If you’re an SEO newbie, you’ve probably heard about the importance of link building. While it’s certainly important to push for external links to your site, you shouldn’t overlook the crucial role that internal linking plays in a successful SEO strategy. But all too often, SEO agencies fail to capitalise on the importance of internal linking, instead focusing on external outreach. Let’s take a look at why internal linking matters more than ever for SEO.
Why are internal links valuable?
From an SEO standpoint, there are lots of technical benefits to internal link building. Doing so ensures that your pages can be effectively crawled by the Googlebot, and it also helps search engines discover new content as and when you upload it. You can also effectively distribute PageRank across your site, which is an internal linking strategy that is often overlooked.
As you might already be aware, creating strong backlinks for your site is crucial, but internal links actually allow you to control the target location of the link itself, significantly improving the distribution of authority.
How to effectively build internal links
Now that we’ve underlined the importance of internal link building, it’s time to look at a strategy. Here are the simple steps you need to follow to ensure your link-building strategy is on point in 2022:
Link within the main content (where relevant)
From the perspective of PageRanks, internal linking within the primary content of a page is extremely valuable. This is because users are more likely to engage with the main content of a page, meaning they’re more likely to click on a link within the content itself. Therefore, Google is more likely to apply stronger weighting to a link that is situated in the main content of a page, as opposed to elsewhere.
Use site navigation links
It’s also helpful to add links to the header when it comes to passing on PageRank. Although linking within the main content is better for passing contextual authority, the fact that navigation links exist at the top of every page makes them valuable. Again, Google will likely prioritise these links.
Utilise breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are one of the most underutilised tactics at the disposal of SEOs, but they’re great for passing PageRank. They also make it easier for visitors to navigate around your site, as they effectively reflect the structure of your website. It makes sense for your site’s most important features to be internally linked via the breadcrumbs, so make this a priority for your site going forward.
Link to your most valuable content
As your most valuable content is likely to have commercial value, it can be difficult to draw external links to the page. So, as a result of this, it’s crucial to build internal links and draw external links from sites with strong authority, as doing so helps to bridge the gap. Ahref’s site explorer is a great tool for finding relative, authoritative pages for your site and is a good place to begin your research.
Consider the anchor text
The anchor text of any link plays a big role in your internal linking strategy. This is because Google reads the surrounding content of a link when ascertaining authority, so your anchor text should be relevant, succinct, and descriptive. It’s best to avoid generic calls to action like “click here” as it doesn’t provide Google with a great deal of context.
The bottom line
Internal linking is a crucial component of any SEO strategy in 2022, and it’s so important not to overlook it. If you’re looking for help with implementing a comprehensive SEO strategy for your business, reach out to Terrier and ensure that your business is discovered by as many people as possible online.