The importance of internal linking for SEO
Links play a major role in SEO for your blog, and with a good linking strategy, you can significantly improve your blog's search visibility and ranking.
Internal links make it easy for your visitors to navigate through your blog, and they provide a map to search for understanding the structure of your blog. Incoming links will increase your domain authority and improve your search ranking.
In this article, I will explain how to build a good linking strategy to increase the visibility of your blog (and guide more people to your sales page)
1. Types of links
Before going a bit deeper into the importance of linking, it is important that you understand the different types of links.
Internal links
These point to other pages on the same website. They help users navigate your site and provide a clear site architecture.
Internal links will help you create content clusters by linking related content together.
Internal links will help you create content clusters by linking related content together.
External links
External links (or outbound links) are links that point to pages on other websites. These are mostly used to provide additional information to your readers by directing them to related and more detailed content on another site.
Backlinks
Also known as inbound links, these are links from other websites to your blog. Inbound links from high-authority domains will increase your blog's authority and relevance.
This blog post will only focus on internal links; another article about link building (trying to get inbound links to your blog) will be published soon.
2. The importance of internal links for SEO
Improved user experience
A well-structured internal linking strategy makes it easier for users to navigate through different pages of your blog. A good user experience will increase their engagement, time spent on your site and will reduce bounce rates. And these are some of the ranking factors for Google.
Improved crawl efficiency
Internal links will help crawlers and search bots other pages on your blog. So it's easier for search engines to understand the structure of your blog and index it.
Link value (link juice)
Depending on your domain authority, Google divides a link value between all links on a web page. The divided link value will passed to the linked page.
A very simplified example: Google gives page A a value of 10. Page A links to page B and page C. Now, these pages each get an additional link value of 5. Combined with the original 10, this makes it 15. This is a bit how link juice works. And this is why pillar posts are so powerful: These collect all this link value, and Google sees that this pillar page has a high value, so it should be important.
A very simplified example: Google gives page A a value of 10. Page A links to page B and page C. Now, these pages each get an additional link value of 5. Combined with the original 10, this makes it 15. This is a bit how link juice works. And this is why pillar posts are so powerful: These collect all this link value, and Google sees that this pillar page has a high value, so it should be important.
3. Create your linking strategy
It can take some time to get to a good-working linking strategy, but it will be worth it in the end: your traffic will get a boost.
Setting up an effective linking strategy requires good planning. Here are some things to keep in mind when you design your linking strategy:
Setting up an effective linking strategy requires good planning. Here are some things to keep in mind when you design your linking strategy:
1. Plan your site structure
The structure of your site determines your linking strategy.
Most people use a hierarchical (or pyramid) structure with at the top of the pyramid your homepage (or index page). From this page, you link down to the different categories of your blog (on this blog, these are: blogging, Etsy and productivity) from which you link further down to individual posts and pages.
Most people use a hierarchical (or pyramid) structure with at the top of the pyramid your homepage (or index page). From this page, you link down to the different categories of your blog (on this blog, these are: blogging, Etsy and productivity) from which you link further down to individual posts and pages.
2. Decide what your pillar posts are
You need to have some pillar posts; these are the cornerstones of your blog. The content pillars are the pages that will get you traffic and give your blog authority.
From this post, you link to all relevant pages, and this page gets a link back from each. This way, the link value will increase a lot, which will inform Google that this is your most important content.
Also, make sure all relevant posts are interlinked.
From this post, you link to all relevant pages, and this page gets a link back from each. This way, the link value will increase a lot, which will inform Google that this is your most important content.
Also, make sure all relevant posts are interlinked.
3. Add links to popular and newest posts
Depending on how your blog is organized, a good idea is inserting a 'similar posts', 'popular posts', or 'latest posts' section into your blog.
This can be done in a sidebar or the right column, as many sites do. If you are using WordPress, many widgets are doing that for you.
This is good for SEO reasons (more internal links) and makes it easier for your visitors to navigate around and get (links to) related content in a single view.
This can be done in a sidebar or the right column, as many sites do. If you are using WordPress, many widgets are doing that for you.
This is good for SEO reasons (more internal links) and makes it easier for your visitors to navigate around and get (links to) related content in a single view.
4. Avoid over-linking
Avoid adding too many links in a single post, as this can overwhelm readers. Just make sure the links are relevant and help your content.
As seen above, every page has a link value, and too many outgoing links will decrease the link value received from this page.
As seen above, every page has a link value, and too many outgoing links will decrease the link value received from this page.
5. Regularly check your links
Regularly check your links to ensure they are still functioning correctly. A broken link (or a 404 page) is not a nice user experience.
You can use many (free) online tools to check broken links: Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, ...
As a rule of thumb, I try to include four internal links in every blog post: two to relevant pages, one back to the pillar post, and the last one to my sales page.
You can use many (free) online tools to check broken links: Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, ...
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