Boost Sales with Internal Linking

Internal linking needs to be part of any effective SEO strategy. Not only is it one of the most powerful tools you can utilize, but it is also one of the easiest to implement.

Yet even though it is a regular fixture in SEO marketing campaigns, internal linking is often overlooked. Other aspects are prioritized instead, whether that’s website design or producing high-quality content. External linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. are also a main focus compared to their internal counterparts.

It’s time to change the current viewpoint of internal linking.

With the right strategy in place, your SEO campaign can jump up a level or two. As you know, you try and take every advantage available to get an edge over the competition – and push your content to the top of the Google search results.

Even though it is relatively easy to add to your SEO campaign, there’s still plenty to consider with internal linking. This guide will cover those points, detailing how your business can boost sales by adding internal links to your website’s content.

What is internal linking?

When it comes to the subject of link buildingLink building is a process of acquiring links pointing to your website. These links are obtained by creating content, participating in social media or commenting on other blogs., external links are the general focus due to the SEO weight they carry. External links are where you get links that point back to your website from a different site. For example, if CNN had a link to clickintelligence.co.uk, this would be classified as an external link.

With this information in mind, not much deciphering is required to understand what internal linking is.

Internal links are those that are found on your website and point to other site pages. For example, see that hyperlink in the opening paragraph to our page about link building? That right there is an internal linkInternal links are links that connect different pages on your website. They help users navigate your site and make it easier to find information, in action.

Unlike external links, which often take a lot of time and resources to acquire, internal links can be added with ease. It can be a simple case of referencing a page on your website and linking to it.

With internal linking, there are three main types available. These are:

• Contextual links
• Navigational links
• Image links

Contextual Links

Contextual links are those that reference another page on your website. There are various ways this can be done with anchor texts, whether this is with a specific keywordKeywords are the words and phrases that potential customers might search for to find your business. or a naked URL.

For example, let’s say we want to support this guide by talking about our content writing services. With a link, users can quickly browse the page and learn more. It also supplies the added benefit of link equity for the content writing services page.

Navigational links

Navigational links are a natural inclusion on any website. That’s right: even if you haven’t noticed, you have already begun your internal link building strategy!

Understandably, the navigation bar is where your main navigational links will be found. Think of pages such as “Home”, “About Us”, “Blog”, and so on. However, the footer can also be used to incorporate further links to your auxiliary pages.

As you know, navigational links are all about ensuring users are able to easily get around your website and find the content they seek. Furthermore, it also provides hints to search engines about your pages, link structure, and which pages are most valuable.

Image links

Images are frequently neglected for their internal link potential. Yet this is a super simple way to incorporate links within your content, all with minimal effort required.

If you have any images dotted throughout a blog post, for example, forget leaving these without a link or just as a link to the image itself. Find any relevant pages you can link through to via these images instead.

Why is internal linking important for SEO?

Google uses a lot of ranking factors when positioning websites in their search results. Unless you’re behind the Google search algorithm, it can be difficult to place an exact value on these ranking factors. With that said, internal linking is undoubtedly one of the more important aspects of SEO.

Numerous technical benefits are gained from incorporating internal linking. Aside from helping the GooglebotGooglebot is a web crawler. It follows links and indexes pages for search engines to make it easier for users to find what they're looking for. frequently crawl all your webpages, it also assists Google in discovering any new content you post. Furthermore, it also supplies Google with a lot of helpful pointers about page content and the relationship between your pages.

For example, take that link building anchor above. It leads directly to our page about link building. Ensuring the anchor textAnchor text is the text highlighted by a hyperlink. The words highlighted are crucial for SEO, informing Google’s crawling bots about the content of the site linked to. and the webpage match up helps Google to understand the context of the linked page.

The reasons why internal links are valuable

If you haven’t gathered it already, internal links are highly valuable for your SEO efforts. Yet there are other benefits gained from utilizing this marketing tactic on your website.

A page that gains a lot of links is a page that Google likes. The search giant views this as a key signal that it is a high-value page. Yes, external links are more valuable in that regard. Yet internal links remain a useful addition to your overall link building efforts.

There’s also a big advantage for internal links compared to their external counterparts: you have full control. External links are never guaranteed. They can be difficult to acquire, they can disappear, and they can even harm your website if they’re from low-rank spam sites. With internal links, none of these problems occur.

By improving overall SEO performance, your website will make a healthy jump in the search engine rankings. That naturally drives traffic to your site. More and more of your pages will climb towards the first page, meaning lots of people will discover your content and what you offer.

The buyer’s journey can also be supported with internal links. Say you are crafting blog posts as an educational resource for your audience. With the power of internal links, you can take viewers of this educational content and point them towards sales pages for your products and services.

Greater navigation and promotion = greater potential to support the buyer’s journey.

How to correctly implement internal links

You know what internal linking is. You now realize the importance of internal links for SEO purposes, but now you must learn how to use internal linking correctly.

Putting together an internal link building strategy might seem simple enough on the surface. However, if you’re hoping to maximize results – and that should always be the goal – there are numerous steps you have to take.

Fortunately, you don’t have to look far for these steps. Below are internal linking best practices you need to follow:

Perform an internal link audit

Your website already has internal links. That’s the case even if you haven’t already made a committed effort to your internal link strategy. Due to this, it makes sense to just take a quick step back, assess the situation fully, and perform an internal link audit.

Google appreciates those that have a sound linking strategy in place. Yet this cannot be achieved if you don’t audit your site to gain a view of the current landscape. Once this is done, you will have an idea about what is working, what isn’t, and what you need to do to improve your internal linking campaign.

