Reader’s Persona

Occupation ­­­­‑‑‑‑‑‑‑ A Writer

Problem ———– Rank Poorly On Google Search

Desire ————– Wants To Rank High On Google Search.

Practical lessons from Buildd.co

Most SEO professionals are familiar with external links. External links come from your guest posts, backlinks, forums, blogs, and social media. The main objective of these links is to pass link juice from a page with high authority to your page. Just remember that these links only help you for a short time as Google recently updated their algorithm to understand why the two sites were linking to each other. But most people don’t realize that internal links are equally important as external links. Internal links are undoubtedly the real solid factors for determining your website’s SERP. The existence of internal links assists Google to analyze and infer what your website content is about. It also helps them to show in search engines which domains are credible on a certain topic. In this way, internal linking is equally important as external linking they can give a quick boost for your pages to rank faster on SERP

What are internal links?

Internal links are a backlink from your site to another page on your website. They are different from (External links) the backlinks from other websites that point to your website or link pages from your site to other sites.

Importance of internal link

Internal links help: 

1. Pass on authority between pages
2. Google find, index, and understand all of the pages on your site, thus, internal link helps Google to crawl your website easily 

How to Layout internal linking structure for your website 

Adding internal links to a post is basically simple but can be very hard if you don’t know how to go about it. The frameworks below will help you layout an internal linking structure for your website 

Framework 1

A Well-planned Site Structure

The first step to acing internal linking is to get your site structure right.

Why should you plan your site structure? 

A Well-planned Site Structure will;

• Eliminates orphan pages on your site i.e. pages with no internal links so that Google can crawl your pages easily & in a structured way
• Identify sub-folders or pages for which you need to build authority.

How to plan your site structure? 

1. All pages should be organized into well thought out sub-folders – Every time a new page is to be created, you should know exactly which sub-folder it belongs to 
2. Your site structure should look like a tree. Sub-folders or pages that are similar should be at the same level (ex. all categories can be at root + 1 level)

Pro-tip: Your URL structure doesn’t have to be the same as your site structure.

E.g. your product pages can be at Homepage → Category → Sub-category → Product. While your URL can just be /product/<<product-name>>. This helps you avoid long URLs like /<<category>>/<<sub-category>>/<<product-name>>. 

Case Study: https://buildd.co/marketing/walmart-seo-strategy… 

Fame work 2

Content Hubs 

Once your site structure is planned; you should identify & create “content hubs”.

What are Content hubs?

Content hubs are simply pages that can be grouped under one topic. E.g. all blogs you write for a category OR your entire feature pages for a product.

Why should you create content hubs?

• Easy interlinking between pages under the same topic
• SEO juice can flow across pages i.e. if one page gets good authority; the goodness gets passed onto other pages as well
• Helps you get Topical authority from Google 

How to create content Hubs?

1. Make the Top-level page your landing page ex. list of posts OR product page – 
2. All other pages should typically be the children of the top-level page ex. individual posts OR feature pages for a product Case Study: https://buildd.co/marketing/adobe-seo-strategy… 

Framework 3

Internal Linking Engine

Adding internal links without a proper structure or a set of rules will have zero to little impact.

So it’s important you establish guidelines for internal linking that are followed for every page on the website.

Why you should have an internal linking Engine?

• Ensures a uniform internal linking structure is followed across the website – 
• All pages get properly internally linked from the moment they are created

How to add an internal linking Engine? 

1. Set specific rules along with a min/max threshold on the number of links – 
2. Sample engine 
3. Min 2 internal links from pages under the same topic 
4. Min 3 internal links from other parts of the website

Framework 4

SEO Juice Flow 

The key idea behind internal linking is to distribute the authority or goodness of “power” pages to all other pages. So it’s important to create & identify such “power” pages.

Why should you create, and identify power pages?

• Other pages on your website get a boost through links from your “power pages”
• It serves as a powerful hack when you want to promote certain pages or sections

How to optimize for SEO juice Flow?

1. Creating power pages: – Research topics that people like to link to → Write content & do outreach – You can also attract links organically by writing on stats & guides, and ranking high on Google 
2. Identifying power pages: – Tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush show you page authority & number of domains linking to a page – Sort all pages on your website by page authority. The top pages in the list are your power pages
3. Using power pages: – Keep a list of these power pages handy, and use them strategically when you want to boost or promote any page – Make sure you don’t abuse the number of links from these power pages, else the authority gets diluted

Framework 5

Audit Engine 

A key element of any internal linking strategy is to periodically check for and rectify errors. Regular SEO audits will give you a good list of points to work on.

Why should you Audit your site? 

• Audits help you identify low-hanging fruits as these website errors can affect your page authority or cost you rankings

How Audit your site? 

1. Use an SEO tool to do a site audit – 
2. Check for these issues — Orphan page — Broken internal links — Internal links to redirected pages – 
3. Set a frequency to do these audits & clean errors. E.g. every 2 months. 

Similar reading: 11 chrome extensions every startup founder must use

Internal links may not have as much weight as external links from other web pages. However, they are still essential for SEO. They help your users navigate through the website easier and also improve your website’s usability.