Internal links are pathways on your website that help visitors navigate to relevant web pages.
These links aren’t just important for user experience, but they also impact your website’s organic rankings.
Without an effective internal linking strategy, you can end up with orphan pages, which are bad for SEO.
In this post, we’ll talk about how you use internal links so that they:
- Offer the best user experience
- Boost your search engine visibility
Let’s dive in.
What are Internal Links?
Unlike external links, internal links connect two web pages of the same website with an anchor text.
For instance, a service page link in the navigation menu of your homepage is an internal link.
Importantly, internal links pass authority from one page to another.
Plus, they’re an important part of your site’s navigation and help search engines understand your content.
Therefore, knowing how to use them effectively on your site can help with SEO optimization.
Why Are Internal Links Important?
Here are some important reasons to implement effective internal linking techniques on your website.
Help Visitors Explore Your Site
Your goal isn’t just to attract new visitors, it’s also to engage the existing ones.
When someone lands on your site, they see a header navigation with all the relevant internal links.
The header navigation allows you to keep those visitors engaged, maximizing the views per session SEO metric.
Internal links within the body copy can also make visitors spend more time on your site.
They Help With Page Indexing
Google has a limited crawl budget for every website.
You don’t want to waste it on unimportant pages.
When you internally link a page with several other pages, you show its importance.
With proper internal linking, you tell Google which pages it should give the most importance to.
They Can Boost Rankings
In terms of power, internal links are no different than backlinks. They transfer link juice or link authority from one page to another.
How to Implement Effective Internal Linking
Here are some internal linking techniques to implement on your site.
Links from High-Authority Pages to Low-Authority Ones
Every page on your website has some authority. And, as mentioned above, you can transfer this authority with internal links.
Linking a high-authority page with a lower-authority one can help you boost its organic rankings.
But, how do you measure the authority of a page?
You can use a tool like Semrush or Google Search Console to identify the pages with the most backlinks.
Next, identify pages that are ranking well but could use an upward push.
For instance, with smart internal linking, you can push a page from the 7th spot to the 2nd spot.
Using Contextual Links Within the Content
Internal links can help with user engagement, but only when they’re relevant to the surrounding content.
Don’t use internal links just to pass authority. If a link doesn’t help visitors in any way, don’t add it.
You can add contextual internal links in different ways:
- In a “Further Reading” block at the end of a page
- Directly within the body using contextual anchor text
- In a box within the content
Reducing Page Depth
Simply put, page depth is the number of clicks between your homepage and the page someone wants to visit.
It gets harder for Google search bots to crawl a web page as it gets deeper (requiring more clicks).
Since Google has a limited crawl budget, you want to keep this depth to the minimum, ideally between 1 - 3.
Search engines will naturally consider any page that’s more than 3 clicks away from the homepage as low-priority.
Your revenue pages, especially, should be as close to the homepage as possible.
Also, your website link structure impacts how the link equity or ranking power is distributed throughout your site.
This is where having category and subcategory pages helps.
To reduce page depth, you can:
- Use a “Related posts” section
- Add important pages to the primary navigation
- Increase categories and create topic clusters
Using Topic Clusters
A topic cluster is a group of articles on a broad topic.
The parent article is often known as a pillar.
Ranking a pillar post alone is normally difficult, especially if the topic is competitive.
In a topic cluster, a bunch of related subtopics is used to boost the authority of the pillar page.
Links help you connect the pillar post with all the supporting articles, boosting its ranking power.
Here are other benefits of using topic clusters:
- Improved user experience by providing in-depth information on a topic
- Reduced page depth
- Effective page authority distribution (By interlinking pillar and supporting articles)
- Enhanced topical authority
- Minimizing orphan pages (Pages with no links to them)
Using Descriptive Anchor Text
Anchor text is the text on your page that connects it to another page.
The destination page can be on your site or external site.
Internal links with proper anchor texts help Google understand the context.
With it, you tell the search engine what the content is about.
Importantly, anchor text should be relevant to the destination URL, at least, most of the time.
For instance, you can hyperlink the text “Anchor text” to a blog post on creating effective anchor texts.
Google considers anchor text as an important signal while ranking web pages on its search engine.
From a user experience standpoint, anchor text gives an idea to the visitor about the content they can expect after clicking on the link.
Now, using the keyword you want to rank for in your anchor text can help.
But, you don’t want to stuff anchor text with exact-match keywords.
The practice can be problematic for your SEO optimization.
Here’s how you can use Google- and user-friendly anchor texts for internal links.
Keep it natural. Your anchor texts should make sense to the reader and naturally blend with the surrounding content.
Plus, diversify your anchor texts. Different types include:
- Exact-match: "Top SEO services"
- Partial match: "Need help with improving your website's search ranking?"
- Naked URLs: https://legiit.com/categories/seo
- Generic text: "Learn more"
- Branded: "Legiit SEO Services"
The Number of Internal Links Per Page
Years ago, in 2009 to be precise, Google’s webspam team did not recommend using more than 100 internal links on a web page.
Anything above that could mean Google won’t follow these links.
Today, the focus is mostly on user experience. This means if your web page requires it, you can even add more than 200 internal links.
However, it’s worth noting that adding too many links on a web page makes it look spammy and can affect user experience negatively.
Plus, as you add more links to a page, each link loses some of its value.
Therefore, don’t add internal links that don’t make sense.
Fixing Broken Internal Links
A broken link leads to nowhere. It’s a link with a non-existent destination URL.
How does someone or Google know if a link is broken? They land on a 404 page after clicking on it.
Broken internal links are bad for two main reasons:
- They hurt user experience, which in turn, can damage your reputation.
- Google doesn’t like them
404 pages can arise for several reasons, including page removal or renaming and incorrect URLs.
To make sure no internal link on your website is broken, carry out an audit.
You can use a free tool like Dr. Link Check or Screaming Frog.
The 404 errors in Google Analytics is another place to find broken links on your site.
Once you know which internal links are broken, redirect them to a relevant page.
Do-Follow vs. No-Follow Internal Links
A link can either be do-follow or no-follow.
Search engine bots have no restriction on crawling do-follow links.
By default, these links have no HTML attribute.
No-follow links, on the other hand, have a no-follow attribute.
This means search engines aren’t encouraged to follow them.
Now, Google has a limited crawl budget for each site.
And you don’t want to waste it on unimportant links on your site.
To optimize your site’s crawl budget, you should use the no-follow attribute wherever necessary.
Here’s what a no-follow internal link looks like:
The good news is you don’t have to do anything to make a link do-follow. It’s the default for every link.
And, 99% of the time, you don’t need to use the no-follow tag on an internal link.
Only use this tag when you don’t want Google to index a particular page on your site.
Update Old Posts with New Internal Links
This is an often overlooked internal linking strategy.
One of the ways you can keep your old posts up to date is by continuously adding relevant internal links.
As you publish more blog posts on your site, update old ones with new internal links.
Addressing Duplicate Content with Canonical Tags
To become an industry leader, you need original content.
But, having duplicate content on your own website can also cause issues.
However, you may have to create similar or duplicate content sometimes.
For instance, if you have the same product under multiple e-commerce categories.
To navigate such situations, use canonical tags to tell Google which page you want it to prioritize.
Conclusion
Internal linking best practices may change with website SEO, design, and user experience trends.
The important thing is to stay up to date and focus on what’s working right now.
From optimizing page depth to using contextual links, a strong internal linking strategy can set your website up for success.
In this changing SEO era, one thing remains constant and will remain constant. It’s user experience.
When creating an internal linking strategy, prioritize user experience and then work on its technical aspects.
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