How important are internal links for SEO?
When I first started learning about Search Engine Optimisation there were two main elements that appeared to be paramount to the success of a highly ranked keyword.
The first being the coding of the website itself i.e. identifying your keywords via URLs, title tags, H1 tags, alt descriptions, keyword density etc.
The second was link building i.e. the more websites that link to your website the more important search engines such as Google recognises it. Also if you are able to obtain a link from a website from a highly reputable website such as the BBC, then that link could be worth up to 20 links from a regular website.
To a lot of SEO’s this can cause a problem. Generating links from companies like the BBC isn’t exactly easy, especially if you are planning to target more than one keyword. So the next obvious step is to register with directories to get a few more links to your website but these will soon be exhausted.
So how then do you generate links to your website?
Internal links
Internal links are simply links from within your own website pointing to other pages on the same website.
An example of this would be the home page of Belfast SEO where I have described both keyword phrasesSearch Engine Optimisation and Web Design in my opening description and I have applied both H1 and href tags pointing them to the related pages.
At first I was very sceptical about internal links because as an SEO myself I was always under the impression that the external link was king….. and to a certain degree this is obviously true but don’t under estimate or devalue the importance of internal links. Recently I had been working on the keywords Belfast Sunday Premier League for Collingwood FC’s website. At the time of writing this article these keywords are currently occupying 3 of the top 5 positions of Google and the reason for this is purely on the basis of internal links. Collingwood FC previously had a handful of links but by going into each page and simply adding internal links the website now has around 60 internal links and with a strong SEO architecture for these keywords they are now comfortably ranking above websites with 108 links.
Last but not least is the blog. This is the perfect way to generate free links to your own and other websites and keep the content on your website fresh and up to date. Obviously don’t go overboard with the links but I always try to get at least 3 on each post, depending on the size of the article. 3 may not seem like all that much but by posting 1 or 2 blogs every week these links will soon start to add up, along with your rank.
Written by Barry Connolly
