One of the most common website optimization strategies is to create internal links on page SEO. This strategy is carried out by placing a link on the content published on it so that the link refers to a page on your website.
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Being in the top ranking of search engine search lists is not only determined by the quality of the content.
In today’s fierce competition, the influence of internal links on page SEO Optimization to rank your website on search engines is quite large.
The use of internal links and external links appropriately in your content will accelerate your website to reach the main page on search engines.
If internal links refer to links within the website, then external links refer to links outside the website. Building an internal link building strategy is very important.
In addition to being detected by Google, building internal links can also make hierarchy and content management more structured and related.
For those of you who have studied SEO, you certainly understand how important internal links are and their effect on search engine rankings.
Relevance Relationship between Article Content
Let’s look first at how Google crawls your website.
Google uses Google Bot to follow the direction of the link, both external and internal.
The robot will visit the homepage then render the page and follow the first link, continue exploring various links between one content and another.
Google will look for similarities between one content and another. If you don’t include links, it will be difficult for Google to evaluate and find relevance between content.
Even if the quality of your content is very good, Google’s algorithm cannot make judgments by reading and understanding the content.
One tactic you can use is to put tags on your content, so Google can easily detect internal links between articles on relevant topics.
Value of a Link
Google rates links that are on the homepage higher than links that are on the content.
The homepage is the place where you promote and choose which content to recommend to visitors.
Because of this, every time you publish content, include it on the homepage. By using this method, Google will find the content faster and easier.
From there Google will then search for existing links in the new content.
Increase link quantity without reducing link quality. Google values content or posts that contain lots of links as important content. This will have an impact on page rankings.
Internal Link Benefits
Some of the benefits of adding internal links in the content on the website:
- Make Visitors Frequently Visit Your Website
If done correctly, it can make visitors visit and browse your website often. In the end it makes the user experience better.
- Improve Website Structure
With internal links, you can make it easier for visitors to navigate on our website. It also makes it easier for search engine bots to crawl all articles on the website.
As a result, websites are indexed more easily and tend to rank better on Google, Bing and other search engines.
- Save Backlinks
Off-Page SEO optimization, especially backlinks, takes quite a lot of time and money. By using good internal linking techniques, you can save quite a bit of time and money because your content will be easier to rank for.
The biggest benefit is that it makes it easier for new content to get to Google’s main page. With well-structured internal links, new articles can rank on Google more easily.
This is often enough with internal links only, without backlinks or other Off-Page optimization.
Even if you need a backlink, the amount doesn’t need to be too much. The key is only in selecting the correct internal link content.
Strategy to Build Internal Links on Page SEO
The internal link strategy you use is intended to make Google understand page relevance, page relationships, and page value.
The strategy you implement must be updated and evaluated regularly. Creating an internal link network is one of the link building strategies.
Here are 8 strategies to build internal links:
- Creating Cornerstone Content
Think of your website as a pyramid. Post your best and most important content at the top of the pyramid (homepage).
The lower you go, the more general your content will be.
Under the homepage, you are encouraged to create content that contains lots of links.
The term for this content is cornerstone content. The pyramid structure will help Google determine content on the same topic.
A cornerstone content contains various internal links with the same topic of conversation.
It is highly recommended to put as many internal links as possible, but still pay attention to the quality of the links.
For example, you create cornerstone content that talks about “free On-Page SEO methods”.
In the content you can include a variety of internal links that have a variety of keywords that are relevant to the topic.
Your cornerstone content is like a hub or connector between content with the same discussion.
When people visit the content cornerstone, they will click on the link and visit another page on your website.
This technique will make Google understand and judge that the cornerstone page is important and rank it above other content.
- Create a Relevant Internal Link at the Beginning of the Article
For easy viewing and identification, put the link at the top of the page. Anyone who visits your website, including Google will see the link that appears first.
This will make it easier for Google to identify the links that you include are important links.
It is useless if you have built posts with lots of internal links but are difficult or fail to find.
- Adding a Link to a Category
You can categorize content based on certain topics or considerations.
However, don’t forget to include the link in the content categories.
