The importance of internal linking
It’s easy to think of links as simply a way to move from one page to another. While at their most basic level, that’s exactly what they do. Internal links also play a very important role in your site User Experience (UX) and your SEO ranking.
Internal links can be used to create a hierarchy, to create user journeys through your website and to aid bots crawling your site for SEO purposes.
What are internal links?
Let’s start with the basics. There are two types of links that you need to be aware of.
External links
These link to outside of your website. It might be referencing a source, linking to a tool or news article. External links are important to your website as they show that you’re connected to other sites and you can help boost each other’s sites, a practice known as backlinks - but that’s a topic for another day.
Internal links
Internal links refer to how the pages of your site are connected together. Your navigation bar is the first place you might think of when it comes to internal links, but, in an ideal world, your pages should all refer your reader to each other and that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
Why do they matter?
Internal links are essential to your website, not only for Google but also to your UX. It’s something that you have complete control over, which for an SEO factor is rare! That’s why you need to understand why internal links matter and, most importantly, how to use them.
SEO
If you want any hope of your site ranking then you need to make sure it’s crawable to Google. Google uses something called a bot to review your site and rank it accordingly.
The bot first accesses your homepage and then follows internal and external links to work out the relationships between pages, and assess the content on every page. If the bot lands on your homepage but then can’t find any links to follow, that’s the end of your crawl session.
Google needs the contextual links to understand what your site is about and whether it’s helpful. A lack of internal links makes that nigh on impossible so your ranking will be negatively impacted.
UX
It’s not only Google who relies on internal links. Any person who lands on your site needs guiding from page to page. Every page should play a part in their user journey which includes telling them what to do next. On some pages that might be completing a form or getting in touch, but other pages will rely on internal links to guide them to another page.
This might be signposting them to complementary topics, this is often the way internal links are used in blog posts. But it could also be giving them extra information or what the next step is in the case of service or about pages.
Without internal links you’ve essentially created a collection of isolated landing pages. The longer someone stays on your site the lower the bounce rate and the higher the dwell time. Both of these are factors which could impact your SEO.
How do you get started?
When you’ve already created a site it can be daunting to think about adding in internal links, especially if you’ve got an extensive blog library!
The best thing to do is to think of two stages. The first is your existing content and the second is establishing a way of working for the future.
Auditing your site
Start by auditing your site, look at how many internal links there are per page, and where those links go to.
If you don’t already have one, create a sitemap to map out every page, where they link to and what the end CTA is. This will make it easier in the future if you need to do any updates.
As a general rule of thumb you should aim for 3 internal links per page, but more for your main pages.
Once you’ve audited your site you can add in new links you want to create and then go through your site and methodically add these in. This is a process that will take time to do properly, but it will make a difference in the long run.
Creating an internal link strategy
Long-term you need an internal link strategy. This will govern how you use links going forward, which will make content creation and website maintenance far easier. It’s the sort of task your future self will thank you for.
Site map
As above the first place to start is a site map. This can help you to identify your key pages and most important content. If you’re a visual person, think of your site as a pyramid with your homepage at the top, pillar pages underneath and then your wider content below. You want to make sure you’re linking from top to bottom to reinforce your key pages.
Planning
Before you start writing a new page or blog, map out which pages you’re going to link to. This might be in your CTA but you can also add what’s called contextual links. Think of these as links to aid the reader’s understanding. So if I’m talking about SEO, I might add a contextual link to one of my SEO blogs. It doesn’t need an introduction, or any fuss - just highlight and link the relevant words.
Link old content to new
One pitfall people fall into, is they link new content to old, but then forget to link old content to new. If there are two points you take away from this blog, then let it be this - create and maintain a sitemap and diarise an annual link review.
Now I know it’s not the most exciting thing. But especially when you blog regularly you need to make sure your older content is linking to your newer posts. It might be that you’ve written a more relevant blog that can replace an older link, or you can add an extra internal link in.
We need to make sure all of our content works together seamlessly, rather than all moving in the same direction.
A link audit will also help you identify if any links have changed or need updating.
It’s not the sexiest of topics, and it’s definitely not the most interesting BUT internal links are so essential when it comes to blogs and your SEO. They’re also one of the most underutilised tools at our fingertips.
No more. You’ve got a starting point, and once you get going and embed it into your working practices you’ll soon find yourself doing it as standard. That’s the point we want to get to, and it is possible.
Need help creating a content strategy that includes internal links? Look no further. Just get in touch and we can talk about how to improve your content creation to boost your SEO.
