One of the most powerful, but often under looked aspects of onsite SEO is a good internal linking structure with quality keywords placed in the anchor text, repeated on the landing page in the title, a h1 tag and in the body text.  Yes, it sounds just like keyword placement but the internal linking structure physically tells the likes of Google what a websites pages are about and allows you to avoid keyword cannibalisation which is essentially when Google can’t define what page is about what on your site.

For this blog I’ll use a real life example of a client here at Click Consult that I’ve just analysed and realised there were some serious internal linking problems. For example we where targeting two keywords to the homepage – Office Desks and Office Furniture but links where leaving internal pages back to the homepage containing the keyword Office Desk (note it’s the singular form) and vice versa.

Anyway after sorting the anchor text out internally and making sure there was good linking from the homepage to the internal categories and back, and then laterally across the website from category to category a colleague (thanks Jon) recommended I use Google Webmasters Tools to find the pages with the most external links citing them. Well it was of course the homepage, but I wanted that link juice to be passed on down to the internal categories keywords I was targeting. So I found the second most linked to webpage and linked to the homepage and the other 3 categories with the keyword rich anchor text I was targeting.

Results: Well still early days as I only did this on Friday but after a check this morning Tuesday, I can tell you over the weekend Google has cached the updated pages, and the 5 keywords we’re targeting have jumped in the SERPs. Some figures: -

30.4% of the keywords are up in the rankings
58.7% are in the same position
6.5% are down
4.9% are not ranked

Out of a total of 46 keywords. Considering the week before 21% of our keywords where down in the SERPs!
Another week or so for the algorithm to work its magic I’d like to see even greater results.

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Your web development should go beyond the appearance of your site. One area which can really be of help to your site as time rolls by is some planning for your internal links.

Internal links can be incredibly tricky things to manage. When a site is first being designed, the design of the navigation is a major concern. After the site is launched, however, most web designers don’t give much thought to how new pages are going to be integrated. New pages come along, new content is installed, and over the course of around half a year the whole thing becomes one big mess.

Even if some planning is made for the future of the site, the internal links tend to be ignored. Unless a site owner is deeply involved in SEO, they tend to overlook the need to embed link anchors in new text, or to set out new link pathways for the new pages.

Link planning is important, and should be discussed with your web designer. You can talk to our internet marketing professionals at Click Consult. Proper planning in the early stages can mean not only better site function, but less work down the track.

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Internal links:

An internal link is an effective means of letting search engines know how your website works and where relevant information is located.  Internal links help you to control the link structure by employing things such as breadcrumbs, which create associations between subpages and categories.

When linking to a page it’s best to use descriptive anchor text which is relevant to the page you are linking to.  Links saying ‘read more’ will be less effective than links where the heading or title of an article is used.

External links:

External links help to increase your ratings by acting as a vote.  However, unlike internal links, you don’t have as much control over the anchor text which may lead to people throwing Google bombs by linking to your site using irrelevant anchor text.

You can control external links by creating them yourself.  If you know an industry well and have friends who can link to you, it's worth doing.  Another option is to link to industry forums and directories.

At Click Consult we can help you to develop effective SEO for your website and ensure you get the top rankings.

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