How to Make the Most of Internal Links for a Better

An internal link is a hyperlink pointing to a page in the same domain. internal links are of crucial importance for the ranking and usability of websites:

• Internal links allow users to navigate comfortably on the site (i.e. to complete a purchase, learn more about a product or learn more about your company)
• Internal links allow robots to exploration to discover more pages of your site, even those without external backs (especially the most important ones)
• Internal links are designed * to improve authority of each given page (Google puts a little emphasis on the signal: The more internal links a page has, the more internal authority it is supposed to have).

* This has never been officially confirmed by Google (unless I missed the ad) but we have seen the web pages get byIt looks considerably better once we add internal links pointing to it, so let's say this one is an educated theory supported by several experiments.

Now the question though is how to properly use internal y links. Let's see…

1. Internal linking basics and best practices

I won't repeat what Rand said in this Friday Whiteboard Video because I agree with most (all?) points. But let me recap:

• Well structured navigation is crucial for both user experience and exploration ... however
• content (embedded links in meaningful context) seem to carry more weight for rankings
• Google is thought to place the least importance on footer links
• Internal anchoringtext matters. This has almost been confirmed by a Googler. That said, if you are targeting specific queries for a specific page, use keyword-focused (but meaningful) deifs keyword links when you link to that page (when it makes sense). However, always avoid using the exact anchor text as it may seem unnatural.
• If there are two internal links to the same page on a page, only the top anchor text seems to matter to Google
• Google seems like text links more than image links with alt text
• In general, the more links a page has, the better its rank (this is easy to test: just choose a page on your site and start linking to it consistently. You will probably see it growing in the SERPs)

2. Analyze and evaluate internal link structure

EtNotably, given the weight SEO places on internal links , there aren't many tools that allow you to see the internal structure clearly. Yes, there are a few powerful exploration solutions out there, including this free one as well as one of my favorites Screaming Frog .

But there 's no easy way to analyze how each landing page relates to the whole site.

Jet Octopus solves this problem by introducing the Linking Explorer feature . Explore your site using Jet Octopus and open the Linking Explorer section (Behind the “Explore” link in the navigation). From there, you can provide your (or competitor's) landing page URL to see exactly how it links from other pages on the site.

I like the section of the report that shows the inbound anchor text links. Thisgives you a great overview:

• If you optimize your internal anchor enough (or over-optimize things to the point where it looks a bit silly / unnatural)
• What keywords that your competitors want to rank for each specific ranking

3. Using structured data for internal links

Besides anchor text, there is a nicer way to signal your internal structure to Google by associating: Schema .org

Some of the properties of Schema.org have been confirmed by Google to have an impact on how they interpret the websites (at least how the page looks when listed in the SERPs). Others probably help, because, as confirmed by Google, structured the data ingeneral help Google understand websites better and may even be a ranking factor.

Resources

Analytics The Ultimate Guide to Forum Linking in 2020

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Development SEO & Developer relationship improvement

Analytics How to do an Online Competitor Analysis

So when using interlinksnes, what Schema .org properties can be implemented?

1. / BreadcrumbList

Google says Breadcrumb trail markup using Schema.org is one of the improvement tools that could positively influence your website's organic visibility and engagement (i.e. click-through)

• Markup helps Google understand the website hierarchy better
• / BreadcrumbList markup helps Google generate a breadcrumb type format of the URL structure, which is more attractive and can increase the number of clicks

[Indicate the position of each URL in the site hierarchy u sing BreadcrumbList]

There are a variety of WordPress plugins that allow you to easily implement markup, including this one .

2. Authorship

Even though Google's authorship was discontinued (meaning authors are no longer highlighted in search results), this experiment revealed two things:

• Google is careful who wrote a piece (we've seen traces of this over and over again, including guidelines from their reviewers who introduced EAT (Expertise, Authority, Reliability) concept )
• Google appreciates any help they can get in identifying a page author

That being said, making their lives easier never hurts, so tag the links internal bio using Schema.org/author is a good idea.

3. / ListItem

Another way to stand out is search is to introduce these search carousels. Officially , Google supports the list format for the following types of content: recipe, movie, course, article. However, as they confirm, this list never ceasese to lie down, so tagging your product lists is not a bad idea.

[Here is an example of a list of a single website displayed in a carousel]

4. Notices!

Reviews enjoy tremendous visibility on the SERPs. This is one of the oldest rich snippets from Google experienced with and today 'hui Google supports a variety of types including including "including businesses, products and various creative works such as books or movies. " Here's a solid collection of WordPress plugins for each supported type depending on what you're doing. All of the plugins in this list are based on Schema.org.

Google recommends using schema.org/URL whenever you want to direct them to the page with the full review.