As the name suggests, internal links are meant to link the various pages on a website internally. They are placed internally on a website and help the user navigate the website easily. They are also helpful for search engines to go through different pages on your website through these links. Pages with no links on them are not preferred by search engines.
In other words, internal links refer to hyperlinks within a website that connects various pages. These links direct the user to different pages on the same website without repeatedly going to the main page to find other page links.
Significance of Internal Links
When it comes to internal links, the more links are placed on a page, the more important those pages appear to the search engines. This does not apply to irrelevant links on a page, just internally linking ones. This is because the internal links give weightage and value to the website and make it appear coherent, connected, and relevant.
There are three main purposes for internal links:
Moreover, internal links help search engines like Google to discover various pages easily on a website. They are controlled by the owner, thus the owner has the power to help Google find other pages through internal links, in the best and easiest possible ways.
Internal Links and SEO
For an effective SEO strategy, one needs to focus on internal linking which is responsible for the:
Google likes to go through page A to page B with ease with the purpose of recognizing the pages and finding links between them. This means that when relevant links are placed on pages that take you to another relevant page, then search engines consider them as related, and the whole context and purpose of your site’s content and the message are understood.
Thus, this is how your pages are discovered and indexed by Google.
When we say passing authority, it refers to ranking pages by Google. This means that with more links on a page, Google considers the page to be of value and importance. Thus, it ranks that page accordingly considering the relevant interlinks on it.
The more ranking you get, the more authoritative your page/ website appears.
When you have made significant connections between pages through interlinking, Google understands which page or topic is the highlight among all the text. Contextual links also bring the attention of the search engines as well as the users towards the more important or quality article that you want the users to read.
Sometimes, some articles might be somehow related to the topic that you actually want to divert one’s attention towards. To do this, you can mention something but guide the user toward a detailed reading through interlinking.
The goal is to keep them engaged for as long as possible on your site, with connecting pages and related information. This way, they easily go through all your pages and navigate the whole site with ease.
Building Strong Internal Links
After knowing the importance of internal links, one wonders, how to build them. Well, here are some things that can help you build a strong internal linking strategy:
Pillar pages contain topic clusters that refer to another page (for detailed information on those topics), creating a link. Pillar pages are not just a good way to build internal links, they are also a professional way to build content, sort and organize it, and make it easy enough to navigate for any user or search engine. The more clean and sorted your contents are, the easier it will be for the search engines to index it.
Keep in mind that pillar pages target more general keywords and phrases rather than specific ones (those are done by cluster topics). Thus, a pillar page refers to each clustered topic through hyperlinks.
