Best Practices For Internal Linking On Your Blog

No matter what your website is about, you need internal links. Why? Internal links are a great way to spread traffic, driving people to more pages of your site, for a start. Links also help readers find what they need, keep them engaged and, by extension, lower your bounce rate. Even better, internal links can boost your overall SEO — as they show search engines how your pages relate to one another and distribute page authority across your site.

So, whether your ultimate goal is more page views for more advertising dollars or better leads to convert into customers, internal links are key. How should you go about increasing them? What are the best practices for internal linking on your blog? Here is a look at what you need to know.

1. Build a lot of content. Step one to building good internal links is creating a lot of quality content. More pages mean more opportunities to link — leading to a better internal linking strategy for your site.
2. Use descriptive anchor text in links. Make sure that all your internal links use anchor text instead of images (or images of text) or generic text, for that matter. Rather than using a phrase such as “learn more here,” try telling visitors the context of the link, using relevant keywords. At the same time, the words you use as anchor text should feel natural; don’t try to force anything.
3. Prioritize the reader experience. Many website best practices go back to a foundational concept: Help the reader. So, in terms of link strategy, ask yourself: What links will be legitimately useful to readers? How can you point them to related resources that will match the context of a page? This helps you know how and where to link.
4. Link less to the homepage and more to other pages. If you’re like most bloggers, you’re already linking to your homepage throughout your site. This means you don’t need more link juice going to that page; it’s got the strongest authority already. Rather, spread the page authority among your site by pointing to other, lesser-found pages. If you already have an SEO campaign underway, you’ll want to link most often to the site pages that are SEO targets. This helps increase their authority, which is one factor in higher search rankings.
5. Find related pages through Google search. Sometimes you’ll remember old posts that are relevant to a new one you’re writing, and it’ll be easy to incorporate them into your content. Other times, you’ll need to search. Here’s an easy way to do it: Go to Google and search “site:yourURL.com” followed by your topic. The results will show you related posts you’ve written, which may be a natural fit for internal links.
6. Aim for about 3-5 internal links per post (per 500-600 words). Filling your posts with dozens of internal links is not a faster path to high SEO rankings. Remember, you’re trying to add value to your readers’ lives. Depending on the type of post (interview, roundup, how-to, etc.), it may make sense to add more or fewer links. In general, though, it’s a good idea to shoot for two to three internal links at minimum. This does not include the homepage or other high-ranking pages such as your “About” page or “Contact” page. Instead, try to link deeper into your archives, to posts that see less traffic day to day.
7. Use the smallest number of links possible between your homepage and any other page. Think of links like degrees of separation. To make content more findable, you want to minimize the degrees of separation between your homepage and other pages on your site. This is where categories and tags can be so useful. Ideally, you arrange your content like a pyramid — the homepage is on top, linking to a handful of pages (i.e., your categories), which link to pages (such as posts).
8. Regularly check for broken internal links. Internal links are useful only if they’re working. When one of your blog posts links, for example, to a page you’ve deleted, all that does is damage SEO. Regularly check for broken internal links with free tools such as BrokenLinkCheck.com or DeadLinkChecker.com. Then, either change the link or 301 redirect the broken link to the closest relevant page.

When it comes to blogging, internal links are vital. Build a better site by strategically incorporating relevant links throughout your posts! To make the most of the links you use throughout your site, follow the best practices above.

Author bio:

 

Shanna Mallon is a contributing writer for Straight North, a professional SEO consultant agency in Chicago. Shanna has been writing professionally online since 2007.

 

What does your internal link strategy look like?