As all marketers know, search engine positioning is one of the main pillars of online strategies. buy youtube views From the selection of the best keywords to the optimization of the alternative text of the images, SEO positioning is made up of an endless number of factors that we can optimize so that our page increases positions in the search engines.
But within all these factors, we sometimes forget some details that can be crucial for search engine positioning. For example, it is very common to pay attention to external links and have a link building strategy , but have you considered the internal linking of your website? If the answer is “no”, it’s time to remedy it and improve your SEO with very little effort!
The importance of internal linking for search engine positioning
The internal linking , that is, the links that take from one page to another within your own website , is a much more important factor than you think. For Google, internal links show the relationships between content and transfer value and importance from one page to another.
The internal links define the structure of your website. They help users to go from one site to another and search engines understand how content is organized. A well developed internal linking strategy makes it easier for your pages to be indexed and positioned in the search engines, and also increases the click and conversion rates of visitors. And luckily, it is a factor that is completely under your control.
Before getting down to work, let’s see some of the basic principles of internal links in search engine positioning:
- The more links a page has, the more value Google will give you . In the same way that external links indicate the overall value of a website compared to other sites of the competition, internal links help Google to decide how important a page is in relation to the rest of the pages of your site.
- Internal links are so important that Google no longer applies limits to the total number of links on a page . The first algorithms of Google penalized the pages with more than 100 links, considering that it was a spam strategy. However, for years this penalty has been eliminated, so you can include all the necessary links as long as they add value to the user.
- The internal links can make some pages of little value for conversions (such as the home page or the information about the company) to be positioned in the first places .
- The links from new content pass new value to the pages that link and serve to notify Google that there is new information on the page. Therefore, including links in the new content can help to index it more quickly and thus improve your search engine positioning .
3 winning strategies to improve your search engine positioning with internal links
1) Reduce the click depth
According to Google statements, the depth of click (that is, the number of clicks that are needed to reach a specific page of the site from the home page) influences the positioning in the search engines . The closer a page is to a page, the better it will position.
For webmasters, this means that we have it very easy to quickly improve the positioning of a particular page , especially if we work with very large websites or with a complex structure. Follow these tips to get down to work:
- Include more recommended or similar pages in your product pages, blog articles and the like . In this way, there will be more internal links within the same category or related categories, causing some of the pages with more depth of click to approach the surface.
- Increase the number of first level categories , that is, categories linked from the start page itself. This will ensure that products within those categories are only a few clicks away.
- Reduce the number of pages within each category . If the categories contain many products, it is normal that they do not load all at once, but that they are presented as a list of pages that the user can consult. The problem with this is that the products on the last pages are very deep. To solve it, you can choose to include more products on each page or create more categories so there are fewer products in each of them.
By implementing these recommendations, it is possible to reduce the depth of click of most pages from more than 50 to less than 15. In addition, these improvements make it possible for Google spiders to track the complete catalog of products on a website. less time. This allows new products to be discovered more quickly and improves their search engine positioning.
2) Create content centers
This strategy works especially on web sites that use content marketing to position themselves as experts on a series of topics. It involves grouping the related content around key issues and creating central pages that include all the related links. In this way, it is possible to improve the search engine positioning of all pages around a specific topic at the same time.
These are the main characteristics of a content center:
- Group multiple pages of your website that deal with the same topic or that revolve around a specific keyword . Normally, these themes and keywords will coincide with the central themes of your site.
- It is structured around a central page . This page includes detailed information about the topic or the main keyword and links to other pages of the content center, so that all the information is correctly grouped.
- Use internal links between the different secondary pages to reinforce the relationships between them . Whenever possible, these links should use words related to the central theme in the anchor text.
The idea of this strategy is to ensure that the central page improves its positioning in search engines and that this authority is distributed among the links to the secondary pages, which also benefit from this. In addition, using content centers can improve the positioning of the entire domain and improve the click ratio.
3) Improve the positioning of pages related to events
This strategy is especially designed for brands that launch seasonal campaigns or hold special events, for example, Christmas campaigns, sales, Black Friday or ticket sales for a congress.
To promote the pages related to the event and improve your search engine positioning, write down these tips :
- Create an optimized landing page for searches related to the event . This page should contain enough text to position itself with the keywords related to the event, but always maintaining relevance. Keep in mind that it will be easier for you to promote a single landing with several contents than several individual product pages.
- Put a “countdown” for the event on the landing page . Besides helping you to arouse the interest of your target, this simple trick makes the content change regularly and therefore the spiders of Google crawl the page more frequently.
- Create a content center to organize the pages related to the event and link them from your landing page . The linked content can include event pages, related product pages, articles, categories, etc. Thus, you will get the landing authority to pass to the other related pages.
- Use internal linking to promote the landing page within your website, making it easily accessible from other pages. For example, you can link to it from the home page and place it in a prominent place within the menu.
In this strategy, it is essential to find the right moment . Start working on your event page with sufficient time and do not forget to remove both the page and the links once the event has passed.
In conclusion…
The strategies linking internal can increase the authority of a site around a particular topic, increase the ratio of clicks and improve search engine positioning of individual pages.
If you use the internal links in a strategic way, you will get visible results in the positioning of the web pages of your site and in the number of organic visits.
If you want to improve your search engine positioning in a simple way, give a review of your website to reduce the depth of click, create content centers and promote groups of specific pages. You will see how the results are worthwhile.