SEO Step By Step Guide– 45. Ways to Improve Internal Links

In the previous post, we highlighted the importance of internal links. If it is one-way links we have several methods to improve the ranking but when it comes to internal linking we run short of ideas for two reasons. Firstly, we do not think of internal linking as much as we think about external links. Secondly, there are not enough resources online that will teach us how to improve the internal links.

Here are some tips on how we can improve on our internal links. Normally, all our websites will have internal links in the form of navigation bar. You can enhance the effect of the navigation bar on internal linking by using keywords as the linking text in the navigation bar rather than some random text. Secondly, the navigation bar should be plain HTML and should not be image links to the inner pages. One of the best practices here is to have the navigation bar on the left hand side so that the search bot will crawl the navigation bar as first thing when they visit your website. You must not stuff the navigation bar with the keywords. The navigation text link should reflect closely the content of the page it is linking.

The next important area that you should concentrate for getting internal links is the footer of your website. The function of the footer navigation link is very much similar to the regular navigation bar. For our SEO purposes, they can be used as another way of more internal links. If you want the footer links to be effective, then you must not have too many footer links, as it will dilute the effectiveness of individual links. You must make sure that your footer should also have a link to your sitemap. The sitemap will of course have links to all the pages of your website arranged in hierarchical order.

Text or content in the web page gives us ample chance to create contextual internal text links. If you have well thought out content, you can have a number of in line links.

Another useful page for getting good internal linking is the FAQs page. FAQs page will discuss about all the aspects of your products or services in the form of help text. Instead of having all the FAQs and their responses in the same page, make individual pages and cross link the pages within the FAQs section as well as the services pages as in line text links.

News pages too help a great deal in getting more internal links in the form of in line text. Since the news updates will be based on your products and services, you will find many opportunities to insert in line text links.

You must remember however, that internal links are just a way of improving your keyword strength and good internal linking alone will not take you to the top of the search results page.

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