What is internal linking? It’s the act of linking to deeper webpages that relate to the current webpage in some way. Sending users to more relevant webpages, helps establish further context of the searchers intent and hopefully answers questions the user may have, so they can become goal converting users. Linking webpages, also forms new paths to deeper content, that searchbots use to help rank keywords that the content focuses on, which can improve keyword ranking and overall brand visibility.
If you’re not linking to your pages, then you’re not telling searchbots about them, and they aren’t indexing as they should be, if at all. Internal linking is one of the most important aspects of SEO, and without setting up a plan to link your subpages to parent pages and other relevant webpages, you miss out on the chance to convey further the keyword relevancy and context to users and bots alike.
Many would just try and link randomly to every page or any webpage and think that is enough, however that would send mixed signals to users and bots causing lack of conversions and high bounce rates to lack of keyword ranking and web traffic in general. Linking to deeper webpages, when relevant, also helps users further understand the message, service or concept you’re trying to deliver much easier, as they have contextual linking to further establish a general idea much faster than leaving them to figure things out in the dark.
Internal Linking Optimization?
Whenever there is a webpage on your website that you feel will further help a user understand the concept and overall message of the website, you should internally link to that webpage. It’s good practice as well, to link out using an external link if you don’t have a webpage that can further help a user or if you refer to any data or statistics. You give searchbots a path to crawl deeper into the website and the searchbots also will see where that link came from, and will understand the relationship and relevancy as a result, so if you’re not linking internally, you’re not conveying relevancy as well.
Going through older content and linking to other pages within websites is a great way to help users and searchbots both find the content they need. Not only will goal conversions increase from such a practice, but so will your crawl indexing an possible keyword ranking, since webpages that were previously unseen by searchbots, are now able to see and crawl those webpages.
What Is Anchor Text?
When a link is created, a label for that link, is needed or there will be nothing to click on in the 1st place. Normally there is text, that is used as the clickable medium to act as a trigger to send a user to another webpage. That text, is called the “anchor text” and is pretty important for a number of ways. As it “anchors” the link, the link’s text or image content, and the webpage that link connects to altogether to create contextual relevance.
For starters the anchor texts acts as a:
- Keyword indicator that helps a user understand what a webpage is about.
- Searchbot indicator into webpage relevancy.
- Searchbot pathway for website crawling.
- Not linking to a webpage, can render that page invisible to searchbots.
Can The Anchor Text Be Anything?
No! You want the anchor text to be a keyword or phrase that best represents the information the user should expect to find when they click on the internal link. This also is what helps convey relevancy, such as a link for buying socks on a product page for selling shoes, helps further establish the type of webpage and keyword group to best relate web searches too.
DOes your website limit crawling by poor internal linking?