Usually people display these categories in the sidebar position. Making categorizations and tags on internal links will make the page more structured.
Of course this will make it easier for Google and visitors to explore content on the same topic.
- Creating Links to Interrelated Posts
To link content or posts to each other based on content similarity, you can do it manually or automatically.
For the manual method, then you are the one who thinks about making these links interconnected.
Or if you are a WordPress user, you can use the internal link plugin available.
- Creating Internal Links on Popular Articles with SEO Copywriting
To increase visitor attention to old links, you can include them in the latest posts.
By using this method, the old link will potentially be visited again and make it crowded again.
In addition to these methods, you can also create categories of popular links and include them in the header or footer section. That way, it will be easier for people to find your popular posts.
- Installed Internal Links Must DoFollow
In the past, the use of the nofollow tag made it unnecessary for Google to explore the tagged links.
The nofollow tag makes Google think that other links (without the nofollow tag) are important links.
If you use nofollow, instead of being untraceable, the entire content of the page will appear lost.
That’s why the nofollow trick no longer works optimally and even has the opposite effect.
To make Google focus its attention on important links, we recommend limiting the use of links that are not important or you can use noindex tags.
This tag will prevent the page from rendering and ranking on Google.
- Maximizing Varied Internal Link Anchor Text
When you’ve found which link (page) you want to put, the next step is to use anchor text.
In an easy to understand and simple sense, anchor text is text that has been given a link or in other words, clickable text.
You’ve certainly seen text that is colored differently (blue) and has an underline. The text will take you to other content when clicked.
How to make good anchor text? Here are some tips for creating good anchor text:
- Use keywords or anchor text that is relevant to the link.
- Put the anchor text naturally, don’t force things that are not related to the text/topic.
- Stick to the White Hat SEO strategy by not using the same keywords for all anchor text (keyword stuffing). Currently, the trick is no longer valid, it can even make you famous Google penalties.
- Use the Right Context on Internal Links
This is the era where the excessive use of keywords for every sentence or topic is over. Now, Google is smarter in determining the ranking and quality of a page.
To get top rankings from Google, content optimization through On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO tactics is not enough.
Internal links on page SEO optimization is required that uses context that Google can understand.
Google has an intelligent algorithm that is able to read and understand text.
However, the way Google understands text is not the same as humans, where the human brain understands what the content contains.
People are no longer competing to take advantage of and force the use of excessive keywords to increase website rankings.
The definition of context is simple, namely the content of a text.
If you write about the increase in web hosting, of course the content of your article discusses various things related to web hosting, including price, uptime, hosting types, etc.
However, Google does not understand the contents of the article.
Remember, Google identifies using an algorithm. To make Google understand the context is to put some things that Google understands.
So what makes Google able to detect context on web pages? Here are a few things that Google is sure to detect.
- Relevant Links: Google is able to assess whether the links listed are relevant or not.
- Useful Article Links: Google is able to determine whether the links listed are useful or not.
So, how do you get Google to rate the context on a link with a high rating?
- Relevance: The more relevant the better. At least, the internal links and outbound links that you install must make sense.
- Use of the right words: Use the right words or text in the link (context).
- Link quantity: Pages or content with a lot of contextual links are rated higher.
- Links that are in the text are valued higher than links that are outside (headers, footers, etc.).
Internal Links Have a Great Influence on Your SEO and Website Ranking
There are 2 reasons why internal links can affect SEO. Here are the 2 reasons.
- Internal links are very important to get your website indexed.
Google will visit and explore your website based on the links you put on the homepage and every post you make.
Make sure each page or post is linked to each other.
This will make Google crawl more often and make your website indexed easily and quickly.
- The context of the link is very influential on the ranking of the website.
It’s not only the internal link building network between pages or articles that you should prioritize, but also the context of the links.
The better the context for internal links, the better Google will rate your website.
Links that are listed in the text, especially with meaningful context are valued higher than links that are placed out of context.
Now, let’s simplify. Internal links between pages/posts/context will make your website indexed quickly.
Indexed means detected by Google and included in the list of websites that deserve to be assessed.