Internal Linking Structures

Internal links are a way for you to keep visitors on your site, clicking to more and more pages and getting more and more information. Hopefully they convert to customers, so you want your pages to be as focused on sales as you can without abandoning informative content.

We won’t get into ‘link juice’ here – that is another article – but I will state that you want to try and keep your home page strong, and keep obtaining inbound links to as many internal pages as possible to avoid weakening your home page.

Link your home page to a few key pages, gather inbound links to those same pages, then spread the love down from there. Suppose I am trying to build a solid linking structure on my PetStyles pet clothing site:

My home page contains (among other things) several boxes with links to various portions of my site. ‘Doggie Duds’, ‘Cat Couture’, and ‘Animal Apparel’.

I might add a link as well for ‘Back Yard Closeouts’ or ‘Super Sets – Outfits for You and Your Pet’, but that is about it.

There is no need for links to specific product pages or the checkout from my home page. Once we get the internal pages, we can start working on these types of links:

(From Doggie Duds Page) I have links from Doggie Duds to various dog related product specific pages. Doggie sweaters, doggie overcoats, doggie fantasy costumes, even a link (with a pic) to ‘Home Dawg Hoodies’, which is a landing page for my niche market effort.

The Cat Couture page is similar. Bonnets, booties, etc. Animal Apparel is my catch-all location for stuff that doesn’t fit elsewhere – the items for rabbits, ferrets and hamsters.

On each of these pages I have a button for each item marked clearly with the price and offering the chance to ‘Add to Cart’. At the bottom of each page I have my links for contact information, the home page and other important information.

If some of my pages extend way below the fold, I need to consider breaking them up or at the very least adding a ‘back to top’ link. This can cut way down on customer impatience if they have scrolled way down the page and want to get back to the top fast.

As I add pages to my website, it will be fairly obvious where the internal links to each page will need to come from. Always keep in mind that visitors who come to your site want to be able to find what they want quickly and easily, so multiple landing pages are nice.

Don’t forget the possibility of an up-sell, though; in my case, pet lovers often have cats as well as dogs, so if they buy a sport related dog outfit they might buy a cat food dish with the logo too.

Try to link like things together across your product categories to encourage more browsing and increase sales. You can even have certain items marked as qualifying for a discount, or free shipping when purchased with another qualifying item (make sure you only specify products with a high profit margin for this type of promotion!).

A strong internal linking structure only costs you time, and the ROI can be phenomenal. If you have advertising on your site as well, then the longer you keep consumers clicking and bouncing around the more likely they are to click on an ad…and YOU get paid!

Happy Linking!