The bad news: an audit is far from the most exciting task. It can also be a monotonous, time-consuming one if you take the wrong approach.

The good news: you don’t have to manually crawl through your website and add each link to an Excel document. There are various tools available that allow you to do this task automatically within a matter of seconds. One tool we recommend is Ahrefs.

Determine the right link structure

Once the audit is done, there’s another building block you need to add. That is coming up with the right link structure for your website. Without having this foundation from the start, it could lead to various problems in the future.

Fortunately, putting together a link structure doesn’t require too much work or planning. What it does need is a little common sense.

A common method is to view your internal link structure as a pyramid. Right at the top is your homepage. It goes without saying, but this is the most important page on your website. It is the basis for everything that comes after it and rightfully deserves its place at the top of the pyramid.

Below that, you should list the most important categories and sections on your site. This could be your blog, products page, features, etc. These are your site’s major components that link to other pages and subcategories.

Speaking of which, the next part of the pyramid will be these pages and subcategories. This sort of trickle-down effect will continue until you cover the rest of your content. The more linkable pages you have, the bigger your pyramid structure will naturally be.

Determine the content which is the most important

You can only have so many internal links. Yes, you’d like to dish out an equal number of links across all of your pages, but this isn’t possible. Due to this, it’s vital you take the time to identify the content which you view as the most important.

Also known as cornerstone content, these pages are essentially those that you deem to be the best. They’re the most complete and detailed pages that best represent your business. They are the pages you want potential customers to find when they’re searching for content within your industry.

So why do these pages take priority when it comes to internal links? One word: Google.

As established already, Google prioritizes content that receives the most links, both internally and externally. To pump up the former, you must put together a strategy to incorporate as many links to your most important content.

Create a regular stream of content

To make the most of internal linking opportunities, you must put in the effort to craft a large volume of content. The more pages you have on your website, the more chances you have to add these internal links.

Of course, you don’t want to simply pump out content for the sake of it. This aspect has to be done with a certain degree of care and attention. Your content has to be relevant to your industry for a start. You should also have the content you want to link to firmly in mind when producing new pages.

Think about it: you want to avoid shoehorning links into content when it doesn’t belong. Not only will this look unnatural and break the flow of your pages and posts, but it could result in your site being punished by Google.

What type of content production schedule should you follow? Aim to add at least one new page each week. If you can do more than that, great – but you want to avoid stretching your resources too thin and creating weaker content.

Also, even if these blog posts are being made with the intention of supporting your cornerstone content, they should still be crafted with quality in mind. Ultimately, they can become other key components for your SEO efforts, further improving your site’s presence on Google. Quality over quantity always.

Use the right anchor text

The anchor text is what you wrap your internal links around. It is the descriptive text that will either convince users to click through to the linked page or decide against it. With this in mind, the anchor text is not something you want to overlook.

There are multiple anchor text options available. It is recommended to go with a blend of these throughout your content. However, there are certain anchors which are much more effective than others. Options include:

• Exact match: This is when the anchor text’s keyword matches up exactly with the linked page. For instance, if you have a page about content marketing, the anchor text would be “content marketing”.
• Partial match: While similar to exact match, this can include partial changes to the keyword compared to the linked page. A page about content marketing could be represented by an anchor like “content marketing tactics”.
• Branded: This is when your company’s brand name becomes the anchor. As an example, we’d use “Click Intelligence” for our branded anchor text.
• Naked: This is when the URL link is posted as the anchor text. Example: https://www.clickintelligence.co.uk
• Generic: A generic anchor text involves no defined keyword or brand name. The text could be something as simple as “Click here” or “More information”.

You probably have a fair idea about which anchor texts deliver the best results. You could look at the list above as best-to-worst in that regard.

If you need further convincing, Google prefers contextual links to gain a better idea of what your pages are about.

Maximize site navigation

The website header is a key place to link to your most important pages. That’s not a secret. By sitting at the top of your site on every page, they gain added value in the eyes of Google.

However, this isn’t the only navigation option you have available. You can also utilize the footer navigation.

Naturally, links that appear in the footer fail to attain the same power as those in the header. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t underestimate the value they supply. Again, they appear on every single page of your site – and that makes them worthwhile.

Another advantage of using the footer is plenty of space to add a healthy collection of links. The header might have a lack of real estate, but there is no real limit to the number of internal links to add to the footer.

Avoid having too many internal links

You have heard of keyword stuffingKeyword stuffing is a technique that attempts to give pages higher rankings in search engine result pages by inserting the same keywords over and over again.. Well, there is such a thing as internal link stuffing. Google has yet to provide guidelines regarding the right number of links to use on a page, but it is recommended to go with 2-3 internal links at most for every 500 words you produce for a blog post. When you factor in that these pages already feature navigational links, including any more links could quickly become overkill, and it may lead to some sort of penalization from Google.

Even if penalties are not on the table, overstuffing links can cause technical problems. It may result in your website suffering from lag. As you know, that isn’t good for either your SEO efforts or the user experience.

Search for errors

You might be trying to do all you can to prevent it from happening. However, errors and broken links are inevitable, particularly if your website is home to a large collection of content and pages.

This is problematic. Users don’t enjoy visiting a broken page, and Google certainly doesn’t appreciate it, so when errors crop up, you need to stamp them out quickly. First, you need to identify these issues, and that’s where regular performing audits can pay dividends. These audits will spot broken links, and you can either fix them or remove them from the equation. You don’t want all your effort to go to waste when the error could be easily fixed.