In the SEO industry, people mostly assume that “link building” is focused on external links or backlinks. While these links are the driving force behind Google’s ranking, there is another type of link building that can significantly increase your website’s overall SEO: internal link building.
Internal links are not the first thing we think of when discussing link building. However, they play an important role in having a successful SEO strategy and delivering ROI from external link acquisition.
What is an internal link?
Internal links refer to any links that point from one page on your website to another page on your site. Internal links are incredibly important in improving user experience and page SEO.
For your readers, they use the links to navigate through your website and find a piece of content related to the current article they are reading.
For search engines, the system uses links to navigate through your site’s web pages and understand your website’s structure and architecture. Google’s bot crawls through your website’s homepage and follows the first link. Google then uses these links to flow through your website work out the relationship between various pages and other content and determine which pages on your site cover a similar subject.
Different Types of Internal Links
There are several types of internal links, some of which you may not be aware are on your website now. Understanding the differences between each internal link is important. Learning the function of each link will help you design and optimize your visitor’s journey and experience when visiting your website.
Menu/Navigational Links
The most important internal links are those that guide your readers through various content and pages on your website. Navigational links, also called header links, normally appear at the top of your page in the main menu area and contain links to all major sections on your page. At times, header links are found in drop-down menus pointing users to subcategories of your services or blog posts.
Navigational links can also bring users off-site, such as sister websites or forums.
Footer Links
Much like navigational links, footer links help users move through certain parts of your website. But instead of finding these links at the top of the page, footer links are found at the bottommost section of the website.
Foot links usually point to important pages that your readers might want to reference. These pages include Careers, About Us, Customer Service, Press, Privacy Policy, and others.
Sidebar Links
Sidebar links direct users to the most popular, recent, or relevant content on your website. Sidebar links are most often seen on websites with a lot of content and blog posts. Examples of these websites include news, recipe sites, and travel blogs.
Contextual Links
A contextual link is a type of text link that directs users to other pages related to the keyword, idea, or context of the content. For example, let’s say you have an article about childcare tips. You find another article that talks about recipes for picky eaters and it has a section about ways to feed a child healthy food. That section of the article would be the perfect contextual link to your “childcare tips” feature.
Contextual link building is an effective SEO strategy that keeps readers on your website for longer, reducing the site’s bounce rate.
Image Links
Images, such as button images, charts, and infographics, can also be used as links. These types of links can benefit readers as they can bring them to another page that has more information about the image.
Text Links
Text links are hyperlinked words or phrases in your content. These hyperlinked and clickable words or phrases are called “anchor texts.” Text links are the most typical type of internal links used in an SEO strategy.
How to select an anchor text?
While optimizing your anchor text is good, it’s dangerous to overdo it. This is why it is important to identify what type of anchor text you should attempt to link to. There are many types of anchor texts, but the variations can be grouped into six kinds.
Branded anchor text
A company’s name or variations of its name is considered a branded anchor text. Additionally, a brand name combined with topically relevant or call-to-action phrases can also be anchors.
Branded anchors are usually found in listicles or in articles that compare one company’s product to that of its competitor.
Topically Relevant
Topically relevant anchors are also known as keyword-optimized anchor texts. While these can be used to optimize your content, increase your domain authority, and increase your ranking on SERPs, Google states in its Link scheme guidelines that keyword-optimized links may violate its terms in certain scenarios.
There are three variations of topically relevant anchors.
Broad match , sometimes called phrase match, includes your target keyword as well as other words. For example: CreateVenue can help you develop an effective SEO strategy. In this case, the target keywords are “SEO strategy.”
Partial-match includes part of the target keyword or a variation. In the example given above, a partial-match anchor text would only be “SEO.” This type of anchor text is useful if you are having difficulties working the entire phrase or keyword into your content.
Related anchors use the synonyms of terms that are closely related to your target keyword. For example: a related anchor to “SEO Strategy” could be a “search engine optimization plan.”
Generic anchor text
Generic anchor text is when the anchor includes non-descriptive words or phrases, such as “click here,” “read more,” “website,” or “info.” Generic anchors offer no direct benefit to how your page ranks in SERPs. However, it can be effective when it’s used as a call to action along with descriptive text.
For example: “Click here to download your free SEO guide.”
Naked anchor text
Much like its name, naked anchor texts are literally “stripped away” of any extra words or phrases and only offer users the URL of a website as the clickable link. Naked URLs are most often seen in data citations, research papers, studies, and other attributions for reference materials.
While Naked anchor texts do not create an association between the target page and your keyword, they can still provide link equity, colloquially known as “link juice,” from the referring page. It can also help diversify your profile during the internal link building process.
Exact match anchor text
An exact match is considered when the anchor text includes the exact keyword or phrase that the page is trying to rank for. For example, if you are linking to a page about wedding bouquets on a site of the same name, you would use “wedding bouquets” as your anchor.
