Internal linking

Internal Links – Making Content Discoverable

One of the most sensible “inventions” in the internet world is probably the link. In the context of search engines, the link is always equated with the so-called backlink – that is, the link from website A to website B. However, the internal link from one text (from one URL) to the next is often underestimated even in search engine optimization. Yet, it is one of the main levers for both the user and the search engine.

There are different forms of internal links that can be categorized differently:

• The navigation link: This refers to the link from the navigation to a corresponding subpage, usually a category. – This also includes the link from the so-called Breadcrumb.
• The service link: Usually found in the footer of the page or at the very top above the header of a page. For example, to the imprint or the terms and conditions.
• The teaser link: This is ideally a contextual link like the internal link that promotes additional or further content (“teases”).
• The text link: This link is especially common on text pages (blogs, editorial pages, guides, press releases, etc.) as a link from the text to supplementary content (similar to the angled arrow (↗) in encyclopedias, which means: “see also”).

Link Concepts

In SEO, we talk about internal link concepts, strategies, and link graphs. These concepts attempt to schematically represent what was established in the lexicon on the internet.

Let’s take an example of a “Content Silo” – Here, it should be a shop for fashion. In the navigation, for example, the following path would be understandable:

• Ladies
  • Womens Fashion
    • Ladies’ blouses
      • Short Sleeve Blouses
        • Short Sleeve Blouses Red

In addition to “Women’s Fashion,” there could also be “Women’s Shoes,” and alongside “Women’s Blouses,” there could be “Skirts” or “Women’s Trousers.” In short: Here is everything that is relevant in the fashion context for women. In this case, one would speak of a silo in SEO terms. This silo contains only “women’s fashion items.” This way, the user, but especially the search engines, know that everything belongs together. However, as valuable as such a silo construction is for content and navigational structuring, it ultimately is also a dead end. This is where internal linking, i.e., the text link, comes into play.

In the category Women/Women’s Fashion/Women’s Trousers/Jeans, topics that are overarching are suddenly addressed. “How do I wash jeans?”, “Do I iron jeans?” etc. And here, both the female and male users would expect to receive links to the men’s jeans range, as these questions are indeed overarching. Another example would be a lexical text on the “Hundred Years’ War” – here, the reader would expect at least one link to “Joan of Arc.”

In both cases, the representation of the extended content (men’s jeans or Joan of Arc) would distract from the main topic. However, in terms of user experience, it would also not be ideal if one had to painstakingly search (or flip through) for additional content. The link helps. It especially helps the search engine, as it crawls through the internal links to capture the next and hopefully more content-rich pages.

All of this should actually be completely self-evident, as a shop operator wants to provide users with added value. Unfortunately, despite the ease and desirability of setting links, it is more the exception. Usually, a link list is created at the bottom of the text. Or one completely forgoes it. The result: The exit rate on this page will significantly increase. Why? Because the user simply cannot proceed. There is no more “door” (link) to get further information or browse.

Experience in SEO shows that well-internally linked pages rank significantly better and that the user signals are significantly better. This, in turn, contributes to overall online marketing success. Note: Internal links are important – for humans and for machines, and thus also for you as a website operator.

Speaking Links

Another advantage of text links (whether internal or external) is that users and search engines can understand them. This is due to the so-called link text. Here are a few examples:

• Link to men’s jeans:
  • “The stylish jeans collection for today’s man” is better than
  • “Shop more”
• Link to “Joan of Arc”
  • “Joan of Arc, who saved France”
    is better than
  • “More information”

It becomes very clear from the examples that both (humans and “search” engines) know what to expect behind the first example. Whereas the second variant still requires an additional explanation.

The text link thus has the opportunity to make it clear to users what they can expect behind it. And that is an unbeatable advantage, because the search engine also “understands” it and contextual relationships are established, which can lead to better and more relevant rankings and thus to fewer exits from the website.

Three Clicks to Happiness …

A rule of thumb in search engine optimization states that Google should be able to reach every URL of your website in three clicks. More clicks lead to “search engine laziness” – meaning: The so-called crawler may drop out before reaching deeper pages and fail to index them.

There are tricks and tools to prevent this. Here, the XML sitemap is mentioned as an example. But internal links can also help make the website more quickly accessible to search engines. And unlike the XML sitemap, this is also contextually coherent (see above).

Since it is important that every URL of your website is first crawled by the search engine bot, you should also use internal links. Because what is not known to the search engine (has not been crawled) will not be indexed. And only URLs that are in the index can be found at all.

What is Link Juice? – And how do I use links correctly wrong

Link Juice, or the power of an individual link, describes how links pass the Page Rank of the respective page to the linked page. The Link Juice value is always (transferred) equal to 1. So if you have 100 links, each link passes on a share of 0.01. For this reason, and because contextual links (see above) are much more crucial than navigational ones, one should ensure to use fewer navigational and more textual internal links.

And as can be seen very well in Wikipedia, navigation in internal linking does not help as much as contextual text links. It is no coincidence that Wikipedia.org has a visibility of more than 7,400 Sistrix points. When comparing Wikipedia to the best-performing online shops in Germany, it is evident that their link concept works (even if other aspects also come into play here).

Sources of Errors in Internal Links – What You Should Pay Attention To

The most common mistake when setting a link is the so-called “Broken Link” – that is, a link to a page that does not (any longer) exist. Here, the status code 404 (“File not found”) is returned. This is a very poor signal to the user, but especially to the search engine. This usually happens because either the link address (URL) has been misspelled or the page has indeed been removed.

Since most Content Management Systems do not notice this, editorial diligence is required. So before a URL is removed from the website, one should find out which links refer to it (it makes sense to check external links, i.e., those from other domains as well).

The next (non-critical) mistake is linking to redirected pages. When a URL has been removed from one’s shop or portal, many webmasters and editors resort to 301 redirects to pass on the achieved search engine rankings. This is a common and acceptable practice, and the redirection is accepted by search engines. However, the best way is always to avoid redirect hops with internal links and simply set the links to the actual target page.

Next, it is not uncommon for a link to refer to a canonical page instead of its original. This is not as bad as it initially seems, yet a link to the page that references itself would be the ideal solution. Even though search engines (especially Google) consider it acceptable to set links to “nofollow”, this means that you want to tell the search engine: “Do not follow this link, it is worthless.” Therefore, in our opinion, it is best practice, especially for internal links.

Do you want to improve your click-through rate and need support? Then contact us! Do you want to learn more or have your team trained on this topic? Then check out our analytics seminars.