Internal linking is an awesome way to boost your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). Yourwebsite will be more user-friendly, and you’ll do better on Google’s rankings. Basically, an internal link is a link that points to a page that is part of your domain. As anyone who specializes in SEO services will tell you, there are numerous advantages to using internal linking, such as easier indexing page definition. However, that is not what we’ll look at today. Today, we focus on tips for using internal linking effectively to help you boost your website’s SEO.
Don’t Overdo It with Keyword Anchor Texts
It can be very tempting to have keyword anchor texts for every internal link you create. However, it shouldn’t be done in such a way that ends up with multiple exaggerations. Maintain a healthy mixture of nonkeyword anchors as well as keyword anchors.
Your Focus Should Be on Users and Not Search Engines
You’ve probably already heard of this a million times before. However, it simply cannot be overstated. You should always think of the user first when you’re dealing with Google. Of course, no one is saying that you shouldn’t try to make the search engines happy as well. However, always think carefully about internal links when you create them. Make sure they are useful to your site visitors first, then find a way to fashion them in a search engine friendly manner.
How Many Links are Enough?
This is a question that many people have. The truth is that nobody knows just how many links per page are enough. On one extreme, we have pages that don’t contain a single link per page and, on the other, we have sites like Wikipedia, which generously sprinkle internal links in their pages.
A good rule of thumb is to keep them to about five links per page. However, you can increase them for longer posts, such as those of more than 1,000 words. Just try to avoid exaggerating things.
Your Links Should Be in the Main Content
The best way to use internal links is in the main content of the page. This is any content contained within the HTML tag. Links that are found in sidebars and breadcrumbs, or included as related articles, are typically not taken as seriously and don’t conform to internal linking best practices.
Cloud Tags and Internal Links Are Not the Same
Should you generally avoid cloud tags? Google themselves discourage their use so you would be wise to heed their recommendation. They generally don’t make for good internal links and you should take some time to remove them from your website if they exist.
Link Deeply
Naturally, you’ll have a lot more links pointing to the most important pages than the rest. However, that does not mean you should neglect the other pages on your website. The more pages being pointed to by your internal links, the better. This makes for good indexing.
Make Your Links Relevant
Don’t just sprinkle them everywhere because you think you’re doing your SEO a favor. Make sure you only put internal links on a page if the text proves to be a good candidate for linking. No linking is better than bad linking.
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Founder Dinis Guarda
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