External links and backlinks are an important part of the marketing strategy. SEO of each website. They send signals to search engines and visitors about the quality of the content on your website. They also serve as proof of the extent of your knowledge on the subject and help your website “borrow” authority from trusted external sources.
Just as important are internal links, which are those that direct visitors to other pages in your domain.
While internal links may not require special design or development expertise to put them in place, using them effectively requires some forethought and planning. So, today, let's take a look at why you should be using internal linking on your website and how to develop a strategy for internal linking in order to create an internal linking system for stronger search performance.
Understanding the possibilities of internal linking on a WordPress site is important. But understanding the "why" behind using internal linking and creating a full-fledged link building plan is essential if you want to do it right.
Here are some of the reasons why you must do it:
- Internal linking, first and foremost, allows visitors to leave your home page and exit content that they really need to see.
- They give your page another link pointing to it (even though it's still contained in your website). This helps to build the credibility of the research.
- Relevant links allow visitors to explore the website for longer than if they were left to their own devices. (Think about what this time does on the website for the SEO !)
- Internal links improve navigation by establishing a hierarchy of pages as well as a better understanding of how they relate to each other.
- If you don't want to insert all the links on the menu, you can use internal links to promote “secondary” navigation pages in the content. Or you can place these links in a sidebar.
- They are also great for keeping your website content succinct and easy to read. Rather than repeating the same topics over and over, internal links can direct readers to more detailed explanations that already exist on your blog or elsewhere on the WordPress site.
- Anchor text (the words that hold the link in place in your content) gives you another chance to optimize content using keywords.
- Internal links within new content allow you to keep relevant and interesting content at the forefront of visitors, even if the original source is buried deeper in the archives. your blog.
Now that you have a better idea of the reason for which you have to use internal links, let's talk about best practices for using them.
Best practices for creating internal links
Using internal links effectively - that is, if you want to reap SEO and organizational benefits - requires more than adding links to articles. Here are some tips to help you create an internal link building plan that works:
1. Research
Before spending any energy adding internal links to your WordPress site content, take the time to research the performance of each page. You should be able to answer questions relating to the following:
Organic search traffic:
- Which pages and articles go well with natural search?
- Are there keywords commonly used in searches that lead to these pages?
Reference traffic:
- Which pages and publications work well in terms of redirect traffic?
- What is the anchor text used in these backlinks?
You can then use what you know about popular search phrases and anchor text commonly used by influencer websites to shape your own internal linking structure.
2. anchors
This is the anchor text:
In this case, the "security best practices" contain the anchor text in your code.
When it comes to creating your anchor text, always try to use descriptive keywords that give an idea of the topic or keywords that the target page is going to content. So, anchor text that says "best security practices" shouldn't open an article that talks about SEO. You have to keep your promises.
Also, don't forget how anchor text is worded in your website's navigation and CTAs. The clearer and simpler these elements, the better.
3. Consistency
After doing the research on organic search keywords and referral anchor text, you should have a good idea of what types of keywords you can associate with each page and post on your WordPress site. (At least those that have been linked or searched before.) That said, you need to be careful with how you will use anchor text. Here's why:
Just as it is important to have only a few selected keywords around which to write your website content, you should minimize the number of keywords and keyphrases for a given page. This is so as not to confuse the search engines with the content of the page.
For example, let's say you have a page for dog shoes. Anytime you link internally to the Dog Boots page on your website, you want the anchor text to be the same in all areas.
However, you need to be careful, if you have similar pages or articles. Let's say there is a Dog Slippers page as well as a Dog Sneakers page. Even if you try to categorize your website for the term "dog shoes", it would be a mistake to use the "dog shoes" anchor to link the different pages of your WordPress site. Basically what you will be doing is competing with your own content. In other words, always give each page its own unique anchor text.
4. Balanced
This is similar to why you don't put plain text pages on your website, or pages full of images without any verbal context. Basically, never leave any page on your website without internal links. Pages that include internal links are a good way to demonstrate that you have a cohesive website where everything fits into the bigger picture. They are also good for improving navigation.
Just be careful not to overdo it: choose links wisely and only use a handful, if possible. Too many links competing for Google's attention could work against you.
5. Hierarchy
While search engines will scan pages in their entirety, marketers have found that links that appear closer to the top of the page rank higher in search. This is probably because they are perceived to be of greater importance and relevance in terms of the "hierarchy" of the internal link structure of the page.
That's it for this tutorial, I hope you now have a better understanding of internal links and most importantly a better understanding of their importance.
