When people hear the term, SEO, backlinks come to mind. For many, SEO is synonymous with the idea of getting “more backlinks” and “ranking”. There is more to search engine optimization and linking than just backlinks. Below we’ll look at an important aspect of SEO that we do have control over internal and external linking.
The different types of linking
What is linking between websites and webpages? There are three main types of linking when considering webpages. There is the ever-popular backlink and then there are the internal and external links.
A backlink, inbound links, incoming links or inlink are one way links that are links from another website to a page on your website. The aim of backlinks is to gain as many relevant backlinks from other websites that have a high “authority”. [5]
An external link is when your website links to a webpage on another website. [6]
An internal link is when you link from a webpage within your website to another webpage within your website. [4]
It’s these last two links that we’ll look at more closely.
How are these links created?
The code looks like the following:
<a href=”http://www.webpage-you-are-linking-to.com/”>Link Anchor Text</a>
The “Link Anchor Text” is the text on the webpage that is used to link to the ‘webpage-you-are-linking-to”. When looking at the text on a webpage you can usually recognize anchor text because it may be in a different colour, font, bolded, underlined etc. As to whether the link is an internal or external link depends on where you end up once you click the anchor text. For example [7],
Code
The orange text, “Creating a Google My Business listing” is an example of anchor text because when you click on it it takes you to another webpage. In this case it takes us to the webpage https://www.google.com/intl/en_ca/business/ which is on another domain from where the link originates so this is an external link.
Below is an example of an internal link [7],
The anchor text “Learn more” takes us to the webpage https://www.onelocal.com/marketing-for-dentists/ which is within the same domain as the webpage where the link originates. So, this is an internal link.
Anchor text
Anchor text is the text that you click on in a hyperlink. It’s usually visible that text on a webpage is anchor text by colour or font. [1]
What are the best practices for anchor text?
- We want to try and keep anchor text brief, relevant to the page it’s linking to and no keyword stuffing! The anchor text “Creating a Google My Business listing” in the first example, demonstrates these best practices: it’s brief, describes the page that it’s linking to and there is a keyword, Google My Business, but not too many keywords in the anchor text.
- We want to try and avoid using generic phrases like, “click here”, “contact us”, or “here” as anchor text.
- We also don’t want to over-link.
- When internal linking we want to avoid using keyword heavy anchor text when linking from page to page. For example, when linking to a laser hair removal page, we want to avoid using the anchor text “laser hair removal” as anchor text too often throughout the page.
The different types of anchor text
Exact match – the anchor text used to link to the page is an exact match of the page that is being targeted. E.g. “pressure washing” is the anchor text to a page about pressure washing.
Partial match – the anchor text includes a variation of the keyword on the page being linked to. E.g. “dog toys for corgis” is the anchor text to a page about dog toys
Branded – when a branded name is used as the anchor text. E.g. “Starbucks”
Naked Link – when an url is used as the anchor text for the link to the page. E.g. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ is the anchor text and the page being linked to
Generic – a generic, common word or phrase. E.g. “click here”, “here”, “contact us”
Images – When an image is used as a link to another webpage, the image alt attribute is used as the anchor text. [2]
Linking best practices
- Only link when supporting information is required and seems appropriate. Ensure there is relevance between the content on the linked pages. i.e. don’t create linking for the sake of linking.
- Try not to use the same anchor text repeatedly.
- For internal linking, you can open links in the same tab since you’re staying on the same website.
- However, for external linking, open links in a new tab since you are sending visitors away from your site and you wouldn’t want them to get lost and forget how to get back to your website.
- For external links you want to link to reputable sources. E.g. News sources, Huffington post etc. Don’t link to competing websites.
Why internal links?
There are two main types of internal links, navigation links and contextual links.
- Navigational links are usually found in the menus, headers, and footers and it’s a clear way for visitors of the site to navigate throughout the site.
- Contextual links are those internal links that are within the copy of the text on individual webpages. These links help the visitor understand the copy on the webpage by linking to resources and information related to the copy on the page.
Internal linking has a number of purposes
- It distributes the authority throughout the site by passing link equity or link juice, from a page to the linked page. E.g. there may be a service page on your site that has a high authority, linking to less authoritative pages within the site will “pass on” some of that link equity to the linked page.
- Through internal linking topic clusters are created. This helps create signals to search engines as to the relevance of topics and posts/content on your site.
- It also helps the search engine navigate through all the pages on your site which in turns helps it understand your website’s structure.
- It improves the visitors’ experience of your site and engagement by directing visitors to related content and keeping them on your site longer which can potentially lead to higher conversion rates.
- Linking to an older post on a website from newer ones can bring new life to the older posts. [8, 9]
Why external links?
- External linking is equivalent to citing sources in a bibliography for an academic paper. It shows you’ve done your homework and research before writing. Adding relevant external links adds trustworthiness to your content, improving your website’s credibility.
- Usually when you’re creating an external link you’re linking to a webpage with valuable information and as a result probably is of high quality. Search engines will view your content favourably as high quality usually links to other high-quality content and in turn, increase the probability of your webpage and website ranking.
- External links are a way to create connections. The website you’re linking can tell when you’re linking to them and they may in turn link back to your website in the future.
- An external link may also provide more value to your visitor who may want to dig deeper into the topic you’re writing about. In the eyes of your visitor, your website is now an expert. [10, 11]
What do we do with this information?
When creating content for a page the goal is always to write valuable content that satisfies EEAT, experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. However, considering natural and relevant connections between webpages within the domain and with other websites with the above best practices in mind will provide greater value to the reader and help with search optimization of the page and site. When designing a website, considering the structural internal links will help a visitor navigate throughout the site and will also help search engines understand the structure of the website. All this combined will contribute to the online visibility of your website.
References:
- Anchor Text: What Is It & How To Optimize It?, Winston Burton Oct 2022, Search Engine Journal, URL: ttps://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-optimize-anchor-text/466787/
- Anchor Text, moz.com, URL: https://moz.com/learn/seo/anchor-text
- What Is Anchor Text? Best Practices for Optimizing Link Text, Kelly Lyon, September 2022, SEMRush, URL: https://www.semrush.com/blog/what-is-anchor-text-and-how-can-i-optimize-it/
- Internal Linking for SEO in 2023, Daniel Rojo, February 2023, Labe Lnone, URL: https://labelnone.com/internal-linking-seo-2023/
- Backlinks, Backlinko, URL: https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/backlinks
- External Links, MOZ, URL: https://moz.com/learn/seo/external-link
- OneLocal, URL: https://www.onelocal.com/
- Maximizing SEO with Internal Links in 2023: The benefits, Asim Akhtar, AtOnce, URL: https://atonce.com/blog/benefits-of-internal-linking
- 7 Benefits of Internal Linking in SEO, Mary Kate Mack, January 2023, seoClarity, URL: https://www.seoclarity.net/blog/benefits-of-internal-linking-strategy
- 7 External Linking Best Practices for SEO, Dharmesh Shah, November 2021, HubSpot, URL: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/235/no-website-is-an-island-why-and-how-to-link-to-others.aspx
- Should You Use Outbound Links?, NEILPATEL, URL: https://neilpatel.com/blog/outbound-links/
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