Why internal linking is important for SEO

Everyone who has just glanced at SEO knows that links from other website are hugely important for SEO. But many people underestimate the power of internal links, the links between your different pages on your website. Not us. In this article we will show you why internal links are important and how you can go about improving your internal linking structure.

Why internal links are important

Links between pages let Google understand how important pages are, how relevant they are and what relationship they have to each other. Google works by crawling the links on your site one by one to build a bigger picture of how all of the pages on your site are connected. The more links you have between relate pages, the easier it is for Google to crawl and the better it can see how everything is related.

Previously we have discussed the importance of creating thematic content. But it is also important to show Google that your content is related. One way to do this is by internally linking relevant page so that Google can easily see how much related content you have on a given topic. As such, internally linking all of your thematic content can help to boost your rankings even further.

Even better, internal linking helps to spread the link juice that each page receives. Let’s say that your homepage gets a link from a huge authority. If you have lots of links from your homepage to other areas of your site, that link juice can be shared via those internal links, boosting the authority of all of the connecting pages.

How you can improve your internal linking strategy today

Now you know why it is so important to have lots of internal links, let’s look at how we can improve your strategy today.

Start by linking to cornerstone content

If you have core pieces of content such as definitive guides that you want to rank for all related keywords, it is important to send lots if internal links to that piece. If you have supporting articles, that discuss other keywords related to that topic, make sure you link back to your cornerstone content.

Next link to your category pages

If you run a blog, the chances are you have category pages or tags. These can be a great way for Google to quickly find all related content on a theme so make sure that you are linking back to these pages where possible. The sidebar is a great way to do this on every blog post.

Finally link to other related posts

It’s not just cornerstone content that you should link to. You should also link between all of the related posts on your site, regardless of how in-depth they are. If they are relevant, link to them in your new blog post.

Finally, optimize your anchor text

When you internally link, you have control over what the anchor text is. This doesn’t happen in offsite link building so make the most of this opportunity and optimize your anchor text with keywords.

Internal linking is easy but you need a content strategy in place to make it work. Arrange a free consultation with one of our experts to find out how we can help.