Internal Linking Structure Best Practices for SEO in 2022
Follow this guide to help you understand the important factors that will help you with creating internal links between your page content on your website.
Developing an Internal linking Structure helps to connect the silos of information on your website, making it easier for search engines to index your pages. An internal linking structure also helps to direct visitors to the most relevant information on your site. When linking internally, be sure to use keywords as anchor text and to choose do-follow links. You can also link to themed sections of your website to help visitors find more information on a particular topic. By taking these simple steps, you can ensure that your website is optimised for both search engines and visitors. A poor internal linking structure can end up harming your site’s overall rankings.
The importance of links can not be underestimated as one way Google understands how relevant a page might seem – they use them when ranking sites by quality! A strategy you should employ if want to increase both natural (when applicable) is to generate backlinks from other domains pointing at yours too – these will help boost rankings because there appears more authority on your site based on the quality of the links you have (each one is like a vote for your website).
A well-optimised internal linking structure can help crawlers and bots crawl your website more effectively, as well as help to pass on ranking signals. This, in turn, can result in better rankings for your site.
Best Practices to follow
User Experience
Don’t break user experience with things like thin content, too many ads above the fold or even worse – disruptive interstitials! These will make a visitor bounce back to the search results page and you’ll lose their business instead of gaining it as intended by doing so. Search engines put emphasis on rewarding positive user experiences which is why they care about giving searchers what they want when using Google/Bing; this means that if your site doesn’t have all those geared towards providing value in order for people searching online via these platforms can find exactly what they are looking for, your pages just won’t rank well.
To meet your business goals, you need a website that ranks well on Google and gets found by potential customers. To do this right requires more than just writing good content; it also means making sure all of the elements on-page work together as one cohesive whole – from images to links and even text size. But with billions of data points available now thanks to machine learning algorithms vs human-based decision-making processes what was once enough information has become less helpful because there’s no way for anyone outside these tech companies who understand how they operate internally anymore!
Flow of Link Value
The link building landscape has changed dramatically since Google PageRank. Now it’s all about getting high-quality external links that pass value from a page to page within your website and pushing up those rankings in areas you care most – but make sure they’re not too aggressive or else someone might take them away!
The inbound links from other sources that land on your site are just as important to monitor and analyse for quality as the metrics coming directly through search engines. To ensure you’re not diluting any valuable content with these incoming hyperlinks, make sure all of it’s placed strategically within page structures so there isn’t too much competition when Google looks at their rankings!
Having streamlined navigation and not spelling out dozens of links on every page, you can concentrate link value to flow towards the pages that are most important. Whether this means spreading it around or funnelling it into one content silo for an extremely specific topic will depend entirely upon your unique situation as well as what kind of website structure best suits yours – whether top-level topics like “home” have higher importance than individual products within those categories.
Context & Hierarchy
The best way to optimise your website for Google is by organising and prioritising content around topics (makes sense right?). The more specific you make each piece, the higher it will rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).
When you’re creating content, it’s important to think about how your audience will interact with the information on a deep level. That’s where the internal linking strategy comes in. For example: if they’re looking for something general but detailed enough that certain parts stand out better than others (i e there is more text), then those specific keywords should be linked from higher up within their page rather than buried towards the bottom like an afterthought; this makes sense because search engines also want users who may not know exactly what keyword someone wrote about until it rains down upon them!
One challenge you may face is that stakeholders in your organisation or those within the client’s company believe everything needs to be on the top-level navigation menu. In addition, if there are too many links involved then it can distract from what content building efforts are happening properly (confuse the search engines) and hinder users’ ability to understand contextually which information applies. So, make sure not only do these pages link back organically but also have internal linking strategies like nesting sections under key topics or questions addressed throughout all types of platforms.
Unique Content & Canonical Use
Create unique, engaging content to build your brand and deliver a quality user experience.
Duplicate content means having more than one instance of the same thing on your website. So if you have a product page with exactly the same details as another, it might be considered duplicate content and should thus not appear under both links when performing an SEO check for search engines like Google or Bing (unless they’re publicly visible).
Canonical tags can help with duplicate and similar content pages, language variations (if you have international products), or pagination on your site.
Canonicals can be a tricky tool to master, but once you do they help make your website more search engine friendly and accessible.
The process for using them should start with understanding how many different URLs are being pointed at by each page on the site as well as when those links point back into other sections or pages within that same section of their main domain – If there’s any artificial spamming going down (like making all product categories invisible) then Google will know!
Crawling & Indexing
All of our efforts are for naught if we don’t ensure that navigation is crawlable and only necessary primary links exist on each page.
To be successful, it is important to have an internal linking structure for how you want your website linked. For example, if someone searches on ” SEO Training” then they will not want all of the pages in this niche but rather just those specifically about search engine optimisation or having an increased ranking by Google through stronger keywords throughout their content which also tells users that there’s something different than any other site out there offering these services so far as quality goes too.
This is why we can never seem to get ahead. Our content always looks shallow and flat, no matter how hard you think about what kind of depths are possible for your site’s user experience.
Conclusion on Internal Linking Structure Best Practices
Internal links are the key to building a strong website. While best practices will change over time as search engine priorities shift and user behaviour changes, there is one thing that remains constant: internal linking structure! These inter-page connections ensure visitors navigate easily through your site by connecting pages together in an organised way so you can rank higher on Google ranks for specific keywords because it helps them find what they’re looking for faster than if everything were simply linked individually from each page without any connection or continuity throughout all 60K+ words.
SEO has always been about creating content that answers people’s questions, but now it’s more than ever. The world of search engine optimisation is changing as Google becomes less strict on its algorithm and starts ranking websites based on velocity instead – which means visibility online can come from any authority.
What’s Next?
The best place to start is with a Website SEO Audit. Contact the SEO Team to book a time.
With your newfound knowledge, you will have a clearer idea of what the possibilities are for increasing your rankings and the opportunities to take up to drive more traffic to your your website through a solid SEO Strategy. Here’s a case study one one of our successful website & SEO clients.
Get in touch with the SEO experts at Ground Zero Digital and get to know the team who can guide you through how we can help with:
- SEO based content writing
- Researched SEO based blog writing
- Syndication of blogs to publishing networks
- Technical, on-site & off-site SEO campaigns
- Implementation of an internal linking structure
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