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Internal Linking Structure
Posted on 13. Nov, 2008 by Rachel Perry in Search Engine Optimization
A good philosophy to run a site by is ‘If you want to be ranked by Google make it easy for Google to know who you are and what you are about’. One of the major ways in SEO to do this is to optimize the links within your own personal site. There are 3 major ways to accomplish this and they all hinge on the idea of clusterizing your keywords, so be sure that you have your words into clusters before diving too deep into this strategy.
Internal Linking Strategy #1: Content Linking
If you own a blog, inter-linking within your posts is an excellent idea. Every post you write watch for the keywords you are focusing on. If you use a keyword in your post link that word to the landing page URL you are trying to rank for that phrase. Blogging with your keywords in mind will increase the power and effectiveness of your blog and the generation of new relevant links will increase your power within your given niche.
Also outside of blogging it is beneficial to strive for that same form of linking with in the general content of your site. Any article or content page that you create can link phrases within the text to other landing pages that are focused around ranking for those phrases. These links help tie all your content together, allowing Google to understand better what your site or blog is all about and more specefically, what each page/URL is about.
Internal Linking Strategy #2: Navigation Bar Links
On the navigation bar of your site is a great place to add optimized links. For instance one of our clients operates an ecommerce site that sells tool parts. Their key phrases are phrases such as ‘DeWalt Parts‘, ‘Makita Parts‘ and ‘Bosch Parts‘ (I just used method 1 for external links to my clients site, but you get the idea). Orginally their navigation bar was a series of image links of the tool brand logos. Although this enhanced the look of their site to the user it decreased its effectiveness in Google. Image links are good for the use-ability of a site. Just make sure you include text links beneath the image so that Google can read what your links are about. And don’t forget to "nofollow" those image links.
Internal Linking Strategy #3: Footer Links
On every site you have the ability to add links to the bottom. These links will show up on every page in your site and are known as footer links.
When you have your clusters formed, choose the main phrase from all of your main category pages to include in your footer links. Here is a good example that we added for one of our clients:
Creating internal links within your blog and site will increase your site’s search engine exposure. Starting with these basic tactics is a great way to optimize your site. If you have any questions as to how or what internal linking is just add a comment below this post. Also if you have any other methods that have worked for you let us know, we would love to hear what has been successful for you.
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