INTERNAL LINKING FOR SEO- IMPORTANCE AND BEST PRACTICES

Internal linking is an important SEO practice for publishers. In this article, we will take a look at its importance as well as the some helpful tips for effective linking.

What exactly is Internal Linking?

Different web practitioners have different terms for this, but internal linking is the term that is well understood by the SEO community. In general terms, internal linking refers to any links from one web page on a domain which leads to another web page on that same domain. This can refer to the main site navigation or the links within articles to related content. In this article, we will focus more on the latter- the editorial links within articles because it is a more commonplace SEO tactic that is controlled by the site’s editors and writers as opposed to a tech team.

Why is Internal Linking so important?

The main reason why internal linking is important is because it’s one of the few tactics site owners can use to make it known to Google and site visitor’s that a particular page is important. From a strategic perspective, it also helps site owners to bridge the authority gap between their content that is more linkworthy with their content that is more profitable.

There are other reasons on its importance:

• Internal linking provides your visitors with more reading options.
• It can help you promote events and other paid services.
• It helps Google crawl the site and index pages more effectively
• Internal Linking helps you improve your ranking for certain keywords

There are instances where large websites like travel sites that have a huge amount of content and the differences between their landing pages are often very slight. Without correct interlinking, these subtleties could confuse Google, especially if there are no external links directing back to those pages.

How significant a role does Internal Linking play in rankings?

Internal linking is easily one of the most crucial and the most overlooked factors when it comes to achieving your ranking goals. One of the reasons internal linking is often overlooked as an important SEO tactic is because many people simply think that it’s not a concern anymore as sites today have such multifaceted navigation menus. Nevertheless, internal linking will help you drive considerable results solely on the back of optimizing internal navigation structures. Many SEO experts have now recognized that Interlinking related factors have strong weight within the Google algorithm.

How to use Internal Linking more effectively

• If you’re using WordPress, there are plugins that will automatically turn keywords in page text to keyword relevant links directing to some of your most important content.
• Though it’s a bit complicated, you can use pivot tables and filters in Excel on data exported from SEMRush to find the pages with the most rankings. Once you’ve recognized those pages, comb your site to find five to fifteen new links from the existing site content to those pages. The number depends on the size of your site.
• Before inserting a link, ask yourself: what is the possibility that a user will click on it? The higher the chances are, the more effect this link will have and it will have the most value from an SEO perspective.
• On the home page, make sure to add links to the most important pages. This could be the main categories or a product page; it depends on your SEO strategy.
• Factors like the position of the link on a page, the anchor text, the font and color of the text, the context it’s used and its relevancy all influence the effect of the link.
• Make sure that whenever you include new content that you are including links to relevant and important landing pages. This will guarantee that any links yourinclude in your content will also share a secondary benefit on the pages you have internally linked to.
• Add internal links in moderation. Every link you place on a page will receive a share of the link authority of that page, so the more links you have, the less value it will collect.
• Links included within content generally carry greater value because they are surrounded by contextual words which can have another benefit in terms of ranking for these related words.
• Ensure that that links add value. Though SEO is a factor to focus on, links should also add value to your audience.
• Make sure that internal links appear natural and not contrived. Links should be included along the natural flow of a piece of content and shouldn’t appear to be out of place to a reader.

About /robots.txt – Search Engine Optimisation Sri Lanka

People who own websites use the /robots.txt file in order to give directions and information regarding their website to web robots. This is known as The Robots Exclusion Protocol.

This is how it works. For example, if a robot visits a website URL, such as http://www.example.com/welcome.html, then before the robot visits the website, it will check for http://www.example.com/robots.txt first. This is what it will find:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

The “User-agent: *” indicates that this section pertains to all robots. On the other hand, the “Disallow: /” relates to the robot that it shouldn’t visit the pages on that specific website.

There are two very essential points to consider when using the /robots.txt. It is outlined as below:

• Robots can sometimes pay no attention to your /robots.txt. This is specifically if malware robots run a thorough scan of the website for precautionary reasons or if the email address was used by spammers. If that is the case, then the robots will ignore your website altogether.
• The other instance is when the /robots.txt file is a file that is openly accessible. This means that anyone can gain access and see whatever sections of your server that you do not want robots to use.

All in all, you should not try to use /robots.txt in order to conceal any information.

Details about /robots.txt

The /robots.txt is an authentic standard that is not in possession of any standard organization. The historical descriptions are illustrated below:

• The 1994 A Standard for Robot Exclusion document.
• The 1997 Internet Draft condition A Method for Web Robots Control

Additionally, there are exterior resources as well:

• HTML 4.01 specification, Appendix B.4.1
• Wikipedia – Robots Exclusion Standard

It should be noted that the /robots.txt standard is not developed actively.

How to make a /robots.txt file

To put it shortly, the /robot.txt file is created in the top-level index of your website server.

To elaborate further on this, when a robot searches for the “/robots.txt” file for URL, it breaks down the path constituent from the URL (which includes everything from the very first single slash), and then puts the “/robots.txt” in its position.

For instance, in the “http://www.example.com/shop/index.html”, the robot will take away the “/shop/index.html”, and substitute it with “/robots.txt”. This will result in “http://www.example.com/robots.txt”.

Bearing all these in mind, if you own a web site, then you need to place it in the correct place on your web server for the resultant URL to actually work properly. Generally, that is the similar place in which you place your website’s main “index.html” landing page. To know where precisely that is and how to actually put the file in that place, it all comes down to your web server software.

Keep in mind to use all lower cases for the following filename: “robots.txt”, not “Robots.TXT.

What should you put in it?

As a text file, the “/robots.txt” comes with one or more records which typically consists of a particular record such as this:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /cgi-bin/

Disallow: /tmp/

Disallow: /~joe/

Three directories are barred in this particular case.

It’s also important to remember that you would require a different “Disallow” line for each and every URL prefix that you would like to keep out because you will not be able to simply say “Disallow: /cgi-bin/ /tmp/” in just one line. Additionally, you might not have empty lines in a record because these are used in order to restrict several records.

At the same time, it’s important to note that globbing and customary terms are not maintained in the User-agent or Disallow lines. The ‘*’ in the User-agent field holds a very unique value of meaning to any robot. Distinctively, you can’t afford to have lines such as “User-agent: *bot*”, “Disallow: /tmp/*” or “Disallow: *.gif”.

Typically, whatever you should leave out depends heavily on your server. Everything that is not clearly prohibited is taken to mean a fair game. Following are some examples:

To eliminate all robots from the complete server

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

To permit total access all robots 

User-agent: *

Disallow:

(Or simply build an empty “/robots.txt” file or don’t use one)

To reject all robots from a fraction of the server

User-agent: *

Disallow: /cgi-bin/

Disallow: /tmp/

Disallow: /junk/

To leave out a single robot

User-agent: BadBot

Disallow: /

To permit a single robot

User-agent: Google

Disallow:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

To reject all files besides one

Because there is no “Allow” field, this becomes a little difficult. The simplest method is to put all files that should be disallowed into a different directory that is named as “stuff” for instance, and leave the other file in the level on top of this directory:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /~joe/stuff/

On the other hand, you can also plainly reject all disallowed pages:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /~joe/junk.html

Disallow: /~joe/foo.html

Disallow: /~joe/bar.html