Whilst much is said about the requirement for inbound links from external websites in search engine optimisation circles, the requirement for good internal links is often overlooked and underestimated.
It’s important that your internal hyperlinks are optimised too. Google et al. use internal links to access all areas of your website and to classify the page content correctly. Good internal linking will make Google’s job a lot easier and you’ll be rewarded with better rankings.
Here are some tips for getting the most from your internal linking:
1. Always use descriptive anchor text in your internal links. Do not use ‘Click here’ as your anchor text. It’s better to use descriptive keywords (eg. Getaroom offers cheap hotels in Sydney, Boomerang Books specialises in Australian books) in the anchor text because it assists the search engine to classify your content.
2. Try to use text hyperlinks, rather than Javascript, image and Flash links. Search engines find it difficult to classify links if they are not text. If you must use fancy linking methods, then always include a text version of your navigation structure in the footer of your page. That way, the search engines will be able to crawl your pages.
3. Employ the 2-click rule. Make sure all your pages are accessible within two clicks from your home page. Pages that are buried too deep in your page navigation may not be indexed by the search engines.
4. Publish a sitemap. A sitemap page contains links to all pages on your website. It’s like the index in a book. Sitemap pages are great for search engines, because the spider or robot can access all pages from a single entry point.
5. Cross-link within your website as much as possible. This requires a bit of discipline because every time that you publish a new page, you need to try and link to as many pages as possible within your website. Not only is this great for the search engines, but it also permits your visitors to navigate quickly and easily within your site. Make sure that you use descriptive link anchor text when you cross-link!
6. Analyse your site for broken links. There are plenty of tools out there that can identify broken links, both internal and external, within your website.
