Link Smarter, Not Harder: An SEO Internal Linking Strategy That Works
Earning external links from a high-authority website can feel like you’ve won the search engine optimization (SEO) jackpot. While we love a good external link, that’s just one part of your SEO strategy. Internal linking is a smart and simple way to boost organic traffic with just a few clicks.
But it isn’t enough to randomly link pages together or, worse, overload your web pages with a blitz of hyperlinks. You need an SEO internal linking strategy to create a seamless user experience, distribute link juice effectively, and guide both users and search engine crawlers to your most important pages.
In this guide, we’ll explain why every business needs an internal linking strategy and share our five favorite internal linking best practices to boost your rankings in no time.
What Is an Internal Linking Strategy, and Why Do I Need One?
An internal linking strategy is a thought-out plan for how you structure hyperlinks in your website. This approach strategically connects important pages on your site, telling both search engine crawlers and human users what they should do next. Not only does this tell search engines more about your site structure, but it also keeps human readers on-site longer. It’s a win-win!
It’s easy to skip over internal linking and focus on other components of SEO, like digital marketing and content creation, but this SEO strategy matters, too. In fact, Google’s John Mueller says internal links are super important because they pass link equity from one linked page to another.
The thing is, you can’t go crazy with the internal links. Using too many links on a single page can dilute their value in Google’s algorithm, which is why a thoughtful approach to internal linking is so important.
Aside from getting on Google’s good side, an SEO internal linking strategy can also help you:
- Improve user navigation: The longer you keep folks on your site, the more time they spend engaging with your brand. Internal links help users find relevant content and important pages on your site that solve their pain points, which will hopefully keep them on-site longer. Navigational links and sidebars are also awesome internal linking opportunities that direct the flow of traffic and give users a clear idea of where they should go next.
- Distribute page authority effectively: Internal linking distributes link value across your site. In plain English, that means your high-authority pages pass their solid reputations to new pages. With the right strategy, this approach improves the visibility of pages that search engine crawlers might otherwise miss.
- Boost traffic: Who doesn’t want more free traffic? A strong internal linking structure encourages users to explore your website, which reduces bounce rate and increases time on site.
- Increase long-term SEO performance: Look, SEO doesn’t happen overnight. Fortunately, internal links are an easy way to boost performance. An internal linking strategy helps you highlight the most important pages, telling search engines what deserves attention in the search engine results pages (SERPs). This approach worked great for our client Aventon: We increased their blog traffic by 207%, thanks in part to better internal linking.
You already went through the trouble of creating content for your website. Whether you have an e-commerce site and need to send extra traffic to certain product pages or want to boost the visibility of a specific page, you’ve got to double down on internal linking.
Our 5 Favorite SEO Internal Linking Strategies
Internal linking is a powerful and cost-effective way to boost your site in search — and keep interested users around longer. Ultimately, a solid internal linking strategy comes down to connecting relevant ideas and providing value to site visitors. Follow these internal linking best practices to do internal links right.
1. Decide on Your Site Architecture
Think of site architecture as the bones of your website. It determines how your web pages flow together and the overall experience they create.
Not only is this a best practice for an awesome user experience, but a well-planned site map also ensures search engines index your most important pages. What’s good for human users is good for search engine crawlers, so the more valuable users find your site, the more likely Google is to index and rank your content.
Identify the most important pages on your site, like your homepage, landing pages, product pages, and cornerstone content. Arrange these hierarchically, grouping them into clear categories and subcategories that make sense to users.
This process can get overwhelming at first, so once you have the basics, link everything together visually. Create a sitemap to help you see how all internal pages connect. Double-check your work to ensure you’re not creating orphan pages, which are pages without internal links.
If you have an established website with lots of links, tools like the Screamingfrog SEO plugin can quickly retrieve a list of pages for you. It can even spot broken internal links, nofollow tags, and technical SEO issues.
2. Cluster Topics and Ideas
When it comes to internal linking, ideas that flow together go together. Start by identifying pillar pages, which are pages that cover a particular topic. For example, maybe you create a long-form guide on “healthy sleep tips for new parents.” This pillar page targets lots of long-tail keywords and provides actionable tips for readers.
Once these content hubs are in place, it’s time to flesh out your site with topic clusters. These are groups of relevant pages or new content that explore subtopics in greater detail and link back to the pillar page using contextual links with descriptive anchor text.
Conduct keyword research and competitor recon to determine which topics best solve your audience’s pain points. For example, a topic cluster for “sleep supplements” might include linked pages on melatonin, herbal tea, or magnesium.
This approach is great because it gives your visitors lots of juicy content to explore when they visit your site. Search engines also like subtopics that explore cornerstone content more deeply because they provide more value to your audience.
3. Use Contextual Linking
Now that your pages are fleshed out, connect them based on shared context. That means all of your supplement-related content should naturally flow together from one area to the next with contextual links.
But don’t overwhelm the page with links. It’s best to find your most authoritative pages and strategically pass their link juice to other pages via internal linking. Tools like the Semrush Backlink Analysis Tool or Google Search Console can help pinpoint high-authority pages and highlight internal linking opportunities.
4. Optimize Anchor Text
Anchor text is the blue hyperlinked text that takes users to another page. Search engines rely on anchor text to determine what the linked page is about and what value users can expect to get from that page.
The goal here is to improve the user experience with helpful anchor text that serves as a natural extension of what they’re already reading.
So, instead of using generic phrases like “click here,” which sounds a little spammy, use descriptive anchor text like “It’s almost time to file your small business taxes,” linking on “small business taxes” to another resource on your site.
It’s tempting to use lots of relevant anchor text, but pump the brakes. Keyword stuffing is a cardinal sin of SEO — you don’t want to overuse keywords in your anchor text. It hurts the user experience and could even hurt your SEO rankings. When in doubt, focus on writing like a human, and you’ll be in the clear.
5. Find Low-Hanging Fruit With the Right Tools
It’s tempting to toss your entire website and start from scratch with internal linking, but you don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Your existing content is prime for optimization — all you need are the right tools to speed things up.
A simple way to maximize link juice is to audit your older web pages and add internal links. For example, if you’ve recently published a pillar page, look through older posts for contextual linking opportunities that naturally connect to this new page.
But hey, we get it: If your site’s been around for more than a few years, you probably have a lot of URLs to sift through. Use Google Search Console to identify orphan pages in serious need of internal links. Ahrefs and Semrush are also helpful for tracking metrics like bounce rate and your overall number of internal links per page, helping you monitor just how effective your internal linking strategy is.
Outsource Your SEO Internal Linking Strategy
Internal link building is a beginner-friendly SEO strategy that will steadily boost your site’s value, organic traffic, and sales. Your SEO internal linking strategy will require creating lots of high-quality content that readers love and search engines eat up.
But you don’t have to figure everything out yourself. The best way to see SEO gains in months (instead of years) is to go with an agency with a track record of boosting PageRank.Growth Machine’s team of SEO and marketing pros is here to create a holistic SEO strategy that gets results for your business — without you lifting a finger. Contact us today to ditch the learning curve and reap the benefits of a personalized SEO strategy.
