if multiple pages are linking back into it. An example of a hub can be the SEO for Beginners page, which links out to more in depth looks at topics mentioned, and those posts also link back to the original post.
On top of just adding URLs onto your posts, you should also take care for what anchor text is associated with that URL. Anchor text is the text that you click on that has a link (for example, SEO for Beginners in the last paragraph!). This text should be correct and relevant to the post you’re linking to so the audience knows what content they’re being led to. It also helps with search engines as it allows them to understand and build association of certain keywords with the link.
How To Use Internal Links?
You should use internal linking in as many posts as possible, but where it is relevant to link back to an older post. If you’re writing about a particular topic for the first time, you may not have another page to link to straight away. But, if you write another post relevant to that topic, you can link back to the first post and then go edit the first post to include a link to the newer post as well.
Internal links are great for navigation, which means if you’re creating a series of content it’s helpful to create “previous” or “next” buttons which lead you the other posts in the series. If your series is a less linear, like this Blogging 101 series, it may be easier to create a hub page which includes links to all posts in the series.
Most blogs will have the option to include a recommended or related post section, mostly used through plugins. This will show content which is within the same category or tag as your post, as is automatic at improving your internal linking. However, I wouldn’t recommend on only relying on this as sometimes you’re better suited to pick the relevant topics over a computer.
You should also focus on the anchor text you’re using for internal links. Ensuring the text is relevant to the post lets your reader know where to head to next, but ensuring it’s also a keyword for the post helps your SEO efforts. Both your audience and search engines use links on your site, and so whilst internal links do help for SEO, you need to remember the goal is to improve the user experience first. So don’t just keyword stuff, but think carefully about what URLs you use.
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