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7 Rules of Internal Linking for Optimal SEO Practices

Are YOUR internal links up to par?

Anyone with a website nowadays needs a thorough understanding of best SEO practices for internal linking. Internal links offer many opportunities to help your site’s search visibility.

They help search engines guide crawlers through the site, identify the most critical pages, and let you determine the context of each page. To simplify, internal linking has three primary purposes:

-Defines the hierarchy and overall architecture of a website
-Distributes ranking power and page authority throughout the site
-Aids in website navigation

Continue reading as Inedit Agency covers 5 rules for improving your website’s authority with internal links.

Go in-depth with your internal links

The more in-depth your links go, the better. Generally, you should avoid links to top-level pages on a site. These are the pages to which the main navigation menu already has links.

The most valuable links are well within the structure of a site. Here are two main internal links you should AVOID using on your website:

-Contact us: Many write, “Call us to learn more about our incredible deals!” as part of their obligatory call to action at the end of a post. Then, they link to the “Contact Us” page using the anchor “Call Us.” Try not to link to the “Contact Us” page unless required.
-Homepage: Most sites already have too many links to the homepage. To boost your SEO, strengthen internal pages rather than adding more links to your homepage.

Make those links count

Internal linking isn’t as scientific as some may believe. But you still have to be deliberate. Don’t just link because you feel you must. Do it to content that’s relevant to the source context.

For instance, if you have a page on heartburn medicine, don’t link it to a page on arthritis symptoms. There isn’t a strong connection between the two. These two pages won’t provide mutual enhancement from internal cross-linking.

But, if you have a page on arthritis symptoms, it might make a great internal link for your arthritis-friendly foods article.

Chances are, information about “arthritis” will be on both pages. Because of this content overlap, the link is relevant. So, link to relevant content in your internal linking.

Anchor text is your new best friend

To respect the content theme of internal linking, your internal links should include anchor text rather than linked images. Sure, image links are fine if those images aren’t the main source of links, and assuming they’re correctly alt-tagged.

But the proper use of anchor text is an entirely different story. Obviously, you don’t want optimized anchors. Over-optimization is a big red flag for search engines because it indicates manipulative SEO practices.

Ensure your anchor text usage appears varied and genuine to avoid penalties. Simply use natural, unoptimized sentence fragments as anchor text, and you’ll be fine. No tricks or overthinking it. Just highlight and link it, and you’re done.

Use links that are natural for the reader’s experience

Internal linking requires a user-focused technique to add information and value. One of the end results of internal linking is improving user engagement on your site. Users who see an informative link that genuinely matches the content context are more likely to click on it.

External links are ok too, as long as it’s something that the reader will be interested in. If that link is internal, the site visitor stays longer and becomes more engaged in your website.

When you add a link to your content, you’re telling the search engine that the target of your link is so relevant and vital that you want your visitor to be able to click a link and go straight there.

Content links are a strong signal to both the user AND search engine that the content you’re linking to is excellent. So, internal linking is helping the reader. But it’s also helping your SEO.

What has your experience with this matter been? Feel free to let us know in the comments. And for more useful SEO practices, we highly recommend you also read: SEO Strategy: 6 Easy Ways Small Businesses Can Gain Visibility

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