How to Create an Internal Linking Strategy for SEO

SEO experts say that link-building is the third most important ranking factor in SEO. Google’s search engine was built on the premise that the more backlinks a site has, the more valuable the content.

Sites with a lot of backlinks would get rewarded with higher search rankings. Backlinks do matter in SEO, but there’s one forgotten part of link building.

That’s an internal linking strategy. Internal links give search engines important information about your site. Bots understand the context of your content and the most important pieces of content just from internal links.

If you want to boost SEO, you’ll want to keep reading. Find out how to make internal links a major part of your SEO strategy.

Create a Website Pyramid

A website structure tells Google what your most important pieces of content are and what your site is about.

You might have a website about yoga. There are different modalities of yoga, such as ashtanga yoga and Bikram yoga. In order to get search engines to understand what your site covers, you’ll create categories for your content.

The categories are the main themes of your site.

Underneath each theme is a page of content. Each theme needs to have a cornerstone piece of content. This is the primary source of content.

The yoga site can have cornerstone content that has the ultimate guide to ashtanga yoga or the modality that is relevant to the site.

Under the cornerstone content, create content that covers elements of ashtanga yoga. An article like “5 Poses to Include in Your Ashtanga Yoga Routine” can link to the ultimate guide article.

The Art of Anchor Text

Anchor text is the clickable area that leads to another web page. The links are usually blue or highlighted in text to show that they’re clickable links.

Understanding what an anchor does lets you give even more context to your page. It helps search engines understand what a page is about.

It’s tempting to use your site’s primary keyword repeatedly as the anchor text. That will send a signal that there’s something suspicious happening on your site.

Your site could end up getting flagged for spam. Use anchor links with related keywords instead. 

Internal Links or External Links?

What should you work on first, internal links or external links? Develop your internal linking strategy first. That helps you build a firm linking foundation.

When you do get external links to your site, it will be like pouring gasoline over a fire. It will accelerate your SEO strategy a needed boost.

How many links do you need to get on the first page of Google? It depends on your niche and your competition. As long as you focus on quality inbound links, you’ll boost SEO quickly.

Build an Internal Linking Strategy

Building an internal linking strategy isn’t as complicated as it seems. You just need to give your site structure and show search engines what your most important pieces of content are.

Then you can turn your attention to getting inbound links as part of your SEO strategy.

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