Many SEOs are familiar with Internal linking, but few are milking its full value to give benefit to consumers. Internal links are those links which connect one webpage to another within the same website. Internal linking however is not just about having a list of links to related content in the page. Rather, they should be added in the body of the content where it makes sense to have them.
This sounds obvious, but it really isn’t. Many SEOs remember to link to old related content when sharing new content, but how can man go back to those old pieces to link to new related content? As you build up your repertoire on any subject, you’re increasing your thought leadership in that subject, especially for search engines, as well as your audience.
Unfortunately, by neglecting to relate content to each other, you’re not ranking as well as you probably would have, had you implemented a strong internal link network. Internal links direct the flow of your readers to your best pieces, increasing session durations and providing true value to users. In addition, your internal link network, signals search engines pages in your site that you consider to be most important.
Site architecture and internal linking
Internal linking must never be considered in a vacuum. In your internal linking strategy, you must ensure that you maintain a logical site architectural flow. In terms of internal linking, it is better to build content silos around separate topics, rather than having important pages in one part and then trying to build content from the blog in a different part of the site.
Consider planning your site architecture synch where topics are grouped together in order to have a snug group of related content grouped together. Every SEO expert’s aspiration is to have their site establish thought leadership and authority in their field. Internal links are advantageous since you don’t have to talk to anyone else and convince them that you have link-worthy content, and they are quite effective in communicating thought leadership and relevance.
Internal linking externally
Did you know that you can create internal links from other sources? You probably know about being active in different forums, but what you don’t know is that you can use your networks in different forums to create links back to your content, which adds back up to building your linking strategy and makes your site stronger in the eyes of search engines.
Advance your connections, followers, lists, subscriptions, shares, groups and other social and non-social networks, and encourage sharing in these places by offering high quality content.