Internal linking for SEO
Sometimes, some businesses overlook using internal links when trying to improve their onsite seo, however when they are used correctly, they can greatly improve your on page SEO. Not only can they inform the search engines about what that page is about, they can also help shoppers to stay on your website for longer, which can help your business to improve its sales if it’s done right.
For example, let’s say that your business specialises in selling e bikes, you might add a link within the product description to bicycle tyre pumps.
Therefore once the shopper has added a bike to their basket, they may also click the link to by a tyre pump.
Internal links can therefore help shoppers to find other products that they are interested in buying, it also help the search engines to understand what that products or services you are selling.
This helpful guide therefore has the aim of helping you to improve how your business uses internal linking, and to explain why it’s important to search engine optimisation, and why it’s important that you use white hat methods when you are writing your businesses anchor text.
First things first, what is internal linking?
Sometimes with search engine optimisation, some of the topics that we cover can sometimes be fairly complex, like how Google’s Hummingbird changed SEO, however internal linking is very simple to understand, even if you don’t know much about seo.
So what are internal links? Well simply put its just one page that links to another through a hyperlink.
The hyperlink has anchor text, which is simply the text that you click on to follow the link.
Internal structure
What’s also important to understand, is that search engine optimisation consultants believe that how pages are linked to within your website is also important. So, for example, your website might have over 100 pages, yet there might be one main page which is linked to the most, and if this is linked to by a lot of blog posts and main pages within your website, then it is obvious that this page is one of the most important pages on your company website.
For example, let’s say that you run scaffolding business, and it is the commercial scaffolding page which is linked to the most. Therefore it is obvious to the search engines the main service you offer is to build scaffolding for businesses.
It also gives an indication that your business is less focused on building scaffolding for residential customers, if most of your anchor text and internal links and content marketing are all about building scaffolding for businesses.
So, you might now see how internal links, can be used to help give a clear signal to the search engine’s what your business offers.
Let’s give you another example, let’s say that your business sells meal kits, that are just sent out in the post for people to prepare the meal themselves at home.
If a lot of the internal links on your website are about curry, let’s say tikka masala, chicken korma and beef madras are mentioned a lot, then a lot of you links about curry dishes, and your website will start to become more relevant for people that want to purchase meal kits, to make Indian meals at home.
What is anchor text?
Anchor text is simply the text that you click on, that then allows you to follow the link. The anchor text should therefore be a short description which describes what that page is about.
May help you to sell more products
When a shopper visits a page on your website, which sells a product, they might be interested in purchasing other items that are related to that product.
Let’s say for example somebody buys a DAB player, they might want a set of headphones to go along with that product.
The anchor text might therefore be something as simple as “headphones”, so that somebody could click the link, and then they might want to also purchase a set of headphones from you as well.
As you can see from what we’ve mentioned earlier, anchor text can be used to help the search engines to understand what a page is about, but it might also help you to sell other products by helping your customers to find other items that they might also be interested in purchasing.
You might just want to help your customers
Sometimes it’s not all about promoting other products that your business sells, for example sure, you can use anchor text to direct the customer to other products that you sell on your website.
Sometimes however a business will simply want to be helpful to its customers, for example, you might have written a rather wordy blog post about a product that you sell.
Let’s say for example that you sell single malt whiskey, which is delivered to the customer. You might write a rather long article about various places people who are interested in Scottish whiskey might want to visit. You might want to have links to distilleries that allow people to walk around see how the whiskey is made.
Therefore, even though you might not own these other whiskey businesses, you might want to promote them on your website, because it’s helpful to people who are interested in drinking whiskey, they may find your website useful, and therefore keep returning and reading your blog posts.
Whether that’s to buy products or to read your blog posts, in either case it helping to promote your brand awareness, and establish your brand within the market.
So to return back to our example of internal links, it doesn’t always have to be to promote your products you could link to other websites that you think your shoppers would be interested in reading.