Internal linking is an essential but often overlooked aspect of SEO, or search engine optimization. That’s not to say that digital marketers or website administrators ignore internal linking. Internal links are certainly utilized for website navigation and to enhance the overall user experience, but their effect on SEO may be lost on some. Before diving into the nuts and bolts of why internal linking is critical to your SEO strategy, let’s first review what internal links are and how your website is likely already using them.
First, What Is Internal Linking?
An internal link is any link from one page of a website or domain to another page on the same website. Clear examples of internal linking on just about any website include the navigation, footer or body, sending visitors to another page within the same site. While the most apparent internal linking may be in the website’s menu or navigation, links within the body are of great importance. Internal links within the content of a webpage are often called contextual links because the text around them adds context to the link. Site visitors aren’t the only ones using your internal links. Search engines utilize internal links to establish how a page should rank on a given search results page or SRP. Google and other search engines also determine the link value based on the additional information, or context, around the link. In short, all types of internal links are vital for website visitors, including search engine crawlers. Still, contextual links can outweigh navigation, footer or button links in importance due to the added information provided by the link’s surrounding text.
What’s the Difference Between an Internal & External Link?
If internal links send visitors and search engines to other pages within the same website, then you may have guessed that external links send traffic offsite to other domains. External links from your website to another can certainly be of help to visitors who are looking for certain information, services or products that you don’t offer. Even so, most websites use external links sparingly since you are effectively sending traffic away from your domain. However, external links that send traffic to your website are of great value, just like internal links. One of the top ways that search engines determine link value is whether a link is from another website with high domain authority, meaning a site that is a trusted source of information.
How Does Internal Linking Affect SEO?
We know that internal links are helpful for user experience and may improve engagement, but they are also critical for SEO. Internal linking helps Google understand your website and, therefore, rank it better in search results. Search engines utilize internal links to establish an information hierarchy for a website. A homepage is seen as an authoritative page and often receives plenty of links from external sources. However, it’s the internal links from your homepage that tell Google what other pages are most important or related to what’s found on the homepage. Linking from the homepage to another page which then links to a deeper interior page helps build a series of parent pages and child pages that interconnect to form link hierarchies. These hierarchies help search engines learn how pages and links relate to one another. To set up an effective internal linking strategy that enhances SEO, you’ll want to:
- Design your ideal site structure
- Determine your most important content
- Add contextual links within page content
- Build links across your website to help form link hierarchies
At FZA Digital, we’ll ensure that your site’s internal linking is optimized and efficient for the highest conversions around!
