#SEOTips: Making Sense of Internal Linking

I know I’ve briefly discussed internal linking in a past SEO Tips article before, but now’s the time for me to dig a little deeper with you. In my “User Experience Part I” post, I explained how our content and pages should be woven together like… well, a web or a basket for quality user experience. While internal linking is helpful to the user experience and increased time spent on your website, it’s also good for overall SEO. Many SEOers skip over the internal linking steps because it’s another small, pesky SEO job they don’t want to waste time on. But these small tasks are the gold ranking points we need. As SEO expert, Patrick Stox says, it’s the little things that count in SEO. Yes, you guessed it, there’s a strategy to this internal linking game, here it is….

First, let’s review

Let’s refresh what internal linking entails. Internal links are links you place in your web copy, articles and other resources from within your own website. Hence, internal. The latter would be an external link, or a link from another website. Hint: You want to limit the amount of external links you use within an article, but we’ll get into that later.

Usage: Don’t use the point ’n’ shoot…er, link method

When writing web copy or blog articles (in this case let’s use these SEO tips articles as an example), I link to previously created and published blog posts, web pages and other resources Red Branch Media has created that could be supplementary to the copy I’m currently writing or creating. For example, if I’m going in depth about how your site should be responsive for quality user experience, I would go searching on our website for a previously created article by one of our designers on how to work with and create responsive design. If I’m talking about design and link to an article about leadership, the reader will start to wonder if these two topics are supposed to be connected somehow, leaving the reader confused. Essentially, you want to link to resources that make sense, for the purpose of being helpful. Simple enough?

Let’s get those pesky keywords involved!

There’s a reason you spent so much time creating keyword lists. There’s a specific way we should be linking to our keywords and a way we should be linking externally. When you want to link internally, try to link to a keyword or phrase from your keyword list. The reason being, you built this list because they are the words and phrases you want credit for. When you link to external sites, try linking to words and phrases you don’t want to rank for. Even better if the link is to a numbered statistic or really, just anything that you don’t want to rank for. If you link your external sites to your keywords, you’re giving those external sites credit for those keywords. Be greedy, keep the keyword credit to yourself. This is a cut-throat industry, boys and girls!

Going beyond your own website

So you’ve linked every resource you could on your website like you were told, now take that to the social boards. We talk a lot about building connections and networking as it has endless benefits.

Patrick Stox (@patrickstox) said, “It depends on the network, but in general, people you follow, people following you, comments, lists, subscriptions, groups, shares and more (pretty much any activity) can create internal links back to your profile — thus strengthening it and potentially any links to your website or content. There is a reason being active on different social platforms and networks is effective, and it’s not just because of relationship building.”

Networking on social sites is much like the benefit of internal linking, it only further builds your credibility. SEO takes a great amount of patience. You have to build your content so you have more resources to link to within your beautiful little web basket, you have to start and grow relationships with people in your field, build lists and organic backlinks; it’s all part of a long-lasting process to gain web presence, but at the same time, you’re expanding your professional skills. So get workin’ on that building!

The Branchers

We build the best damn marketing campaigns on the planet. And we do it for industries and companies you might not identify as easy to market (right away). Working here takes a very special kind of person.