Internal Linking in SEO | How to be effective

Internal Linking in SEO | How to be effective

Many of us in the SEO game have pondered this, especially in recent times. The best answer lies in what we BELIEVE to be best practices. It does seem however that there is a method and some great tools to use. One method is to create what’s called a “pecking order” of pages you would like to rank for a specific keyword and what order you would like them to rank in.  Here is an excerpt from design solutions blog about internal linking and how to create the “pecking order”:

Creating an earmark for specific

page/keyword continuity

requires a blueprint of how each keyword “fits in” to the planning and execution of the site.

For example, more competitive keywords (keywords with 1 million of more competing pages) should be baked in to the architecture, naming conventions and content as much as possible using an aggregate ranking factor from a collective conglomerate of pages instead of

over-optimizing

on any one page. This is done through selecting a logical champion page to concentrate your SEO efforts.

Usually using a simple Google search operator is enough to determine the degree of relevance your existing pages have for a specific keyword.

Then based on this relevance and

keyword/page saturation/volume

, you can then determine if your existing pages will suffice or if you need fresh content to imbue your website with those keywords to cross the ranking/tipping point.

For example by typing the following search operator into a Google search bar;

site:mysite.com keyword

Note that there is no space between the site: and the website, but there is a space between the site and the keyword.

You can assess which page it deemed the most relevant listed chronologically in sequence “by pecking order” in the Google search index.

Hence, if you see 1 of 10 of 55 results for the “keyword” following the site command, then you know that the website has 54 pages to build internal links from “with that keyword in anchor text” back to the new preferred champion page.

You can also use this technique to uncover how many pages your competitors are dedicating to their optimization efforts to acquire more competitive rankings. Also researching the amount of deep links each page has can also create ranking factor or reveal why each page works as part of a cohesive optimization plan.

For example if they have 30 pages of content and 20 of those pages all have links from other sites in the dozens, that means if they collectively point those pages (which are augmented from off page SEO factors) toward one specific internal page within their own website, the elected page then becomes the new preferred landing page a.k.a champion page for the apex/keyword.

So, if your recent SEO efforts have failed, maybe your pages simply just do not have enough relevant content to rank for your keywords, despite any aggressive linkbuilding. Ranking with linking and no or very little content can be done, but it just makes your life harder. It’s just google’s (and other engines) natural tendency to extract relevancy from on-page content.

~Stephen