Internal linking refers to the practice of publishing links on a particular page of a website that lead directly to another page on the same website.
Even though it is a key SEO tactic that is quite easy to implement for businesses with little SEO experience, unfortunately, it is often underused or poorly implemented in many onsite SEO strategies.
Internal linking can refer to a website’s main site navigation i.e. the links above a website’s home page that lead to the About Us or Contact Us sections. It also refers to any links included in a business’s articles or blog posts that lead to related content.
Internal linking is important because it is one of the few methods businesses can use to tell search engines and online visitors that a particular page of their content is important. For example, businesses could include a link from a popular blog post that attracts regular traffic to raise awareness to or promote a new service or the latest piece of firm content.
Other reasons why internal linking is important include:
- It can provide online audiences with more reading options.
- It can help improve a business’s search ranking for keywords. For example, if a business wants a page ranking for its food or beverage menu and it has a web page that contains those items, the business can direct people to the page using relevant anchor text. This is then likely to signal to Google that the page is relevant to users searching for that phrase.
- It can help search engines ‘crawl’ the site. Including internal links in blog posts and articles can help search engines like Google index pages more efficiently.
