What is Internal Linking And How They Affect SEO?

Internal links refer to hyperlinks within the same website to different web pages. These links help users navigate easily within the site and allow search engine crawlers to index the site content more efficiently. For example, link from the homepage to a product page, or link from a blog post to a related article.

Internal links are usually presented as HTML A tags. In addition to allowing users and search engines to better browse the website, they can also allocate the weight of the website to other web pages. A tags usually look like this:

< a href="your URL"> < /a>

Internal links vs. external links

After introducing internal links, you may be curious about external links. The answer is yes! External links are links to other websites. External links are mainly to enhance the authority of the website. The following is a comparison table of internal links and external links.

Internal links are very important for SEO. In addition to helping improve a website's search rankings and user experience, a good internal linking strategy allows search engines to index website content more quickly and distribute weight to important pages. In addition, appropriate internal links can also extend user retention time and reduce bounce rates, and allow search engines to better understand the theme of the page through keyword optimization. Here are the SEO benefits of internal linking.

1. Improve website indexing efficiency : Search engines can crawl and index website content faster through internal links, allowing new pages to be included faster.
2. Distribute website weight : Distribute the value of high-weighted pages to other pages through internal links to improve overall SEO performance.
3. Extend user stay time : Internal links guide users to browse more relevant content and reduce bounce rates.
4. keyword optimization : Optimize keywords through label text to make it easier for search engines to understand the page theme.

After understanding the benefits of internal links for SEO, the next step is to understand how to make internal links well.

1. Plan the website structure

The tree structure extends the hierarchical classification of website content from the homepage to each category page and content page to form a clear website structure. This helps search engines quickly understand the logic and relevance of website content, and can also effectively guide users to browse various types of information smoothly.

2. Set the anchor text

When choosing anchor text, try to use highly relevant and narrative text to help search engines accurately understand the content of the page. For example, use "Learn more SEO optimization strategies" as the anchor text instead of "Click here."

3. Link to related content

Connecting content pages to each other, especially popular or high-weighted pages, is a very important part of improving SEO. Suggestions should be closely integrated with other related content to guide users to explore in depth and increase page exposure.

4. Create a featured content page

Create a core content page and link related articles or product pages to it through internal links, and form content clusters to help search engines understand the website structure and topic authority.

5. Optimize 404 error page

Setting up a custom 404 error page can avoid losing users due to invalid links.

6. Create a navigation bar

Navigation bars are a good strategy when thinking about internal link layout, likeBreadcrumbs, the navigation bar at the top, or the Footer below are all designed to allow users to better jump between different pages.

After understanding how to make internal links, here are the things you should pay attention to about internal links. Quickly check to see if the internal links you just set have any of the following problems.

Avoid overuse of anchor text

Excessively setting internal links for the same keyword may be considered by search engines as over-optimization and result in being penalized by Google. This may cause rankings to drop instead of rising. When setting anchor text, you should choose one that is relevant and naturally inserted into the content.

Avoid links automatically generated by Javascript

Although Google's crawler's ability to understand Javascript content has gradually improved, it is not sure whether it can interpret it correctly now. Therefore it is safer to useInsert the href attribute into the < a /> tag to jump instead of using Javascript's onclick event with the jump function. If the search engine cannot correctly interpret the link, it may not click on the indexed content, and it will not be able to obtain the benefits of internal links.

Avoid placing important tags in content that requires interaction

Because search engines will not (and may not be able to) interact with the page, if you put important links in the content that requires interaction, the search engines may not be able to read it.

Avoid broken links

Sometimes the original page will be deleted due to website changes or deletion of articles. If the original link is not updated at this time, all links will be directed to the 404 page. In addition to affecting the user experience, this will also affect search engine index content, which will lead to lower rankings.