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Top Six Internal Linking Tactics To Get Top Google Rankings
By Jason OConnor © 2008 | from The Net Gazette
If you own or run a website and are not following these six internal linking tactics for properly linking your website together then you're losing Google traffic as you read this. First some definitions. Internal linking is the links on your website that point to other pages within your same website. External linking is when you link to another website. Tactics are specific things to do to achieve desired results, or any mode of procedure for gaining advantage or success.
There are things you can do when developing or refining your
internal linking structure. If you carry out the following tactics,
you're going to achieve two things. One, you'll make your website
better from a user's perspective. Two, you'll rank better in Google.
And it's no coincidence that Google rewards you for doing things that
make the website user's experience easier and better. In fact, the most
important thing I can recommend is that you create, design and link
your website together is a way that benefits the visitor first. Your
visitors are most important, not Google rankings.
One last thing before I get to the tactics. Have you heard that links
from other websites that point back to your website is essential in
getting top search engine rankings, especially with Google? It's true.
These links vary in their effectiveness and value depending on the
website from which they're coming. But did you also know that internal
links often can have similar effectiveness and value as external links?
So bear this in mind as you read on.
1) Add links in your navigation or footer as text links to all your
important pages and main sections
This is a very easy and an extremely effective tactic that not all
sites do, and even less do for maximum results. This is the first thing
I look for when reviewing a website for a client. Unfortunately,
sometimes artsy Web designers add cool buttons, which are images, to
all the main sections of the site, but neglect to include text links as
well. Or a programmer decides to make the website's navigation a
dynamic drop down menu in DHTML or JavaScript but forget to include
text links to the same pages represented in the menus. Search engines
cannot follow image links or links created in JavaScript, they can only
follow simple text links, so be sure you add them to your site as well.
So if you want search engines to visit and index (or record) ALL your
website's pages, be sure there are text links pointing to all the main
sections of your site and to all your important pages.
2) Make use of the rel="nofollow" HTML tag
This is fairly simple. Google created this tag which tells them NOT to
count the link in their search engine ranking algorithm when used on a
link. There's debate that maybe Google does count them a little, or
will some day in the future. But for now, this tag does greatly
decrease a link's value in Google's eyes.
Therefore, consider using
this tag on some of your links within your site. For example, let's say
you have a homepage and then create two inner pages, and that's the
extent of the site. Let's further say that you add a link to both pages
on your homepage. If your homepage has some external links pointing to
it, then it has some value in regards to Google's ranking system. When
you link to each of your two new pages within your site from your
homepage, each page gets only 50% of the value the homepage has. (This
is all measured in Page Rank). Let's then say that your first inner
page is the one you want to rank well in the Google, but you don't care
if your second inner page even gets found by Google or ranked. You
could add the nofollow tag to the second link on your homepage, thereby
giving the first inner page 100% of the homepage's value.
Think of the implications. Imagine if you had a website with hundreds
or thousands of pages and used the nofollow tag throughout. To
understand how to implement this tag is, see the two links in HTML
below, one without it and one with it correctly included.
<a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com">Your Website</a>
<a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com" rel="nofollow">Your Website</a>
Joomla! adaptation
If you wish to apply this tactic to the links in your articles, you can use the link manager of the JCE editor (version 1.1.8 of the JCE mambot).
However, in order to do that you have first to make an alteration in the
mambots>editors>jce>jscripts>tiny_mce>plugins>advlink>link.php
file to add the "nofollow" option to the list of the relationships page to target.
- Download through FTP the link.php file (see path above) and open it in a text editor (TextWrangler on Mac
or Notepad on Windows)
- Find the following line (around line 182) : <td><select id="rel" name="rel" class="mceEditableSelect">
- In the list that follows, add the following line (in the beginning or the end) : <option value="nofollow">No Follow</option>
- Save the change and upload back the file to replace the old one.
- That way, you'll be able to add the "nofollow" tag to your links in the "Advanced" tab of the link manager, selecting the "No Follow" option in the list "Relationship page to target".
If modifying PHP file is a little scary for you, you can download the already alterd file :  Add the "nofollow" tag ( ).
Finally,
if you have pages such as a privacy page, terms page, checkout pages or
contact pages that you don't care if they rank well in Google, be sure
to use the nofollow tag when creating internal links to these pages.
3) Use descriptive & different phrases to point to the same inner
page
The words that are in the text of a link (also known as the anchor
text) affect your search engine rankings. For example, the anchor text
in the two links above is "Your Website". If enough of these links that
were on quality and valuable sites, including your own website's inner
pages, pointed to the same page, it would eventually rank well in
Google when someone searches for the phrase "your website".
Therefore, be sure to make the anchor text in all your internal links
the phrases you want the pages to be found for in Google. If you have a
page that sells "blue widgets", make the anchor text in links on other
pages within your website that point to this page "blue widgets". Do it
like this:
<a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/blue-widgets.htm">Blue Widgets</a>
Going
back to the number 1 tactic above, you would be far better off making
the anchor text in all your footer links as descriptive as possible. If
you want to rank well in Google for "affordable blue widgets" then use
this in your links that point to this page:
<a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/blue-widgets.htm">Affordable Blue Widgets</a>
Finally,
vary your anchor text when pointing to the same page within your
website. For instance, on some of your pages you could link to your
Blue Widgets page with the anchor text of "blue widgets", then on other
pages link to it using "affordable blue widgets" and then maybe use
"widgets that are blue". This allows you to get the page ranked for
multiple terms and helps the user since you're being descriptive and
making your anchor text better match the content of the page it's on.
4) Make links in your content
If you have text on your site, make some of the words within the text
links that point to other pages within your website. For instance, if
you have an article about blue widgets, (or a page about realtor Web
design <--see how I did that?), or a page that describes how great
your blue widgets are, make the first or second occurrence of the
phrase "blue widgets" in the text a link that points to your Blue
Widgets page.
5) The Home link solution
If your website is typical, you'll probably have a link on every page
that points back to your homepage. And you should because this helps
users. By doing this, you're supplying a lot of link value to the
homepage since it is getting all these internal links pointing back to
it. Since in the number three tactic I recommended that you make your
anchor text the same as what you want to rank for, the word "home" does
you no good. I'll assume that you're not trying to get your homepage
ranked for the word "home", so make the anchor text what you do want it
to get ranked for.
The other option is to add the nofollow tag to all your 'Home' links,
thereby canceling out the word "home" altogether.
6) Make important pages at most 2 folders deep with your site and at
most two clicks away from your homepage
The farther away a page is, the worse it ranks. So if you put a page in
a folder that is five folders deep within your website folder
structure, Google will likely consider that page not as important as a
page only one folder deep. Also, make the pages in your website that
are most important to get ranked two or less clicks away from the
homepage. This is good for users and allows Google to index these pages
more quickly.
By following these top six internal linking tactics, you'll be far
ahead of the competition, you'll rank better in Google and you'll be
making your website visitors' lives easier.
Article by Jason O'Connor
© 2008
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Author Byline:
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Jason OConnor is President of Oak Web Works - The synthesis of Web design, technology and marketing
Jason is an expert at Web design and programming, e-strategy, and e-marketing
http://www.oakwebworks.com
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Last update : 31-08-2008 20:02
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