Link-building is not just about getting links back to your site, it’s also about to connecting the pages of your website with each other.
Internal links are a great help for site visitors and search engines like them because they make the navigation easier. This means that internal links are vital to website design, user experience and good search results in Google.
With that in mind. lets look at some of the most practical and important internal link building strategies for any website.
How to Create Powerful Internal Links
If you want to land on the first page of Google, internal links will be an important factor in your on-page search engine optimization plan.
Internal links carry link juice and authority to other pages on your site and are just as important as externally produced backlinks.
Here are five things you need to do to optimize your internal links.
1. Choose the page for which you are wanting to build authority. Not all pages are created equal. Within any group of related topics, you will have one page that is more important than the others.
It could be a landing page or sales page. We will call this page the target page. It’s the page you want to rank for most in Google.
2. Create a new article or post. We will call this your support page. This will be on a subordinate or horizontal subject.
For example, if your target page is on the subject of, “how to build backlinks” for social sites, you don’t want your support page to be on the more broad subject of, “link strategies” which would be vertically above.
The concept involved is known as chunking. Take a look at the infographic below for an example of how chunking works.
The above image shows the hierarchy of a cluster of topics that are all related. If your target or sales page was torches, then a supporting article might be about camping or batteries, or perhaps halogen globes.
It would not be an article about lighting, given your overall website navigation and goals.
These, “lesser” pages would point either up or across in a one way direction, giving more authority to the more important pages in a clearly defined way.
3. Create your Internal link opportunity. In preparing your support article, make sure you have naturally occurring opportunities for linking to your target page.
If you were writing about batteries the link opportunity to your target page will occur somewhere in the article – preferably in the top fold as this carries more weight in search engine ranking.
As Google moves down your page it will assign decreasing importance to each new linking pointing out.
In the example above, the second paragraph of your support article about batteries might begin to talk about the best batteries for a certain kind of torch. This is where your link text will go.
4. Vary internal link anchor text. The link anchor text is the text that you will hyperlink to the target page. The text of this link is important as it tells Google and other search engines what to expect when a user clicks on the link.
Much has been written of late about the importance of link text variation. The thing to remember is to keep it natural and don’t always use the same keywords.
So, for example, your article about,
“The Best Long Life Batteries for Campers”, might state that, “The F4E50 battery is the preferred battery for those using the AE500 Multi-function Energizer Trekker Torch.”
And there’s your link opportunity right there.
Alternatively, it might read that,
“The F4E50 battery is suitable for a range of torches suitable for fishing and boating.“
In this instance, three ideas are linked; batteries, torches and fishing.
What we have done is created some natural associations and varied the link text.
Since you might have a number of links pointing to your target page from various sources, we want to avoid using the same keywords all the time.
Google may consider this an attempt to “game” the system and reduce the search engine ranking in its results. They may even penalize you.
5. Duplicate this process with other pages. It’s a good idea to go back through older articles and look for appropriate link opportunities for your target page.
You will also be creating articles in the future that lend themselves to links in more than one direction, but try not to overload and dilute the links by having more than two or three on each page.
And never dilute your target pages by having links running in infinite circles…
Knowing how to build backlinks internally is going to increase your page authority over time and make it a rock solid player in Google search results.
Internal linking strengthens the overall search-optimized value of a website. Inner linking does so by providing clear paths for spiders, prolonged sessions for users, and a tight-knit network of pages and posts.
See a subject we haven’t covered? Contact Us and let us know what you would like us to write about.
Hey, maybe you could write it for us!
SixtyMarketing says
November 19, 2014 at 11:20 pmHi David, the biggest downfall people have with internal linking is unnatural, repetitive anchor text. This is mainly an exact match keyword they want to rank for. As you said, internal linking is just as important as inbound links. I try and spend an hour a week going through old blog posts and linking them to newer posts. The main thing is not to focus on exact match anchor text but increasing the readers experience through your website.
Thanks David. Kev Massey, SixtyMarketing
David Trounce says
November 19, 2014 at 11:32 pmThanks for the feedback Kev. I agree with your priorities. Solid internal linking over time can build a very strong site.
Tristan says
May 18, 2015 at 7:41 pmHi David,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. Internal links are one factor that many webmasters have overlooked when trying to optimize their websites. I got your post bookmarked, can be used as reference. I’m going to double check my website. Thanks again! You got also a tweet from me!
David Trounce says
May 20, 2015 at 8:35 amThanks Tristan. Be sure to check your grammar before posting.
LED7 says
June 17, 2015 at 2:12 amVery cool advices, i will try them,
Thanks for sharing with us!!!
David Trounce says
June 19, 2015 at 6:36 amHi Led. Glad you found these link building techniques helpful.
Abid Anwar says
February 27, 2016 at 6:27 pmvery special article for me, i will try it on my bog, Thanks for sharing with us.
satya says
March 13, 2016 at 1:33 pmHi David.nice to see you.
thank for great article.I will use your internal link guide as reference for my new site.
karamath says
August 21, 2016 at 11:29 amHai,
Thanks for this lovely article i will share it for sure
Thanks once again.
janny says
October 10, 2016 at 5:03 pmThank for great article.I usually dofollow and internal links building…
Muhammad Usman says
December 23, 2016 at 6:10 pmIt is very good article. It is very important article for link build.
Thanks for sharing this article I am applying what I get here on my site, thank you again.
JRN Treks says
May 12, 2017 at 1:15 amThis is a great article to learn how to get the good backlink.
Thank you very much for sharing this.