Improve Internal Linking for SEO: A Guide to a Successful Strategy

In the world of search engine optimization, there are numerous strategies and techniques to enhance the visibility of a website. One often underestimated but highly effective method is optimizing internal linking. Internal linking in SEO serves to connect different pages within a website. This plays a crucial role not only in navigation and user-friendliness but also in distributing what is known as "Link Juice," which increases the authority and relevance of pages in the eyes of search engines.

In this blog post, you'll learn how to improve your SEO strategy through thoughtful and targeted internal linking. Discover the best practices to satisfy both your users and search engines and ultimately improve your ranking. As a basis for the concept of your internal linking, you will learn in a step-by-step guide how to analyze the current state and identify potential areas of improvement.

Definition and significance for SEO

Basically, there are two types of hyperlinks:

• Internal links are connections that lead from your website to a subpage within your website. They help users navigate through your site and assist search engines in understanding the structure and hierarchy of your site. The advantage is that you have 100% control over them.

• External links, on the other hand, lead from a completely different domain to your website or vice versa. They can enhance credibility. However, you do not have full control over these and are dependent on other websites.

This blog post will focus solely on internal linking. An important term in this context is "link juice." Link juice is the strength of a page. It consists of the quality and number of incoming links as well as their distribution across a website. As a result, the homepage has the most link juice and can pass it on through internal links. Links from pages considered more important transfer more link power than links from less important pages. A page is deemed important when many other important pages link to it. Link power is not distributed evenly. For example, if there are 100 internal links, they do not each receive 1/100 link power. Some links receive more, others less link power.

The significance for SEO is diverse. Internal links enhance the user experience by helping visitors easily reach the desired information. For search engines, internal links are indicators of which pages on your website are most important. Pages that receive many internal links are considered particularly relevant and can rank higher in search results. Additionally, internal links make it easier for search engine crawlers to explore and index your site, thereby improving the discoverability and visibility of your content.

Significance for Users

The importance of internal links for SEO is diverse. They improve the user experience by helping visitors easily find the desired information. Within a text, for example, other products or services of the company are linked. This allows users to reach the page directly via the link without having to navigate to the site's menu.

A well-thought-out internal linking strategy for SEO can help increase the user's time spent on your site. This can lead to better rankings in search results, as search engines consider user behavior in evaluating a site.

Significance for Search Engines

For search engines, internal links are an indicator of which pages on your site are most important. Pages with high link juice are considered particularly relevant and can rank higher in search results. Additionally, internal links make it easier for search engine crawlers to explore and index your site. This, in turn, improves the discoverability and visibility of your content.

We occasionally hear the idea of marking links with nofollow to save link power. However, we advise against this. In such cases, the link is not followed, but it is still perceived as a link. During the calculation of link power, this link is considered in the total count.

Concrete tips for optimizing internal linking

We have concrete and practical tips on how you can optimize the internal linking on your website for more efficient SEO. From identifying particularly rewarding pages to choosing the right anchor texts to strategically placing links, these tips will help you fully exploit the potential of your internal linking and sustainably improve your SEO performance.

1. Use Screaming Frog to find pages that particularly benefit from additional internal links

How can you find out which pages would benefit the most from additional internal links? This is where Screaming Frog comes into play. This powerful SEO tool allows you to specifically search for pages that are currently under-linked and therefore have great potential for additional internal links. Especially for pages that already have high traffic and are relatively poorly linked, there is a high probability that additional links will increase visibility and relevance in search results.

First, create an API connection with Google Search Console:
1. Configuration → API Access → Google Search Console
2. Log in and select domain → OK

Figure 1: Screaming Frog Guide: Set up API access

Then start the crawl of the domain and limit the dataset to relevant data:
1. Internal → HTML
2. Select the following columns: Address, Meta Robots 1, Inlinks, Impressions
3. Filter: Meta Robots 1 → does not contain → "noindex"

Figure 2: Screaming Frog Dataset

Once the crawl is complete, you should have a manageable number of pages. Now the ratio between inlinks and impressions is relevant. For optimization, especially those pages are interesting that have many impressions but few incoming links. For these pages, optimizing internal linking is a great way to capture the low-hanging fruits (threshold keywords).

If the number of URLs is too overwhelming, you can save the data and create a chart using Excel.

2. Use internal links in the content of the page

When using links in the text, the so-called anchor text (or also anchor text/link text) is particularly important. You shouldn't use phrases like "Click here" or "Learn more." Because not only should users learn from the anchor text what to expect on the linked page, but so should bots. Therefore, the linked text should as closely as possible match the keyword of the target page. However, we recommend not using the same anchor text (the keyword) 1:1 for every linking of a page, as that would seem unnatural. Ideally, use variations and synonyms, sometimes single words, phrases, or even entire sentences with keywords.

It's also important to consider the position of the link. The highest importance lies in links within a text. The context signals to both users and bots the context in which the link is located. The further up on the page it is placed, the more important it appears. Of course, buttons can still be used, as they are user-friendly. Pay attention to a good link text here as well. Furthermore, images can also be linked. In this case, using the alt attribute and a good image title is particularly important. Specifically, the alt text visualizes for the bots what can be seen in the images and indicates what content the target page offers.

3. Use internal links in the navigation

Navigation consists mainly of the menu and the footer. The navigation can be accessed from any page, and thus the links are visible on every page. Especially the most important pages should be linked in the menu, as they receive a lot of link power from this placement. The links in the footer should also not be forgotten. However, it is not meant to contain innumerable links. Linking pages from the menu a second time in the footer makes no sense. Moreover, the links pass less link juice because they are less likely to be clicked.

Seasonal pages should be well-linked internally with some lead time. If a topic is relevant in 5-6 months, the target page can be linked in the footer. However, it should be linked more prominently 2-3 months beforehand, e.g., in the menu, on the homepage, and from relevant content to show search engines that it is currently a very important page.

We also recommend integrating a breadcrumb for easy navigation. The links it contains show the hierarchical depth of the active page and offer the users the opportunity to reach the correct parent page with a few clicks. As a result, it is very user-friendly and increases the number of internal links in the domain.

4. Quality over Quantity

There is no optimal amount of internal links on a website. More important is that the links are relevant and make sense. If you keep this principle in mind, you cannot have too many internal links on a page. You can ask yourself for each link: Could this page be interesting for users? If that is the case, it is a good and relevant link.

If you want to create a concept for the internal linking of your website from scratch, you should consider the so-called siloing. This is the topic-relevant linking. According to this principle, online shop visitors on a product detail page for a soccer shoe should not see links to products from the "T-shirts" or "Pants" categories. These are likely not relevant in this case. Instead, it makes sense to offer a link to a soccer shoe from another brand, as the users are obviously interested in this product type. Therefore, internal linking should be limited to the category in which the users currently are and should only refer to the homepages of other categories.

Figure 3: Siloing - topic-relevant linking

Internal Linking & SEO: Conclusion from internetwarriors

Optimizing internal linking is an important but often underestimated method for improving a website's SEO strategy. Through targeted internal linking, both the user-friendliness and the visibility and relevance of pages for search engines can be significantly improved. Well-thought-out internal linking supports navigation, efficiently distributes link juice, and helps search engines better understand the structure of the website. Practical tips such as the use of tools like Screaming Frog, the correct selection and placement of anchor texts, as well as high-quality and topic-relevant linking, are essential for success. Overall, optimized internal linking contributes to longer user dwell time and a better ranking in search results.

We are happy to support you in developing an SEO strategy for internal linking. With an SEO Analysis, we find the potential of your website, define measures, and can implement these together under SEO Management. Contact us anytime for a non-binding offer!

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