The critical link in your SEO strategy: internal links and external links. What’s the difference between the two and how can you use them to your advantage to skyrocket traffic to your website? Here’s the shortest, comprehensive guide you’ll find on the world wide web.
Internal Links
Internal links are basically the hyperlinks that go from one page on your website to another page on the website. It can be a word turned into a hyperlink, a link to another page on your site such as a blog or an image linked to another page on your site.
Why is Internal Linking Important?
Internal links help establish authority for various pages on your site for search engines like Google. Search engines send out their “spider” to crawl the web looking for websites. If that spider reaches a website and can’t find any internal pages because there aren’t any links to them, then the search engine will simply view those pages as non-existent. Make the spider’s life easy. Throw in some internal links. Internal links also help a user navigate your website easily. This vastly improves the user’s experience on your website reducing bounce rates.
How to Use Internal Linking
1. Figure out which page has the most traffic. While this may usually be the Home page, occasionally it’s a particular blog post that went viral. Now, find ways to link other pages on your site to that page or blog post to maximize traffic.
2. Create a hierarchy of information on your website. Starting from the Home page, find a way to link all your pages in a way that you can get from one page to any other page on your website (apart from blog posts, case studies etc.) within 3 clicks. This may seem a bit tricky at first and may require a complete structural overhaul for your site but it will work wonders for your website user experience.
3. Use anchor text in your links. So, instead of marketit.digital/p1”w make it SEO : Internal-links-vs.-external-links. As you can see the second link is a hundred times clearer in where the link will take you. CMS systems like WordPress make it very easy to turn your keywords into links. This technique can be used for both internal and external links.
4. Make sure to use relevant links. Don’t link to a blog post about “internal links” from a blog post about “Facebook banners”. While there may be some relevance, it won’t feel natural to the reader leading to less chances of them clicking through. Instead link to “internal links” on a blog post about “keyword strategy”.
External Links
External links take you from a page on your website to a page on a different website. These can be the building blocks to having your site become one of the most authoritative sites on your particular topic. Building external links isn’t just about getting other websites to link to your website, it’s about building meaningful relationships with other business people so they link to your website on multiple brands and they do so with genuine interest.
Why is External Linking Important?
People trust businesses that have connections to other businesses. This gives you credibility and authority. Two major points potential customers always look for. When you have no other sites linking to yours, it shows lack of connections (even if you do have connections it doesn’t reflect on your website). On the other hand, if your website has 100 links coming in from other high profile websites, now you’ve made a name for yourself. Not to mention the thousands of SEO benefits that come in due to search engines ranking you as a higher authority figure in your industry.
How to Gain External Links
1. Speak to your network. This can be colleagues, family, friends or acquaintances. You would be surprised at how many people within your own network are looking for other websites to link up with. Make sure you are gaining links to high quality, relevant websites.
2. Run a guest blogging link building campaign. Choose a keyword to write a blog post, gather a list of potential blogs who may want you to guest blog on their page, reach out with emails, if you get a response send the blog in exchange for a link to your website and repeat.
3. Try to get yourself on a podcast. The podcast will most definitely link to your page and all the viewers on the podcast will potentially now be viewers to your website.
4. Run a marketing campaign. If you run a successful campaign and can get people to link to your website for some prize in a competition or just out of the goodness of their heart, the potential for link building is unlimited. This is the best way to gain links but the most difficult as it takes a lot of time, effort and money to run a successful campaign to the end.
Well, there you go. You are now up to speed on some of the basics of internal and external links. And as an added bonus, you have some strategies on how to implement these links or obtain them.