Links

Links are fundamental to how the internet works, by creating connections between all the disparate documents on the web. Internal links are connections between pages on the same website, and internal linking can have a huge impact on the ranking ability of a given URL.

This article will explain how internal links can help search rankings, and how issues with links can have the opposite effect. Throughout the article you will find links to all the relevant Hints that Sitebulb uses.

The value of internal links

Most everyone in the SEO industry understands the power of backlinks from other websites (inbound links), which count as 'editorial votes' for a URL in the eyes of search engines.

One of the things that set Google apart, when they first came on the scene, was their calculation of a URL's relative value based on incoming links, through their PageRank algorithm.

Since then, 'link building' has been big business, with SEOs taking various approaches to creating links back to their pages from other websites. However, since the PageRank algorithm is URL-agnostic, you can 'manipulate' the search engines in a similar way by adjusting your internal links.

So if you have a page for which you have spent a long time creating fantastic content, and you think it has a great chance to rank for lots of keywords, you can increase the PageRank of this page and give it a better chance to rank by pointing more internal links at it. This will complement any external backlinks you develop to this page.

Internal link optimization represents one of the most effective on-site optimization techniques, and you can make big gains in organic search by improving internal linking.

Image shared by Andy Drinkwater of iQ SEO.