Internal Linking

Understand how the Google bot crawls your website

Internal Linking is core for on-page SEO, especially for big websites. Link juice redistribution, prioritization of key pages or site sections to name a few reasons. Google crawls websites by following links, internal and external, using a bot called Google bot. This bot arrives at the homepage of a website, starts to render the page and follows the first link. By following links Google can work out the relationship between the various pages, posts and other content. This way Google finds out which pages on your site cover similar subject matters.

It all begins with the homepage

Review and audit your current internal linking settings, including navigation, sub-navigations, breadcrumb and tags, taking into account business prioritization. In addition to understanding the relationship between content, Google divides link value between all links on a web page. Often, the homepage of a website has the greatest link value because it has the most backlinks. That link value will be shared between all the links found on that homepage. The link value passed to the following page will be divided between the links on that page, and so on. Therefore, your newest blog posts will get more link value if you link to them from the homepage, instead of only on the category page. And Google will find new posts quicker if they’re linked to from the homepage.

The ideal structure: a pyramid

The most important content should be on top of the pyramid, that being the Homepage. There should be lots of links to the most essential content from topically-related pages in the pyramid. However, you should also link from those top pages to subpages about related topics. Linking internally to related content shows Google what pages hold information about similar topics.

Top Navigation

Using a top navigation will give the most important posts or pages a lot of link value and makes them stronger in Google’s eyes.

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs have two positive impact: for users: navigation and where they are in the site, and for SEO and boost internal linking and site mapping.