You put in the work. You wrote amazing content and provided valuable resources for readers to learn everything there is to know about a topic. Now it’s time to add internal links to your posts so that readers stay on your site longer and discover your amazing writing!
Lots of posts can quickly get lost once they’re pushed off the front page. To assure that your posts stay relevant and Google crawlers discover them, you need a solid internal linking strategy.
What are Internal Links?
An internal link is a link from one post of your blog or niche site to another post. Search engines and individual users use internal links to uncover your website content. Readers click internal links to navigate around your site and read new content that piques their interest. Without internal links, Google would never be able to discover new posts on your site at all!
Each time you publish a new post, the first internal link of a post is added to your homepage, provided it shows your blog’s latest posts.
However, we want to also add internal links to the body of several existing posts on the site to show google the post is important.
The more internal links that point to a single post, the more important Google understands it to be to your site.
Posts with zero internal links are referred to as “orphaned posts.”
Ideally, every post on a site should be internally linked to/from another post.
Internal Links Help Your SEO
Strategic internal links are a powerful strategy as far as blog marketing is concerned. It is one of the most straightforward methods to benefit from an uptick in SEO. Internal links among blog articles and relevant content are considered to be an efficient way to show Google how your articles related to each other. Internal links are considered an essential key if you want to get those sky-high Google rankings.
Internal Links to Pillar Pages
Internal links can massively aid the ranking of your blog’s pillar content. You have to compete with some huge competitors in pretty much all blogging niches. To compete, if you have a pillar page with lots of internal links on your website, the higher its chance of ranking will be on Google. It’s not that simple, of course, but it’s a start. The quality of the article and external SEO factors are also considered, but internal links to pillar content give your blog post a fighting chance.
Choose Varied Anchor Texts
Anchor text is the blog post text used to create the internal link, visible to the front-end reader.
Most often, you want to use the keyword you’re trying to rank for when creating internal links.
However, doing too much exact match anchor text linking can appear spammy. Some unscrupulous bloggers have tried manipulating search results this way, but they failed in the end. So vary up the anchor text you use to keep your linking strategy natural.
Anchor text is an important way to tell Google what the post is about. Google will look at link profiles in their algorithm when they decide where to rank all of a blog’s posts. When you use varied anchor text on your link profile, rest assured that you will have a greater chance to be on top!
Keep Track of Your Internal Links with Yoast
The Yoast SEO plugin provides an easy way to check the number of internal links going in and out of a blog post. Just enable to columns on the “Screen Options” area of your Posts page on the WordPress backend. This allows you to quickly prioritize the posts that need more internal links. Yoast SEO is crucial for checking whether I’ve linked to other posts on my site.
Add Links Manually
It’s best to add internal links to your blog manually, even though plugins and software tools are available to do it for you and make link suggestions. No one knows your site better than you do! By doing the linking manually, you can rest assured that you will carefully select the best anchor text and links that appear across your website for the best results.
How Many Internal Links to Add Per Post?
As far as the exact number of internal links per post is concerned, there is no required number as to how many links you should add to every blog post on your site. It is usually good to add at least 1, but up to 10 internal links for every single post on your website. Remember that Google will avoid crawling spammy pages with thousands of internal links. Be selective and careful about your blog’s internal links to avoid appearing like you are link-stuffing your site!
Should Internal Links Open in the Same Window or a Different Tab?
Many SEOs recommend formatting your internal links to open in the same or current tab of your website, however, I take a slightly different approach.
If the link appears at the beginning or middle of my article, I have it open in a new tab. If it appears at the end of the article, I have it open in the same tab.
The idea is that the user might want to keep reading the current article if they’re only at the top or the middle of the page. Once the reader is at the end, they’re more likely to want to move on to the next piece of content.
I don’t have any official data to back up my choice, but good old-fashioned thinking about the user experience brought me to that conclusion.
But to be clear, the official SEO recommendation is to have internal links open in the same tab.
Optimize Your Site Structure for Best Results
A well-structured niche site is essential to making the Google search engine crawler’s job easier. Good site architecture means greater chances of achieving higher rankings and faster indexing. Optimizing your niche site structure is essential for both usability and SEO. Be sure that your website is user-friendly, fast, easy, and simple to navigate and, most importantly, serves its true purpose.
An easy structure will attract new readers, get more email subscribers and make even make sales if you do affiliate marketing or sell products on your site.
By using internal links, the valuable content of your website will be in the best position possible. It has become essential for all bloggers, especially if you have a loyal readership since you can reduce the bounce rate of your blog, which in return will help Google see your site as engaging and worthwhile to readers.
Go ahead and add some internal links to your blog posts today! Adding these links is an essential part of the path to success in your making money blogging journey!