The term “internal linking” might be new to you. If so, here is some helpful info:

• Link: A link – or a hyperlink – is text that, if clicked upon, electronically takes you from one location on the Web to another location.
• Inbound link: An inbound link is hyperlinked text that starts on a web site other than your own and points to a spot on your web site.
• Internal link: An internal link is hyperlinked text that links from one location on your web site to another location, also on your web site.

The focus of this blog post is on creating internal linking that is effective and strengthens your site. (Here is information about inbound link building techniques, plus an e-book review that focuses on effective inbound link building strategies.)

You might be wondering why creating hyperlinks —and optimizing them with keyphrases – is so important for the success of your web site.

Creating hyperlinks that provide clear direction are important for three reasons:

• These hyperlinks help human site visitors navigate the site and find what they need, whether it’s information or a product or a service.
• When you provide logical site navigation cues with clear internal linking, this makes it easier for site visitors to explore your site for a longer amount of time; as you educate them with your helpful material, it increases the likelihood that they’ll begin to browse your products and services – and potentially end up buying them.
• Optimized hyperlinks offer thematic cues for the search engine spiders. Once the spiders understand the theme of a page, they can index the URL – and then return it in response to a relevant query. In other words, if a URL is not indexed by the search engine spiders, it cannot appear in the search engine results pages.

To quote Google on the subject of creating internal links for the search engine spiders: “Writing descriptive anchor text, the clickable words in a link, is a useful signal to help search engines and users alike to better understand your content. The more Google knows about your site—through your content, page titles, anchor text, etc.—the more relevant results we can return for users (and your potential search visitors).”

There are six main strategies for effectively creating internal links for your site.

1. Add relevant keyphrases to the site’s navigational links.

2. Add relevant keyphrases to internal links found within the body of the text.

3. Look for additional opportunities where you can naturally add optimized internal links within the body text.

4. Make sure that, when creating hyperlinks, the links point to the most logical, relevant and useful pages on your site.

5. Vary your anchor text. For example, if pages B, C and D each point to page A via a hyperlink, make sure that the text on page B differs from what is on page C – and make sure that page D text has a different twist, as well.

6. When creating hyperlinks within your site, make sure that they are logical from the viewpoint of a site visitor who has never been to your site before.

When choosing optimized anchor text (the keyphrases that will be used in hyperlinked text), you want to ensure that the phrases are:

• Searched upon
• Relevant to your web site
• Achievable, without too many other web pages using that keyphrase (to help with this point, choose a phrase rather than a single word in your internal links)

Here are specific internal link building strategies to boost the strength of your site:

1. Make sure that your links are text, rather than being image-based. Search engine spiders cannot read images.

2. When you add a new page to your web site, link to that URL from other pages on your site that have already been indexed. That way, when the spiders crawl your site the next time, there will be multiple ways for them to find and index the new page.

3. Pay close attention whenever it’s difficult to think of a logical way to link to a particular page on your site. It’s very possible that this is pointing out a flaw in the logic of your site architecture; fixing that flaw may help both human visitors and search engine spiders to more easily navigate your site – and this could lead to more conversions and sales from prospects visiting your site, as well as better rankings in the search engine results pages.

Creating internal links also strengthens your site by showing Google the importance of well-linked pages.

Google has two indices it pulls results from: its main index and its supplemental, or secondary, index. Internal linking is a very important factor in whether your site’s pages end up in the main or supplemental index. Because Google looks to the main index first for results, you want as many pages as possible to be in the main index – and effective internal link building techniques can help make that happen.

Finally, here are a few internal link building strategies to avoid:

1. Do not create URLs that consist solely of lists of internal links. Instead, find ways to naturally build in internal linking on pages of at least 150 words of original text – and, preferably, with 250 to 350 words.

2. When choosing which page to link to on your site, do not choose the same page or couple of pages too many times; spread out the internal linking to a larger part of your site.

3. Do not conduct keyphrase research one time and then assume that you’ve captured all of the best opportunities during that research; double-check your keyphrase research results at least once a year and perhaps twice a year if your company is in a rapidly-changing industry. Then, update your internal link building strategies based on what your new keyphrase research indicates.

If you need help crafting your company’s internal link building strategies, contact The Search Guru today.