Internal Linking! Using Content to Build Value in Your Site.

Internal Editorial Linking

What is it!

All of us know what a link is, even those of us who have been cryogenically frozen and held in suspended animation since the rotary telephone was a seriously inventive addition to the continuum of human technological innovation...well maybe not you, but everyone else who does not fall into this category, knows that a link, from your favorite news site, is usually going to be an interesting story. Thus Google increases the value for each page based on a sum of the existing page values that links to it. This is called external back-linking, and is one of the more powerful components of Google's ranking algorithm.

That being said, this model of linking can be laborious and time consuming and inevitably is built over time with good content, quality site design, increasing visibility and user community. So before you throw your hands in the air, settling into the long trek to online success, there is another key technique that you need to do to help develop a site positioned for success: internal editorial linking.

Internal Linking is basically just as it sounds, linking your website's different pages together, not haphazardly, but in a coherent manageable manner. This improves usability of your site, and though it is not as important for your overall score as external back links, it is incredibly important for long term success.

Why do it!

There are a number of discrete and different reasons to care about your internal linking strategy. Happy users are a big part of the reason. If I am reading an article on your blog about how to pick a pet from the SPCA and you had recently written an article on SPCA detachments with 'No Animal Kill Policies' then that would be a great link to slip in there. It is likely that if I am interested in one of those articles then I am interested in the other. This makes the site more useful and easily negotiable. Happy users stay on pages longer and follow your suggested directions, which can make the site a better conduit for whatever end-use actions you want your visitors to engage in.

How to do it!

To maximize your internal links its important to follow a list of techniques to make the task more defined.

- Utilize Sitemaps to create a simple architecture for you site, that users will find easy to navigate and will also make it easier for search engines to browse your pages.

- Never underestimate the value of a good FAQ section. It will give you a chance to reiterate other pieces of information found throughout the site as well as a good reason to link back to the pages that source the information. Create truncated answers and then link back for the rest of the answer. This will reinforce particular search terms increase their visibility to the search engines.

- Use a "Most Popular Posts/Articles" bar that lets you list some of the best content on your site in a convenient location. This will help drive traffic where you want as well as increase the internal strength of your site.

- Pick a good topic that you are interested in and instead of blasting out some somber of voluminous tome, break it up, write a series. Over time build a number of posts on the same topic and then link from each one to the next.

There are plenty of other ways to tweak and develop your internal linking structure, be creative. Remember that if you manage to create a site that is easy to negotiate and works to intuitively build information hubs, then other people will be more likely to link to your site, more likely stay for longer periods on your site, and thus the search engines will give you more and more credit for the work that you have put into your site.

Make sure to ask us about standing requests for blog content or use our writers to build topical articles for a series on your site.

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