It might seem like using a lot of exact match anchors is the best way to increase your page ranking. However, too many exact match anchor texts can actually look suspicious to Google’s algorithm. You should only have an exact match anchor text ratio of less than 5% to 10% across your website.
What is internal link building and why is it important for SEO?
Internal link building is a complex process. However, the benefits it has for your website’s SEO are definitely worth the hard work. As stated at the start of the article, Google uses internal links to establish how valuable your website and the content within it are.
If you have a new website, it would be best if you constantly revisit (and probably revise) your internal link-building strategy often to increase your website’s quality and get a higher PageRank.
Here are some of the things to keep in mind when creating your internal linking strategy.
Advantages of Internal Link Building
There are several major benefits to developing a sound internal linking strategy.
Enhances user experience
Internal links help your users (and Google) navigate through your website. They offer your audience the ability to dig deeper about a certain topic and inform themselves more about things they don’t know.
Take this as an example. You are a visitor reading about approaches to homeschooling on a childcare website. The topic of Montessori education comes up and you realize you don’t know much about the approach. However, an internal link on the webpage points you to an introductory article on Montessori.
Those connections help your audience continue to build your knowledge on interesting topics and make you appear as a resource about a certain topic.
Improve engagement metrics
Internal links help reduce your bounce rate and keep readers on your web page longer.
Increases conversion
For e-commerce brands, building an internal link structure helps users navigate through your website and drive them towards making a purchase. For example, putting an internal link that points toward gated content or a free trial within your blog posts can help your audience move from initial awareness to becoming leads and eventually customers.
To build this type of customer journey, you need to analyze what your buyer needs to make a purchase.
Improved relationships with authority players in your niche
When you build links within your industry niche, you’re not only optimizing your website and improving your ranking on SERPs, but you are also fostering a relationship with the authority players of your chosen niche. This may lead to collaboration and other opportunities.
Better Website Architecture
Most websites have very linear structures; various topics and subtopics are displayed on the homepage or under menus, and services live in a different section than the About Us or Contact Us contents.
But what if you need to link one topic to another page? That is not possible to achieve within a linear website architecture. This is where links come in. Having a linking structure in place will allow you to create a second layer of your site’s architecture. These cross-links between different pages improve your user experience and also create a comprehensive experience for readers.
Spread link equity to other pages
Every link carries equity that acts as a signal for search engines to determine the page ranking. This means linking to a high-traffic, high-converting page that carries good quality equity can help other internal pages rank in the SERP too.
However, there may be some cases where you need to add an internal link to a page but not necessarily give it any juice. In this situation, you can use a nofollow link.
Internal Link Building Strategies
Strategic internal linking is an incredibly powerful SEO technique, especially for content marketing. There are several strategies that you can employ to give your website top-notch SEO.
Create content
The first and most important step in any situation is creating lots of content. When your website only has three or four pieces, you won’t have as many opportunities to create internal links. The more content you have on your website, the better your internal linking strategy would be.
Link deep
While linking to a homepage is a common technique, it won’t really benefit you to boost that page compared to strengthening the overall SEO of your website. When you link, avoid linking to the top-level pages. Instead, link deep within the structure of the website to better spread equity.
Use natural-looking links
Internal link building is important to improve your website’s SEO. However, it should only be secondary to this key point — providing rich and valuable information to readers.
When you’re thinking of inserting an internal link, try to view it from the reader’s standpoint. Where should I place the link to make it look natural and ensure that it truly matches the context of the content you are linking to? When you take a user-focused approach to linking, your readers are more likely to click on that link and become more involved in your website experience.
Always use relevant links
As we’ve said, internal links should only link to content that is relevant to the source context. In other words, do not link to a piece that talks about “cat food options” if you’re writing about the nesting habits of rabbits.
However, if you have an article on cat food, it might make a great internal link for an article about cat nesting. This is because information about “cats” are going to be on both pages and may overlap, making it a relevant source to link to.
Don’t go overboard
While having plenty of links can benefit your SEO, going overboard can do the exact opposite. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines recommend limiting the number of links to a “reasonable number.” Having said that, no one really knows what Google means by “reasonable number.”
When it comes to link building, there really is no magic number. One site can flourish with 300 links while another can rank high on SERPs with just 100. So instead of focusing on the number, focus on the user. Add as many links as would be helpful for your readers.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between internal links and external links?
Internal links are hyperlinks that point to one page of your website from another. An external link directs users to another page found on a different website.
What is the difference between internal links and backlinks?
Whereas internal links point only to target pages within your website, backlinks (also called incoming links) are links from other websites that point to your site.
What is the difference between a dofollow and a nofollow link?
A dofollow link passes PageRank signals or link juice to a target page. In contrast, a nofollow link does not carry over any link equity.
How does link juice work?
Link equity, also known as link juice, is a search engine ranking factor that refers to the value and authority passed from one page to another through links. Google sees link equity as a “vote” toward your site.
