Table Of Contents
What is internal linking?
Internal linking is adding links to your own content, from one page to another. It helps your readers go from one post another related post that they might be interested in.
Internal links can be of different types. You can add links to your pages, posts, or even content on a different platform such as Instagram.
But make sure that these links should be related to the content and topic of the page. Only then it is useful to the readers.
If you have shared a post on Instagram which shares insights on the same topic, link it!
You’ll get more profile visits on your Instagram profile, plus they might even follow you. Win-win.
Also Read: How To Make Instagram Stories Like a Pro: In-depth GUIDE
How does internal linking work?
Google’s crawler discovers and scans the content of a site through links. If you have a page/post that ranks good in the search engines, add internal links.
This is called passing the link juice. The traction you are getting on one page will help your other pages rank higher as well.
When you add internal links, it helps Google find the most important pieces of content on your site. I use the Yoast SEO premium plugin and has a feature where it makes internal linking suggestions.
These suggestions are made while I’m drafting a post. The plugin analyzes the content and suggests related posts that you should add through the anchor texts.
Yoast SEO plugin has a free version as well. I strongly recommend giving it a try and upgrading to premium if you’re serious about nailing the SEO game.
Also Read: How to Setup Google Amp On A WordPress Site
Your homepage has the highest link value
Google divides the link value of a web page between all the links present in that page.
In most cases, the homepage has the maximum number of internal links and hence it has the highest link value.
This link value keeps on dividing from the homepage to the posts and then to other posts through internal links.
Therefore, your newest blog posts will get more link value if you link to them from the homepage, instead of only on the category page. And Google will find new posts quicker if they’re linked to from the homepage.
Let’s take a closer look at how does internal linking helps in SEO.
10 ways in which internal linking is good for SEO
1. Internal linking helps users navigate your site
You might have posted some useful, detailed posts a while back. The possibility of a reader reaching to that old post by pressing next page is very less.
When you add internal links to your old, relevant posts, it makes navigation much easier.
You can see I’ve done in that in this post itself. Include internal links through anchor texts around the topic of SEO & Blogging.
Also Read: John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Answers The Burning Questions About SEO
2. Spreads the link juice evenly
This is similar to the link value we talked about earlier in this post. Internal linking helps you spread your link juice to other pages of your site.
When you build backlinks to a particular page on your site, this target has links to other pages on your website, therefore spreading the link juice.
Naturally, you would want this juice to go to your other important pages/posts.
3. Increases page views
Well, this is a no-brainer. As the readers have the chance to read a related post that you have published previously, they spend more time on your site.
This increases the page views. To be truly efficient you should be able to make decisions about which content should be linked where.
Stuffing too many links can look spammy. Keep it clean and relevant to the topic. If you increase the readability of your content along with this, it’ll be like a cherry on the cake.
4. Decreases bounce rate
As you have already seen in the previous point, readers spend more time on your site.
This directly affects your bounce rate. Internal links help decrease the bounce rate which in turn helps you in ranking higher.
This is because the reader is navigating from page to another on your site itself.
You can track your bounce rate using Google Analytics. Simply go to Behaviour> Site Content> All pages.
5. Google bots can index more easily
Google bots are designed to recreate a user’s thinking process. They visit your website and follow all the links and pages that are easily indexed.
If you have built a strong internal architecture will help bots find deeper pages that are not always visited. These links can give a boost to other pages and help you rank higher overall.
6. Brings your old pages back to life
You are continuously posting new content on your site. The old pages can get buried under the stack of new pages.
To take these pages out from the hiding, add links to them in your latest posts. This will tell Google that you have some old content that is still relevant. It can re-rank them.
Navigating users to a more accurate and relevant page within your domain will increase your overall page view at the domain level. A higher page view is benefiting your website’s SEO.
7. Helps Google Crawl Your Site
Search engines use crawlers to travel through your site and gather information to help them understand your content and pages.
Internal links help these crawlers recognize which pages are most important. They grab search engine bots by the hand and guide them down the path to find and index these pages.
Internal linking influences a better crawling and indexing experience for Google.
8. Rank for targeted keywords
Building an internal linking structure that revolves around your targeted keyword helps you in gaining higher rankings in them.
If you are wondering how to do keyword research for SEO, I’ll make a quick suggestion to go for medium and long-tailed keywords. Here’s why.
SEMrush is a great tool, that I myself use for keyword research and domain analytics. The keyword difficulty tool of SEMrush helps you filter out the keywords which are easier to rank on.
9. Increases the number of long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are keyword phrases that have more than 3 words. If “SEO” is a keyword, “SEO for website” is a long-trail keyword.
Long-tail keywords are deemed to have a much higher conversion rate than generic keywords.
Their level of competition is low which makes it easier to rank in them.
Most SEO experts agree that internal linking is the central element that will allow you to position yourself on long-tail keywords if your link anchors are sufficiently diversified.
10. Improves your click-through rate
The click-through rate (CTR) is the ratio between the number of clicks on a search result and the number of times that this result is displayed.
The larger the organic CTR, the greater the match between what the internet user is looking for and what the search engine offers.
If your page as internal links, people are more likely to click them and this would increase the CTR.
