We all know Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is used in order to rank your website higher in search results.
But many reasons contribute to a higher ranking of a website or blog in an organic search result like the use of proper keyword or writing the proper content. But one important aspect that people always tend to miss is the inclusion of internal links that link away from your blog to a different web-page providing more information about the concerned subject.
Linking is referred to the process of creating a hyperlink to another page or resource, such as image or document which can be on the same website or domain or maybe not.
There are two types of links:
- Internal: A link referring to another section of the same web-page.
- External: A link to a page outside the same domain or website.
One important thing every SEO agency should note that before content gets ranked, it needs links!
Let’s have a look at some points where the most used search engine Google comes into the picture and its importance when it comes to linking:
- Google’s algorithm is structured in such a manner that it tends to search for links in your posts and pages that link away to a source on the web. When it finds that it ranks your content higher.
- Google crawls between links in your content both internal and external via a boot known as Google-bot.
- By following those links, Google works out the relationship between various pages, posts and other content. Through this Google understands that the contents of your post are related to those pages by adding those links. Interesting! Isn’t it?
- It should also be kept in the record that internal links give Google an idea about the structure of your website. This helps it to find out about what content on your site is related and the value of that content.
- They establish a hierarchy of the website by allowing the most important pages and posts more links and value against the less important ones. One final thing should be kept in mind. When you have decided which links should be on a page and which page gets the link value, anchoring them with a proper keyword is an important step.
So in a nutshell, internal linking when done correctly boosts your SEO! This is the place where Ranking by SEO has distinguished itself as the best digital marketing expert in Sydney. All of their SEO packages are customised according to their client’s requirements in order to offer them a perfect path towards business enhancement and using the right internal linking is one of their key strategies.
After knowing about links and how important they are to SEO, let us look at Five Reasons to Use Internal Links in Your Blog:
- Useful Resource for Readers:
Users visit your website or blog for one particular thing “information”. The more you provide it to them, more the chances of them revisiting your website so are the increase in traffic and higher ranking in an organic search result. The best bloggers routinely link out to content on a regular basis providing users with more information. Take this example for instance. Suppose you are writing a blog regarding the upcoming mobile technology trends that are going to change the world. As a supporting content, you need to provide a chart showing the changes in recent trends in technology. But this chart is not hosted on your website so link it out to the host website for the reader’s benefit. Wouldn’t it be nice?
- Giving Credit to External Research and Statistics
Only writing good blogs or articles is not enough unless you back them up with strong statistics and research analysis. The credibility of your website is an important factor. Going by the fickle behaviour of online users, once the credibility is affected, it is almost impossible to regain it. Adding statistics and research helps in making your content credible and adds value to your content. If someone else’s statistics or surveys are used in your content, it is always good to include an external link to the original source.
- Quotes and Interviews from Industry Experts
There are many ways to add values to your website. Interviewing industry experts in order to get better insights and quotes for their story is one such method. Whenever there are quotes from experts people, tend to like your content. But in order to do that there are certain things that need to be done first.
- Build solid contacts.
- Engage in B2B (Business to Business) relationships.
- Use PR (Public Relations) services.
After the above things are done, use links to describe the quotes and interviews with industry experts.
- Publish Charts, Aggregate Data Infographics on your website
Adding visualisation elements like charts, graphs, and other visual elements adds an extra dimension to your content. Including info-graphics makes it much easier to get the point across to your users. Suppose you are writing a sports blog about a famous footballer. Of course, a chart showing his no. of goals, no of games played, his scoring rate and the opponents he played against will provide for more information and a look good feel to the readers. Most of the time we use someone else’s info-graphic when you do that make sure you give credit to the original source via a link as the extensible amount of time and cost is incurred to produce and distribute such infographics.
- Improve your SEO, Usability and Panda Score
In the end, the point is to improve your website ranking and make your SEO better. When you link your content to high-quality sources at naturally does the two things listed above. While incoming links are important, outbound links to important content are what readers like, which goes a long way in improving the traffic in the long term. A cardinal mistake bloggers do is not including the external link in their content as they fear their own rank may get reduced, but they actually miss out on the long-term rewards. Even then if you are scared of losing traffic, use target=” blank” HTML tag and the link will open in a new window keeping the traffic to your website unaffected.
One thing bloggers or content writers forget is that links increase the value of their own content. Another important takeaway from linking is that it helps in building relationships with other bloggers, which is just the right thing to do. These are the factors which define a good SEO agency and employing these techniques has made ranking by SEO.
