How to Use Internal Linking to Improve Your SEO 

Think of internal links as roadsigns for search engines. They help search engine crawlers understand how different parts of your website are connected and navigate and index your content more efficiently. If your page is more visible on the search results, you’ll get more organic traffic. 

With an effective internal linking strategy, you’ll guide users to relevant pages and keep them engaged. But how to do that? In this article, we’ll share tips on approaching internal linking wisely. 

Conduct a Website Audit

When it comes to improving your SEO, a website audit is the first and essential step to finding the areas for improvement. In terms of internal linking, you need to perform an audit to understand the structure of your website and how different pages relate to each other. 

Think of your website as a tree. A tree has branches, sub-branches, and leaves, and a website has a hierarchical structure with main categories or topics, subcategories, and individual pages. And as you can nourish the tree’s growth with proper branching, just the same, you can strengthen your website and drive traffic to specific pages with internal linking. 

Auditing your website manually isn’t efficient. It’s time-consuming and labor-intensive, especially if you have dozens of pages to go through. Instead, you can automate the process by using one of the best SEO software available on the market. With these tools, you’ll be able to analyze the website’s structure, identify pages with no internal links, detect links with “nofollow” attributes, and get many other insights into your website’s technical health and performance. 

In the following parts, we will dive deeper into various parts of the website audit and how to perform it. 

Analyze Your Content

The next step is to analyze all the content on your website. The key focus is identifying the most important pages and the topics they cover. Chances are, you have dozens of product pages, blog posts, etc, on your website. While all of them are important and necessary, some drive more traffic than others. In your internal linking strategy, you have to keep that in mind. 

When you identify important pages, keywords, and topics, you’ll be able to perform the next steps of building your internal linking strategy. 

Identify Relevant Anchor Text

When it comes to internal linking, everything matters, even what words or phrases you choose for a link. Anchor text should provide a clear and meaningful indication of what the linked page is about. If you go for general words or phrases, such as “click here” or “learn more”, your users won’t have a clue what’s more and why they should learn about it. Besides, it’ll also prevent search engines from understanding the purpose of the link. 

Instead, it’s better to choose words or phrases that provide context about the page that’s being linked. For example, if you want to place a link to the product page of the fall boots in your blog post about types of vegan leather, choose words like shoes, boots, fall footwear, or vegan leather boots. 

These descriptive anchor texts not only inform your readers precisely what to expect when they click but also convey relevant information to search engines. 

Prioritize High Authority Pages

High authority pages are those that have earned a strong reputation and credibility. It is measured by metrics such as Domain Authority. When you establish internal links, make sure to prioritize high-authority pages. In this way, you’ll be able to channel the SEO power of these high-authority sources to other pages on the website. 

For example, Amazon uses high-authority pages like its homepage, category pages, and best-seller lists to distribute link equity. When they link from these authoritative pages to product listings, it significantly improves the search visibility and rankings of those products. Users trust Amazon’s recommendations, and this boosts sales and user engagement.

Create a Linking Structure 

A clear and logical linking structure is like a path that guides people to different parts of the city. In the same way, linking structure guides users and search engines to various pages on your website. This structure doesn’t just enhance the user experience but also enables search engines to crawl your website more efficiently, which leads to better indexing and ranking.

Take Airbnb, for example. They excel in their internal linking strategy that is tailored towards enhanced user experience and improved search engine visibility. 

Most of Airbnb’s listings are places for short-term rentals. To improve the SEO of these property listings, Airbnb connected these listings to local attractions and points of interest. For example, if a host listed a vacation rental in Paris, Airbnb would include internal links within the listing description to nearby attractions like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum, or other popular destinations in Paris. 

In this way, Airbnb reaches several goals: 

• Improved user experience. It’s convenient for users to have information about nearby attractions on hand.
• Enhanced relevance. Search engines use internal linking to understand the relationships between web pages. By linking property listings to local attractions, Airbnb showed the relevance of the listing to specific keywords and locations. In this way, it improved the chances of these listings appearing in relevant search results.
• Increased time on site. The internal links to local attractions encouraged users to explore more content on the Airbnb platform. It led to longer session durations and increased engagement.

Use a Logical Hierarchy 

Imagine your website as a library. Just as books are organized by genres, topics, and subtopics, your internal links should follow a logical hierarchy. This structure helps visitors navigate your site easily. When links are grouped logically, users can find related information without confusion. For example, a clothing store might organize its links by categories (shoes, dresses) and then subcategories (high heels, summer dresses). This creates a structured path for users to explore.

Let’s take a look at what Etsy has done with its website. They interlinked product listings with relevant category pages. For example, a product listing for handmade jewelry was linked to the broader category of “Handmade Accessories” or “Jewelry & Accessories.”

By creating this interconnected web of links, Etsy made it easier for users to navigate from broader product categories to specific product listings. This strategy had several positive outcomes. Firstly, it helped users who were searching for specific items. Secondly, it boosted the visibility of individual product listings in search results.

And by now, you know that search engines like Google reward websites that provide clear, structured navigation and relevant internal linking. Etsy’s strategy helped search engines understand the hierarchical structure of their products and categories, contributing to higher organic search rankings.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing and Over-Optimization

Keyword stuffing is the practice of overloading a web page with keywords in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings. Once, it was a widespread tactic to make sure that search engines notice your website. However, search engines evolved and outgrowed this practice, so now it will only hurt your website.

For instance, imagine a website selling sneakers. If it repeatedly adds phrases like “best sneakers,” “affordable sneakers,” and “top sneakers” indiscriminately throughout the content, search engines will recognize this as keyword stuffing. And damaged SEO efforts are only half the problem. It also affects user experience as the content looks unnatural and breaks the trust between you and your customers. 

Meanwhile, over-optimization means the excessive use of keywords in a way that seems forced or unnatural. For instance, imagine a gardening website that uses the term “best garden tools” in every other sentence within a single article. The readers won’t be fooled by this and will see that the article is aimed at search engines. They won’t actively interact with such content.

Optimize URL structure

A well-structured URL makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your site. Besides, it also enhances the user experience. Let’s explore why this matters and how to achieve it.

Let’s imagine that you have a travel blog. The next article to come out is about top destinations in Europe. A good example of a URL for this page is www.yourtravelblog.com/top-destinations-in-europe. The keywords are clear, and the structure is logical. Both users and search engines immediately understand what the content is about.

Now, let’s take a look at a poorly structured URL: www.yourtravelblog.com/index.php?id=123&article=456. This URL is confusing; it has random numbers and parameters. There’s no insight into the content’s topic.

Use a clean and descriptive URL structure, and you’ll improve your website’s search engine optimization. When search engines see a URL that matches the page’s content, they can more accurately index and rank your page for relevant keywords.

Sum Up

Internal linking is a massive part of the SEO journey that affects how search engines perceive your website and the level of experience the users get. If you figure out the best way to conduct internal linking, you’ll turn your website from a bunch of different pages into a well-connected spider-web-like system that will lead your users right where you want them to land. 

Before incorporating internal linking into your SEO strategy, you need to perform a thorough analysis to make data-driven decisions. 

Read more:

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• SEMrush vs Ahrefs – Which is the Right SEO tool for Your Business
• 10 Tactics To Promote Your Website