How Can You Use Internal Links to Enhance SEO Performance?

How Can You Use Internal Links to Enhance SEO Performance?

In the quest to enhance SEO performance through internal linking, we've gathered insights from ten digital marketing experts, including CEOs and Heads of SEO. From optimizing internal PageRank structure to ensuring links prioritize user value, these seasoned professionals offer their single best piece of advice. Dive into the wisdom ranging from forming content clusters to revitalizing orphaned pages with strategic links.

• Optimize Internal PageRank Structure
• Maintain Natural Linking Structure
• Ensure Relevant and Natural Links
• Form Content Clusters with Strategic Links
• Think User Journey and Limit Links
• Build Content Pillars for Key Pages
• Create Comprehensive Topic Clusters
• Revitalize Orphaned Pages with Links
• Diversify Anchor Text with Related Phrases
• Link with User Value as Priority

Optimize Internal PageRank Structure

One key piece of advice for effectively using internal links to boost a page's SEO performance is to calculate the internal PageRank of your pages using data analytics, and then optimize the linking structure based on these insights. By analyzing which pages have too high or too low of an internal PageRank, you can adjust your internal links to better distribute link equity across your site.

This approach is especially powerful when combined with orphan page analysis, ensuring that every important page is properly connected and contributing to the overall PageRank flow. By strategically adjusting internal links, you can enhance the visibility and ranking potential of key pages, ultimately improving the SEO performance of your entire site.

Maintain Natural Linking Structure

Maintain a natural and relevant linking structure. Instead of forcing links where they don't belong, focus on creating high-quality, informative content that naturally lends itself to internal linking opportunities. When you reference topics that are covered in more depth on other pages of your site, link to those pages organically within the context of your content.

This approach not only improves the user experience by providing valuable, related information, but it also helps search engines understand the relationships between different pages on your site. By creating a web of interconnected, relevant content, you signal to search engines that your site is a comprehensive resource on particular topics. This can boost the overall authority of your site and the individual pages within it. Remember to regularly audit your internal linking structure, ensuring that links are up-to-date and that important pages aren't buried too deep within your site architecture.

Ensure Relevant and Natural Links

A key tip for using internal links to boost a page's SEO performance is to make sure they are relevant and natural. Don't cram a page with too many internal links. Instead, place them in spots within the content where they fit the context. This helps search engines understand how different pages on your site connect and makes the site better for users. When you link to related pages, you show visitors the way through your content and highlight how your website's topics link together. This can have a positive effect on where you rank in search results.

Form Content Clusters with Strategic Links

Create a strategic internal-linking structure that connects your main topic pages with related subtopic pages, forming content clusters. This approach helps establish topical authority, distributes link equity throughout your site, and signals to search engines the depth of your expertise on specific subjects. When implementing this strategy, use descriptive anchor text that accurately reflects the linked content's topic, and ensure that your internal links guide users through a logical, value-adding journey across your site's most important pages.

Think User Journey and Limit Links

Versatility is key.

Thinking about the journey of a user through your website is very important when adding internal links, not just to web pages, but also to long-form written content—blogs, case studies, and articles. It's worthless to add an internal link to a tangentially related part of your site, as the user will have no interest in viewing the content. Similarly, there's no need to add links to elements of your page that repeat the same content as the one the user is already on; you've got to be able to think about where the user wants to go.

If you're writing a page for one of your business's specific services, think of related services that are not identical. This would allow the user to follow a natural pathway through your site—ideally, there would then be a logical next step for the user once they enter the next page, allowing you to provide them with a specific path for them to follow.

We also try to limit the number of internal links on a page. Overwhelming a user with tons of clickable links will fail to hold their attention on the actual content of the site. Similarly, when writing a blog or case study, it's important not to distract from the valuable written content (nor diminish your SEO credentials) by providing too many links. We usually limit it to 4-5 per 1,000 words.

Build Content Pillars for Key Pages

Be strategic with your internal links by building content pillars and linking from related content assets to your key SEO pages. This strengthens the authority of those pages and improves their rankings by signaling to search engines that they are central to your site's structure.

Create Comprehensive Topic Clusters

Use internal links to create topic clusters, where related content is interlinked to form a comprehensive resource on a particular subject.

Identify your cornerstone content—key pieces that cover broad topics—and link supporting articles to these pages. This structure helps search engines understand the hierarchy of your content, boosting the SEO of your cornerstone pages.

Revitalize Orphaned Pages with Links

Identify and utilize orphaned pages.

Start by identifying pages on your site that do not have any internal links pointing to them. Work out ways to add relevant internal links from high-authority pages on your site to these orphaned pages. Search engines will now begin to discover and index these pages, boosting their visibility in search results. This effort also improves your site's deep-linking blueprint, where even peripheral content on your site is now linked to your homepage and main category pages, and even to other relevant pages.

Diversify Anchor Text with Related Phrases

In my 15+ years of experience in the industry, I've seen the importance of internal linking grow significantly, especially after the Penguin and Panda updates, which killed the impact of targeted search terms in external links. One of the best ways to boost a page's SEO with internal links is by using a variety of related phrases (targeted keywords) as anchor text when linking to that page.

This approach has helped me ensure that search engines clearly understand what the page is about. For example, I've seen great results by linking to a page on "SaaS Growth Strategies" using anchor texts like "growing a SaaS business," "expanding SaaS companies," or "SaaS business growth tips." This helps the page rank better and improves the overall user experience by naturally guiding readers through the content.

Link with User Value as Priority

Internal linking is indeed very important for SEO, but many times marketers forget its main purpose: to provide value to the users and give them additional information. While this may sound too obvious, ask yourself this question when linking to internal pages - Will this link genuinely help my readers find more useful information on this topic? If the answer is yes, go for it!

Here's what to do:

1. Link to related and in-depth content related to the main topic. This keeps readers engaged and signals to search engines that you have comprehensive coverage of the subject.

2. Use descriptive anchor text that accurately reflects the linked page's content. Avoid generic phrases like "click here" or "read more."

3. Prioritize linking to your most important pages from high-traffic areas of your site. This distributes "link equity" to the pages you want to rank.

4. Update older content regularly with links to the latest articles.

5. Don't overdo it - too many links can overwhelm readers. Aim for quality over quantity.