One of the easiest strategies to increase traffic to your blog is to increase its visibility in search engines like Google.
However, internal linking is just one of several SEO best practises that must be adhered to if you want your site to be found.
Internal linking is straightforward, but it does require some planning.
This tutorial will teach you the fundamentals of internal linking so that you may build a successful website.
Why do we need internal linking?
These are links that take you to different pages within the same website.
The aforementioned link will take you to another one of our blog posts that you may find interesting.
These are distinct from external links, which take you away from this site to another.
If you’re having trouble creating links with WordPress, have a look at this guide.
Internal linking’s many advantages
The purpose of internal linking is to make it easier for visitors and search engines to navigate your site.
So, let’s examine the gains you can make with a solid plan for internal linking:
Boost Your Site’s Visibility
In order for newly discovered pages to appear in search results, Google must actively seek them out and add them to its index of previously discovered pages. Google is familiar with some pages of the site because it has already crawled them, whereas new pages are found when Google follows a link from an existing page.
If you want Google to find your material and give it a greater opportunity to rank, you should use internal links.
You may also signal to Google which of your pages is the most crucial by using internal links.
Make Your Blog Easier to Navigate
Whether it’s your about page, a list of blog categories, or a landing page with a call to action, users may easily navigate your site with the help of navigational links, such as those found in the header menu.
However, you should also provide contextual links to assist visitors in navigating your blog.
Within the text of a post or page, you may find contextual links that take you to other, related content. Using these references, you can easily connect all of your internal posts and pages. This way, your readers can find more of what they like within your writing.
Increase Participation
Your blog’s readership can increase in tandem with the quality of its navigation. As we’ve already discussed, linking within your own content makes it easier for readers to navigate your site. Therefore, they will likely spend more time on your site and read more of your blog content.
Your chances of gaining comments, email subscribers, and paying customers all increase as a result of this, and it also helps reduce your site’s bounce rate.
Internal Linking: 4 Suggestions for Success
Connect to Useful Material
To begin developing an efficient method of internal connecting, one must first determine:
- Where you’d like your links placed
- Where in your posts or pages you’d like to include the link
- While we agree that some experts’ advice to have a sophisticated structure of pages set up or to create content “silos” to link to is warranted, we also believe that this is unnecessary.
Relevance is the most crucial factor. Adding an internal link regarding video games to an article about European tourism is neither useful nor relevant to the readership.
Anchor text optimisation
Next, be strategic when using anchor text.
The words or phrase that serve as the visible “anchor text” of a hyperlink.
Users who access the article by clicking the link will learn more about user-generated content. The article’s major keyword is also “user-generated content.”
Instead of just connecting to “customers” or some other random term in the content, OptinMonster will employ relevant keywords as the anchor text for the link.
Using keywords as anchor text indicates to Google that the linked content is relevant and useful, which can boost your keyword rankings.
Any internal links will open in the current tab
Many web users are confused about where an internal link should open: in a new window or the current one.
If the link is to another post or page on the same site, we at Blog Tyrant believe it should open in the same tab.
This is the norm and the best course of action from a user experience perspective.
Link with DoFollow
The “dofollow” or “nofollow” status of your internal links is something we need to discuss now.
All of your site’s links will be crawled and indexed if you use “dofollow” links.
A nofollow link, on the other hand, is one that does not convey link authority from your site to the linked resource. It tells Google to ignore the link and not consider it relevant.
So that Google and the other search engines can easily navigate from one page to the next, you should always use dofollow links within your site.
Unless you specifically designate them as nofollow, all links will automatically be followed.