| Internal Links - How to make full use of it? |
Internal Links - How to make full use of it?Just what are internal links? Well, they are links in your own site pointing to your other pages. You know, like those links in the navigation menus? They are usually used for navigation among your webpages. However, you should know that internal links can be good for Search Engine Optimization as well. Just think of internal links like backlinks from other websites. Although the ranking benefits from internal links are probably less than those from external links, I am very sure that they still do help. And since these links are in your own site, you can do whatever you want with them.
The biggest mistake webmasters tend to make is with their navigation menus. Webmasters tend not to fully use their navigation menus to minimize their the number of navigation steps. For example, if a page is important or you would like to optimize for Search Engines, it should be easily accessible from the main page and from other pages as well. And not to mention, it is good for your human visitors. No pages should come to a dead end. Pages should be interlinked so that Search Engine spiders can navigate to other parts of your site. However, it would be better for you to link pages of the same subject or topic together. If you have a new page which you would like to be indexed by Search Engines, you should have more internal links pointing to it. The more links it has, the more chance of it being indexed right? This is exactly the same thing, only difference, you can add as many links as you want since want since this your site.
Sitewide links in your footer or header or even your navigation menu is very useful to tell Search Engines which parts of your website is important. Sitewide appears in every page of your site and thus provides the most value to a budding webmaster!
Other than just links in your navigation menus, you could also add in-content links to your other pages. In-content links mean that the links are in the actual content itself, rather than in the footer or header or in the navigation menus. In-content links look natural and are usually surrounded by keywords rich text. Remember to point them links to your important pages.
Another big mistake webmasters tend to do is with their anchor text. How many webmasters use the word "Home" as the anchor text pointing to their homepage? And how many webmasters would like to rank for the word "Home"? As I mentioned above, think of internal links as backlinks. And the anchor text in those links will help you rank for those keywords. So having the proper anchor text is very important, especially if you have a lot of pages in your website. And since you control the site, you can very well have whatever anchor text you want.
Instead of just having a XML sitemap for Google, try a HTML Sitemap. It's just like a page, but the content are all links to other parts of your site. Getting a few external links pointing to this HTML sitemap page is like showing Search Engine spiders a map of your site.
With all these being said, do not populate critical pages with too many links (even internal ones). If you have a lot of links, divide them among other pages. You definitely don't want Search Engines to think that the page is a link farm. And remember to link out as well. Don't be a link hoarder, and only link to your own page. You have to get at least some information from somewhere else right?
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