When looking for new SEO opportunities, internal link building is one of the most crucial concepts one should understand.
I have noticed that most digital marketers focus on building quality backlinks and forget about the internal links, which causes harm to your links. Internal Links have been pretty simple to understand but can be tricky for experts too.
Most people have made several mistakes while creating those links, which we will discuss here.
Why is Internal Linking Strategy for SEO Important?
In simple words, internal links can help you take from one page to another but will share the same domain. It even allows visitors to navigate different sites easily by interconnecting them. If you create a solid internal link strategy, then that can benefit you in several ways-
1. Increase Visibility
Creating high-quality internal links will help you to improve website ranking in SERP, and every search engine will crawl through the web pages and explore new content. It will follow a link to another page which is why building a quality internal link is essential because that will make you visible on Google.
2. Enhance User Experience
User experience is one of the crucial parts when it comes to SEO. With the help of creating a good internal link, it will help the users to navigate the website. It will enhance the UX and also improve the performance of the website. The ability will drive traffic to your website and offer more opportunities to rank higher.
3. Build and Distribute Authority
The PageRank algorithm of Google accesses the web pages for authority and quality, which helps determine where Google will rank your website. With the help of internal linking, you can improve the website and your page's ranking.
Mistakes you should avoid
1. Using inadequate links
Using inadequate links is one of the most obvious mistakes people make. When they use the broken links, then that will not work at all. When you do this, that means you are sending your reader to the broken or unavailable link, which increases the bounce rate and eliminates the website's credibility. Different kinds of wrong links that may hamper your link structure –
- Broken Links
- Redirect Chains
- Masked Links
- Temporary Links
You can even avoid inadequate internal links to audit the website regularly. You should check whether there is any wrong or broken link so you can replace it later.
2. Use excessive on-page links
If you have heard the saying, "everything in excess is good for nothing." Well, I learned it now! As it is applied to internal linking because when you do overdo then, it can be dangerous and threaten your SEO.
When you add so many internal links, then that will make your search engine suspicious, and that will affect your ranking and reduce user engagement and experience. That is why it is advised to the person to achieve this by linking only the relevant pages with your pages or content that is crucial for the audience.
3. Improper use of anchor texts
Anchor text is something that should be visible and clickable in the hyperlink. It is even customizable, which means you can change the style or color of the link with the use of CSS and HTML.
I believe that anchor text is one of the crucial parts of link building, whether internal or external. We need to use that properly because it will give users an idea about the linked pages. Otherwise, it may cause more harm.
The best way to use the anchor text is through link pages on the site and keeps the link text as concise as possible. You also need to optimize the anchor text and prevent hurting the SEO.
4. Broken external links
External links will pass the authority to other linked pages, but if the link is broken, that will be a complete waste of time. You need to adjust the internal links when your external links are broken.
You can check whether the URL is correct and change the other website. But you need to ensure links on the site are working properly, and that will be your responsibility.
But if the page has a broken link, it is essential to contact the website's owner and fix that issue. We can also find the functioning page ourselves and change the link or remove the link.
5. Permanent redirects
Permanent redirects may not be the final decision because they have to pass PageRank of the original page while you ask search engines to remove the index.
Moreover, when you redirect, that will consume your budget for crawling, which means the search bot will stop crawling the website before even indexing the critical page.
That is why; we recommend you keep the redirect to as minimum as possible and review the URLs and change them to the target URL.
6. Missing the Follow Attribute
It is essential to have about two 'follow' attributes on the website. Normal users may think do-follow and no-follow links are the same, and they may add either.
But let me tell you, my friend, it is not!!
When it comes to internal linking, the kind of attribute you use can make a lot of difference. If you use the no-follow tag for internal links, then the search engine will avoid that, and you may want to stop search engines from visiting the content. This will impact the SEO of the website, and ultimately, the ranking will suffer.
But you can assign do-follow tags when there is no good reason which will prevent the crawlers from visiting them. This is the best way to rank better.
7. Liking in a header tag
Another mistake that most people face is that they link in the header tags on the web page, which can be defined as the structure and hierarchy. When you notice the links that point to the other pages in the heading, you should only remember that it is bad internal linking.
It does not transfer more link equity to the linked pages but looks spammy to search engines and users. When this happens, then that will significantly damage the ranking. That is why the best way to optimize headers is by making them relevant to the page.
Moreover, you can add the link in the body text and even use the image for internal links. It is the right way that helps search bots index pages and boosts your SEO.
8. Redirect chains and loops
One of the great ways to use redirects is when it takes you from one page to another. But it may become wrong when you put that in the wrong way. The redirect leads will take you to other redirects and create a chain.
I link that straight to the destination pages because that will help you identify the pattern and fix it as soon as possible. For the internal pages, chains and loops are caused by the previous migration of the website.
9. Overlooking the orphaned pages
Orphaned pages on your website will not have any internal link which points toward them. There is no way that a user or search bot will get those pages. When you have those pages then, that will harm the SEO efforts which you have made.
That is why you need to audit the website for the pages with no internal links. Once you find those links, you need to analyze the content, have some valuable information, and then interlink it with the other pages. But if the page is not helpful, just delete it from there.
It is the right way to minimize the count of orphaned pages on the main website and ensure that SEO is unaffected.
10. Not building proper links for images
Another mistake we usually make is that they need to build proper links for the images. About 10% of the information is what users read from the text, and about 65% of the information they remember is through photos.
Which is the reason I always link my images correctly. But people often overlooked this part. We should start using the image link correctly and make the page look amazing and filled with quality leads and backlinks.
We can fix the issue by creating an engaging image that people would live there or making infographics that will provide you with details of insight. But more importantly, we need to use high-quality graphics and alt-tags, which make the images explorable. So people can get the information that they are looking for.
Wrapping Up!
Making mistakes is not a big deal because anyone can make them, but a higher ranking on Google is the crucial factor one should consider. With the help of well-planned internal linking strategies, you can gain more ranking and visibility and secure higher ranks on Google.
But building a good internal link structure does require several efforts, and you need to ensure creating proper strategies. While building strategies, make sure you are not making these SEO mistakes because when you do that, it will be a complete waste of resources and effort.
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