In the last article, we took a close look at the URL - the address of your homepage. Because in the search for the treasures of search engine optimization, links play a central role. Internal links serve Google & Co as a guide through your website. So let's venture a little deeper and take a look at how you can use internal links for SEO. Your diligence is guaranteed to be rewarded!
What are internal links?
An internal link is a cross-reference to another sub-page of your own homepage. If you use internal links cleverly, you can increase the general visiting time on your website as well as the total amount of clicks. This has a positive effect on your visibility in search engines. For example, you can link directly in the body text to another exciting article. Internal links are usually clickable words with a blue background. As in this example for a related MainetCare's blog post on internal linking.
Internal links help search engines to better understand your website as a whole. This is because they offer clues as to how the content relates to each other. In addition to the internal links in the body text described above, this also includes links in the page navigation, in the footer at the bottom of the web page or in a table of contents.
Throw out the anchor with keywords!
The clickable link text (the so-called "anchor text") is useful as an internal link in SEO. If you use your keywords in the anchor text, this is particularly rewarded. Always use the same keyword when linking to a specific internal page. This way, Google notices that this subpage is particularly important for this keyword. Don't give away this ace up your sleeve by simply writing: "click here" or "learn more". An example: You have created a subpage for a certain product that you sell. Link to this sub-page again and again from different places on your website with the same keyword in the anchor text.
Internal links show the little cobold the way
Imagine that Google is a little cobold that tries to read websites like a human being. Show it the way through your internal link structure to better find its way around your homepage. Show the cobold that your website is well-structured, well-maintained and provides valuable content on your central keywords. The more favourable his evaluation will be!
On the other hand, it has a negative effect if you have outdated or faulty links on your page. Therefore, check regularly whether all links are working. There are free tools for this like the Link Analyzer from SmallSEOTools.
To be continued ... in part 6 we will look at external links
