Welcome to the SEO tutorial, and today we will talk about internal link and its importance for the On-page SEO. We have already covered few On-page SEO topics like:
- Importance of SEO page title
- Keyword density
- Header and bold
Before jumping on to the working or all about Internal link, do you know what does internal link means?
Internal Link – Definition
Let’s understand it with a very simple example, let’s take a practical example of a family to understand the internal link.
Look at the above picture, we have taken a small family. You can see, the names are different for each family member, but the surname is same for every one. It means, they belongs to the same hussy family. They are linked together in such a way, that their neibhour, friends or postman will address with their common surname.
In short, if you will reach to the daughter, then you can get information about the other family members.
Same way, In technical term, an internal link is a hyperlink, which will let you to reach another page on the same domain or website. And it is called internal links because it is linked internally to other pages or resources.
Internal link – Benefits
Now let’s see how internal link will benefit you as a webmaster.
- Minimize Bounce Rate – If you will use internal links effectively, then you can expect a low bounce rate. Just link a related post, and if the visitor wants to know more about it, then he/she will click on the anchor text. Your reader will give more time to your website and hence reduced your bounce rate.
- Improve Page rank – The major search engines consider link popularity with the relevant content and links. Let’s suppose your one page has the best high pr links, and that page is internally connected to the other page in your website. Then, for sure it will pass the weightage to the other page.
- Page Views – Yes, the upfront benefit is, it will improve your page views. For example If a user has searched for internal links and reached to your website, there he found that, he is lacking keyword density and keyword research tools. Now he will visit those posts, and it will give you two more views. Hence, it will let you earn more, if you are using pay per impression.
- Effective crawl/Index – Effective internal linking will buy you a users and search engines. If a spider will find your page more valuable in terms of content, links and authority, then they will not avoid to crawl or index it again for relevant search.
- Make your website user-friendly – If you have linked pages effectively, then the user will find it easy to navigate your content with ease.
How many internal links are too many?
Well, there is no such hard written rules to use the number of links, but yes, try to use only relevant links only. Because, if you will have non-relevant links, it will irritate both the visitors and the spiders as well.
The best practice is avoiding irrelevant links and use only relevant links. And relevant links are only few, and hence you will not cross the border of internal linking.
Note: you can read matt cutts article on how many links per page.
Internal link – how to use?
Now we will see, how to use internal link effectively to gain above said benefits.
- Link Relevant Post – while writing an article or a post, you can link other post which will give more information to your reader. Just remember, the only relevant article will help you.
- Link Old post with new post – If you have a new post which is relevant to the older post, then you can link it. In fact, if older post is still found in the search result, then it will give you more value.
- Link pages to the post – You can link pages to the post or post to the pages as well.
Conclusion
We have just covered internal link, its benefits and how to effectively use internal link. Never forget to link your relevant articles to give your user best of yours.