Some websites are made for external linking. They’re great for attracting social media chat and social media love. And they rise up nicely in the search engines on account of all of this activity. How about some examples?
- Sports websites
- Gossipy oriented websites
- Glossy auto websites
So on…
Other websites, however, fall by the way side. Irrespective the amount of effort you put into making the subject ‘glossy’, achieving social media oomph and external links through other sources simply doesn’t happen automatically. Examples?
- Law
- Home refurbishment
- Services in general
So how does your site ever get any search engine love if you can’t get any external links?
Sure, you can work them yourself. Spend hours every day gently massaging those external links towards your site.
Or, you could hire some chap in India and trust him with the crafting of links.
Personally, I wouldn’t do the latter. And, personally, I wouldn’t do the former – don’t have the time.
Instead, you can rely heavily on generating your own internal site links.
How do you go about it to the best effect?
Let’s check some ideas out now.
Internal Linking
What is internal linking?
Simply put, it’s where you link one of your site’s webpages to another one.
If you use WordPress.org as your CMS (content management system), as most online marketers do these days, it’s just so easy that it will not take any further explanation than that.
Why do they matter?
A number of reasons:
Authority: or flow of authority, if you will. Linking many pages to a single page on your site will send authority to that one webpage. It’s a sign of popularity. In other words, it tells the search engines that that one page must be good.
Reduction of bounce rate: bounce rate is when someone finds your site, doesn’t like what they see, and ‘bounces’ right back off again to go look at something else instead. This is a BAD thing! Reduce the bounce rate by adding more internal links to your site.
Sales funnel: okay, so you’re intent on selling a product or a service from your site. So, in which case, structure your website in a manner that means a lot of people who arrive on your site are ‘driven’ to your sales page/s. You make more money this way.
How do you Craft the best Internal Link?
- Exact Match anchor text
Unlike external web links, internal web links can all be exact match. Exact match meaning that you can use the same keyword phrase over and over again, and that keyword phrase can be the perfect match to the keyword you wish to rank for in the search engines.
- Use only one link per webpage to the same page
Are you with me on this one? Google only count that first link from a single page to another page. Thus, you should only link one time from one webpage to another webpage.
- The homepage
On by far the majority of websites, the homepage is the authority page. That said, be very selective how you link out from your webpage to other pages on your site. Link only to your most important pages.
- Using silos
When I first heard this term I thought it was referring to some construction on a farm. Latterly, I figured that this was not quite true when in relation to SEO. Yup, it took me a while to get it.
Silos in terms of the online world of silos, mean that a website is structured whereby the pages that possess related content link together in a hierarchical fashion. Hierarchical being the most important page in the structure at the top, and the least important at the bottom.
- Do Follow
External web links should consist of no-follow and do-follow links, just to keep things nicely random to impress the search engines – or, rather, to impress Google search engine. However, internal links do not follow the same policy as this. Instead, always make your internal links as do-follow (or dofollow).
- Always open links in new windows
This one is very annoying. Say your reading a webpage and the content is really, really interesting. You see a web link and you click it because it’s wholly relevant to the content you’re enjoying. But what? The content you’ve just been reading vanishes to be replaced by the fresh content that you’ve just clicked the link to.
So it’s your turn. Don’t ever do that. It simply provides a very poor user experience. Instead, always, always ensure that you make your links open in a new window. That way, the guy/ girl who’s reading your stuff will easily be able to return to the previous page on your site rather than jumping away to someone else’s site because they are pissed.
