You have created your website, and you want to increase its visibility as well as its reference? In this article, we explain what internal linking is and how it can improve your SEO.
By the end of this article, you will be able to understand and use internal meshing. First of all, it should be known that there are two techniques of mesh: the internal mesh and the external mesh. Both involve adding links to your site’s content to complement it. But the links themselves and their purpose are different. To understand how the technique of the external mesh differs from that of the internal mesh and to use it wisely, we invite you to consult our article explaining the external mesh (or net linking).
Table of Contents
To begin with, what is internal linking (or internal linking)?
In marketing, this term refers to the hypertext links included in the content of the pages of your website. They are arranged in such a way as to organize their structure. These are not just keywords to add but rather links that redirect the visitor to another page of your site. Thus, page A can add in its content a link to page B, another to page C, etc.
Also Read: Integrating SEO Into Your Marketing Strategies For Business Success
What are its objectives?
Allow an optimal visitor experience
The internal mesh gives visitors fluidity in their navigation and reading of your site. They, therefore, have quick and easy access to all the pages of your site. This prompts the visitor to explore other pages of your site by spending time there and looking for other information. This navigation can then facilitate the user experience and make it enjoyable.
Build effective SEO
The goal is also to encourage the visitor to explore other pages of this site and spend more time there. Thanks to this internal networking strategy, the various search engines consider it a site containing a lot of information. It is perceived as complete and can therefore be better referenced thanks to the traffic it will have generated. Its indexing will be optimized.
How to create an effective internal network?
For an internal networking strategy to be effective, several rules and recommendations must be followed.
Create content
An internal mesh is, above all, effective because it refers to content that you have created. To encourage the visitor to browse your site and its various pages, it is essential to create content (an internal link will not be as effective with 3 pages as with 20 linked pages). In this way, positioning the pages on different subjects allows distributing the power of each page. Doting Word Solutions provides you with the content creation services that will help in increasing brand awareness, provide information to the audience, build trust and loyalty, and boost lead and demand.
Also Read: SEO Trends: What Google Is Preparing For Us
Link contents
The second step is to link your different content together.
First of all, the location of the link plays a very important role. It is not advisable to place it in the “”””outer “” “”part (the bottom of the page) but rather in the content itself so that it is visible.
Therefore, it will be necessary to use logical connections between your different pages (as we did at the beginning of this article to indicate where to find information on our blog concerning the external mesh). To know what content to link, it is necessary to introduce a link that completes the page’s subject. It may therefore be a different subject but with similarities to the page in question. For example, on a page presenting an apple pie recipe, we can add a link to prepare the pie crust.
The content in which the link is inserted is called the “link anchor” To get the user to click on it, the transition needs to be done smoothly and consistently (using the same terms). Thus, several techniques are possible:
- By adding the link directly in the text on the relevant word (s), for example, “””” he pie is better with a homemade dough”
By adding an indicative formula such as ” o know our pie dough recipe, see our recipe on this page” “In this type of mesh, it is also preferable that this link opens in a new tab or window. Indeed, staying on the same tab by clicking on links redirecting to other pages can, in the long run, lose the visitor in his searches. With a new tab, he will keep the page on which he was browsing while looking for other information on another page.
Internal networking via ” landing pages” ” The landing pages are pages that generate the most traffic and arrivals (home page or one of the main pages). By adding the links on these pages, the information is easily accessible and refers to many contents. However, it will be necessary to select the main content, which may themselves lead to deeper pages.
Also Read: Free And Paid SEO & Web Marketing Tools (2020)
Which architecture to choose?
- The classic meshing consists of relating the pages to each other without considering their degree of importance in the website. In this way, the links used present a page’s information without highlighting one rather than another. Therefore, the classic mesh is an advantage because it is a method that allows easy access to any page. However, it can be complicated to follow.
- The genealogical architecture makes it possible to break down the different pages in order of importance. In this way, the home page (the trunk) presents the most important categories of pages (the branches), which themselves present subcategories of pages (the leaves). Everything is organized and hierarchically linked to the main page. There are, therefore, many more links from this main page than from one of the subcategories. This makes it possible to give visibility to deep pages, which are more difficult to reach in normal times. But on the other hand, some pages become much less visible because the links place them at the end of the chain. It is therefore preferable not to exceed three clicks to be able to reach a page.
- The silo architecture is, therefore, certainly the most efficient method because it allows to gather and link pages whose content is complementary or strongly similar. The links are relevant, and the visibility of each page is important. This strategy turns out to be the most effective for sites with many pages.
How many links to add?
While this strategy is generally effective, we still recommend that you do not overdo it. Indeed, too many links could discourage visitors who would no longer know which content (s) to go to. We, therefore, think that a few links are sufficient (4 to 5 per page). But it all depends on the length of your article!
Conclusion
To avoid wasting time, the most effective will be to do your internal linking manually from the creation of your website. It’s a job that takes time and can quickly get complicated. This is why we advise you to work with a Blogger Outreach Agency to make your job easier.
