Internal linking refers to adding a link from one page to another on the same domain. They’re hyperlinks added for the purpose of directing the reader to more relevant pages from your webpage. It passes the authority from one page to another and guides the readers to other relevant pages by prompting them to act.
Adding many internal links to a page will make your page appear important to the search engine bots as they use these internal links to figure out which page is the most important one to be shown in the search results. This will result in your page ranking higher on search results.
Internal linking is all about helping the reader but wouldn’t it be a win-win situation if it also helps your SEO?
Therefore, if you want to create a clear path for your website visitors and prompt them to prolong their sessions while improving your page’s ranking and lowering the bounce rate, we’ve listed some best internal linking practices that’ll help you maximize SEO results in 2021.
Add Links Under Meta Description
Often, the links that are added in the footer get devalued. Therefore, to make your article rank better, you must add links at the beginning of the articles rather than in the middle or toward the end. A good meta-description is concise yet persuasive summary of the page’s content. However, you must not stuff the meta-description with your main keywords only, instead you must focus over including them in the description. This will allow the search engine crawlers to immediately see the links right under the meta description and help your article rank high. It will also help improve the dwell time.
Make use of WordPress Plugins
Millions of people around the globe use Yoast for optimizing their posts. Once you’re done writing your article, the Yoast plugin will analyze your write-up and choose the prominent keywords. It’ll offer you some relevant interlink suggestions for your articles.
Moreover, this is the part where the automated plugins options come in handy. You can use an internal link juicer, an automatic internal linking plugin that helps to interlink content from the website in no time. Interlinking manually can be time–consuming and the automatic plug-in options will help you save time and hassle.
Use Different Online Tools
Investing in some link tools can help you assess your linking structure and guide future link building. If you’re confused about which one to use, you can look up effective tools to get a better understanding of your most internally linked pages.
Screaming Frog can be helpful if you’re trying to build links to your site by finding all the relevant pages that mention ‘internal links.’ It will provide you with a custom search menu where you can enter your terms and show you how many pages include the term you selected.
Link tools help optimize your internal link structure
Update old articles with new internal links
Updating your old articles by interlinking them to new content is a powerful SEO strategy. It will allow google crawlers to see and index them again, which will help improve their ranking on google. This will not only update your old content but improve its ranking value and create an internal link between the old and established page with a new and not so established page. A good way to go about it is to add links as reference points to improve the readers’ experience. You can look for areas where the subject matter overlaps. This will act as logical points of connection and prompt the readers to visit the old pages as well.
Just adding a small paragraph and explaining the updates at the beginning of your old article will enhance the connection between the two pages. It’s an effective strategy to boost the ranking of your old content while improving the user experience.
Add a Reasonable Number of Relevant Links
You must be wondering what exactly is a reasonable number, right? Well, nobody knows! Although there is no set number of internal links you must add, you can use your judgment and add only links that can benefit someone reading.
Avoid linking every page to one another and add only those links that are relevant to the content of the page. However, if the link doesn’t appear relevant to the reader, they will most likely avoid clicking on it. Therefore, it is essential to use links that provide value to the reader and matches the context of the original content. A common mistake that new marketers often make is that they link without a proper sense of planning. Therefore, a marketer must consider how these pages add value to their page visitors before linking different pages together. Take it this way, if a link is not adding value to your page’s user engagement or it is not relevant to the main topic, then what’s the point of even adding it?
Text Links vs. Image Links: Know Which One to Choose
Let’s take a look at the analysis between the two. SEO places more importance on words as compared to pictures. For SEO, text links hold more value than image links because the text links pass more SEO juice than the image links. It is recommended to utilize text instead of images in your Articles, in order to highlight the important links or content. In case it is necessary to use images to the textual content, make sure to integrate the alt attribute for including few words of descriptive text.
Moreover, for crawlers, understanding the text links in the form of HTML is far easier than understanding alt attributes from the image. Come to think of it, would you easily decipher an HTML text or an alt text?
Another important reason for this is that the bots can end up comparing the anchor text with the linked page’s content to verify its relevance. This issue is easy to avoid, but if left unattended, it can create obstacles in your high rankings.
Summing It Up!
To cut it short, adding internal links on top of the page, making effective use of the WordPress plugins, using online tools will help you reap phenomenal results and boost your website’s traffic and revenue. It’ll not only ensure that the user does not bounce back to the results page, but instead, it will create a positive user experience by saving their time scrolling through the webpage aimlessly.
Internal linking is an integral part of SEO, and in today’s world, it’s considered a cornerstone of SEO. It helps you improve navigation and boost authority on your website. Hence, if you want your best piece to rank well on Google, this is the perfect place to start with. Now that you’ve learned the best practices, you know how to help your users reach the next destination.
About the Author
The author, William, has been associated with Search Berg for a decade. He’s an SEO expert, and his services are recognized internationally.
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