Let me explain how important internal linking is with regard getting your website to work on Google (point to note: I will just talk about Google regarding optimisation, as this is the only search engine that needs be considered as all other engines strive to be Google, so if you get it right for Google you are right on track. Google also generates over 90% of all traffic to the majority of websites, links from other sites not included).
All links need to have a Title Tag. A Title Tag is similar to an ALT Tag (that you attach to an on-page image). Lets look at an example so you understand what a Title Tag looks like and how to write one:
Wrong:
<a href="/website-optimisation.html">Website Optimisation</a> ✖
Right:
<a href="/website-optimisation.html" title=”website optimisation”>Website Optimisation</a> ✔
As you can see by the above (right) example this is how the Title Tag should be written & included in all internal links. You may have seen a hover box that that contains text that describes the link that you are hovering over. That is what a Title Tag is. The reason this is important is that Google looks at the Title Tag to somewhat determine what the page the link points to discusses. Google hold a great deal of weight with links, internal & incoming. I will discuss incoming links more later in the report.
Every Title Tag link should contain the main keyword phrase that you want the page its pointing too to be found for. It is a good idea to make each link within the site to include different keyword phrases. Google uses semantics & this is a very clever way of getting a page found for several different keyword phrases. Let me share an example. You have a page (page 1) that discuses “website optimisation”. You have 3 internal links to that page.
- 1. Link has the Title Tag “website optimisation”
- 2. Link has the Title Tag “search engine optimisation”
- 3. Link has the title tag “SEO”
As you can see the three terms explain the same thing (semantic writing). This gives me the chance of page (1) to be found for: Website Optimisation, SEO and Search Engine Optimisation. This really makes a huge difference to the pages when done well. I would consider this for all the pages in your site. It will take a little
time to implement but the result difference will be so worth the time & effort taken to do it.
The next thing that needs to be discussed concerning the internal linking is the fact that your pages could have a PageRank. This is something that needs to be considered & carefully thought about when making your site work for you. It is possible to make you PageRank stick to a page or somewhat be watered down to leave a page to help another. This is sometimes called Link Juice.
This takes some explaining so please be patient. You should be looking for your products/services pages that are important to you and the business to get the best PageRank possible. Some pages will not be so important like you Terms & conditions, Privacy Policy and Contact page or the About the company page. You can include a No Follow Tag so that Google will not allow the PageRank to disperse from the page to a non important product/service page.
Lets take a look at how to implement this on internal links to non important pages.
Wrong:
<a href="/contact.html" title=”contact us”>Contact</a> ✖
Right:
<a href="/contact.html" title=”contact us” rel”nofollow”>Contact</a> ✔
Imagine this is on a product/services page, you do not want the PageRank (Link Juice) to be diluted as PageRank is an important determining factor to be ranked well on Googles SERPs This needs to be done on all pages that are products & services. These are the pages that make you business money, so you want Google to look at them as highly as possible.
At this point it would be advisable to explain how to get a site indexed by way of Google web masters tools. Google have the facility to add a xml sitemap to there index so they now about all the pages of your site. To setup a free account got to: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ & sign up its free too. Then you will be asked for the name of your sitemap. the address will be /sitemap.xml. This will help Google know about all your pages within your website & the account will show you when Google last picked up your sitemap & indexed your web pages.
If you don't have the time to implement the above Internal Linking Strategies on your site or you would like me to assist you, please contact me today for a free quote. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
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