The Importance of Internal Links for SEO in 2023

If backlink is the soul of SEO Offpage, Internal link is an indispensable part of SEO Onpage

Constructing the perfect site for your business can be a strenuous effort, but if you can get it across the finish line, then the development of your business will considerably benefit in the long run. Hence, your site has gone live, and now you are going to enhance your online presence more via content marketing.

Well, we’re all aware of the integral role of content marketing when it comes to search engine optimization. Nevertheless, content alone is not enough. Internal links are created to support your SEO by bringing traffic to other pages.

Internal linking can result in numerous benefits for your e-commerce site, and this post will reveal some main reasons why you should make use of internal links.

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Table of Contents

• What is an Internal Link?
  • Types of Internal Links
  • The Essential Role of Internal Links in SEO
    • Establish a hierarchy of information for the given website
    • Allow webmasters to direct users to a site
    • Bring traffic to your site
    • Help spread the link juice
    • Make it easier for Google bots to crawl and index
    • Enhance usability via anchor texts
  • How to Optimize Internal Links?
    • 1. Ensure content richness
    • 2. Build a proper structure
    • 3. Generate cornerstone content
    • 4. Remember to link from the top
    • 5. Write the correct anchor text
    • 6. Link to relevant posts
• Summary

What is an Internal Link?

Internal Link is a form of link created by placing a link from a page on a domain and pointing to another page on the same domain. In simpler terms, internal linking is the linking of the pages on the same website.

Types of Internal Links

• Navigation links: They are the most popular type of internal links. These links form a structure for your site and lead the audience via the content.
• Editorial links: Editorial links are the links that are added within the body copy of your site. These links can be included in your site content organically and are the most useful links for your website.
• Footer or site-wide links: Placed at the bottom of the page, footer links are utilized to boost the usability of your site. The footer of a site usually includes contact details, social media widgets, or an internal search tool for your web page.
• Taxonomy and categorical links: These links combine popular topics, such as relevant blogs or post categories, together to make content easier for users to explore. They also can lead to parent service pages.

The Essential Role of Internal Links in SEO

Establish a hierarchy of information for the given website

In other words, internal links help create a structure of the website. If the pages on the site are parts of the human body, the internal link, like the bone system, always attaches the scaffolds together and helps the parts to work. The more complete the skeleton is, the easier the parts will be to work.

Allow webmasters to direct users to a site

It enables webmasters to direct users to a website, dramatically increasing access time and site interactions on the site. Besides that, by reducing negative indexes that reflect the user’s experience badly such as Bounce Rate, Exit Rate, etc. In addition, internal links are also the main tools for navigating search engine bots, helping them to crawl the site in a complete way and helping the child pages free from isolation.

Bring traffic to your site

When users visit your site that the site is not interesting to keep them, visitors will turn off the website, so the bounce rate will increase and Google also evaluates your low website quality and no useful for people. For that reason, you navigate the reader by adding internal links to other good articles, which helps your website become more attractive.

Read more: What is a Good Bounce Rate?

Help spread the link juice

While concentrating on external linking and backlinks, it’s necessary to reinforce your authority over other sites. Internal linking can help you distribute your link juices to other pages of your website.

As you create backlinks to a specific page on your website, this target has links to other pages on your site, thus spreading the link juice. As a result, you expect this juice to go to your money pages, as getting a deep insight into how this follows via your internal links is the primary component of SEO.

Make it easier for Google bots to crawl and index

Google bots are born to regenerate a user’s thinking process. They go to your site and track all the links and pages that are easily indexed. Constructing a robust and smart internal architecture will help bots explore deeper posts that are often visited.

Enhance usability via anchor texts

Internal linking enables users to navigate across your site. By adding suitable and user-friendly links to your blogs, you are able to facilitate your users’ navigation. Your anchor texts must direct to related content that can intrigue your readers.

For instance, if you are discussing various content problems, you can lead your audience to a previous post listing tools, thereby preventing the repetition of problems via internal linking.

How to Optimize Internal Links?

1. Ensure content richness

In your goal to build a wide amount of meaningful internal links, you will need a number of internal pages. The first thing to do is prepare a great content marketing strategy, which means building tons of relevant and helpful content that’s loveable and shareable. The more interesting links and various content, the more effective your internal linking will be.

2. Build a proper structure

When structuring your site, you will want to add the most significant information upfront. Like email marketing, consider how you want to draw in your readers by utilizing things like powerful subject lines and bold opening sentences. The same applies for the structure of your site. Besides, bear in mind that the average user spends less than 15 secs on a site, so it’s vital to draw them in early.

3. Generate cornerstone content

Cornerstone content is considered the core of your site. It contains the most outstanding articles on your website; pages, and posts you want to have high ranks on search engines. When done accurately, your cornerstone content might grow traffic and raise brand awareness to tell readers that you’re a thought leader in the field.

This content is not targeted to make someone purchase something and it should be easily accessible. Ultimately, you’ll want the cornerstone content of your website to make a good first impression.

Notably, you should link from the top pages to subpages about relevant topics. Internal linking to relevant content tells Google what pages contain information about similar topics. Google will know that the cornerstone content article consists of the most information on these specific keywords. Eventually, Google will rank the cornerstone above other, shorter blogs about keyword research.

4. Remember to link from the top

In addition to linking to posts and pages with similar topics, you can generate better cornerstone content by including links to it from your site’s home page or the top navigation. This will fill the most typical blogs or pages with huge link value, and will make them more visible in Google’s eyes.

5. Write the correct anchor text

When you have determined what links should be on a page and which pages should have the highest link value, it’s essential to create the right anchor text. In layman’s terms, the anchor text is the clickable text that users see. In regard to generating your anchor text, there are several things to consider:

• Keep the anchor text related to the content
• Put anchors where readers pay the most attention
• Prevent over-optimizing and keep the text natural
• Keep them concise and non-generic
• Choose keyword phrases that best detail the destination page

6. Link to relevant posts

Linking to relevant posts allows Google to better understand your site structure and promote one or more relevant posts at the end of your blog, as well as generating more internal link juice. Plus, linking to relevant blogs can keep visitors on your site when they scroll through other articles and content you’ve produced.

Summary

Your content cannot rank without links. With an appropriate internal linking strategy, you can showcase which content is relevant and which of your blogs are most informative and useful.

While you produce more content and your website keeps growing in size, ensure to crawl your website and check on your internal links regularly. That can keep your page updated all the time and let you make use of all the benefits from internal linking.

SEO extension for Magento 2 is the perfect solution for your e-commerce store. The module provides a complete list of SEO works to ensure that your SEO strategy is always on the right track with the best performance. Moreover, you don’t need to worry about any possible risks as Mageplaza offers a free version of the SEO extension. Let’s install it for your store now!