The following are best 10 practices for linking the pages of your site together:
1. Use text-based links if possible and use the proper link structure.
2. Use keywords in your link text for every link.
Part of the ranking algorithm includes checking the text of a link against text on the linked-to page. Use your keywords in link text.
Don’t use “Click here” or “Home” as the text of a link, as these are not relevant.
3. Link from your home (or sitemap) page to every other page on your site.
If your Web site is relatively small (less than 10 pages or so), your home page can effectively function as your sitemap page. If you have a larger site, this becomes unwieldy and you then need a separate sitemap page. Add some content to your sitemap page – it should not consist of just links.
A sitemap page functions as an “index” to your site and is invaluable for the following reasons:
• Helps Google find and crawl other pages on your site quickly
• Helps your customers find what they need quickly
• Helps distribute your site’s PageRank to other important pages
Tip: Because your home page likely has the highest PageRank in your site, you should NOT put any outgoing links on this page. Ideally, the only page you should have outgoing links on is your Related Links page. This will minimize the small amount of PageRank “leakage” from that page. This concept will be discussed later.
4. Link from every “non-relevant” page back to your home page ONLY.
Non-relevant pages are defined here as those pages that are not keyword-rich and do not likely contain the information that a visitor to your site is looking for while searching on Google. You do not want these pages to receive as much PageRank as your more important pages. Examples of non-relevant pages that should ONLY link back to the Home page include the following:
• “Copyright” page
• “Privacy Policy” Page
• “Disclaimers” Page
• “About Us” page
• “Contact Us” page
• Order form, shopping cart pages
• “Link to Us” page
• “Testimonials” page
This helps return and concentrate PageRank back to your Home page. Remember, you want to maximize PageRank for your most important pages.
5. Link from your “Related Links” page to every other page on your site.
This page contains outgoing links that point to other websites and will “leak” PageRank from this page (but not from any other pages). Since PageRank “voting power” is shared evenly among all links on a page, having many links that point back to your own page will minimize this effect.
As a rule of thumb, try to keep all links going to other sites on a single page – your “Related Links” page. (If you have more than 100 links on a page, consider splitting them up into multiple pages).
6. Link ONLY between pages that are related by keyword.
This helps distribute PageRank among pages that are related by keyword phrase. These pages are likely important to your customers, which means you should concentrate PageRank on these. These pages should also contain a link back to the Home page.
7. Ensure every page links to at least one other page
.
This will help Google crawl your site faster and help your customers navigate through your site better. Pages with a link to them but without a link on them are called orphan pages.
8. Use Absolute URLs to Link to Your Home Page
When linking back to your home page from other pages on your site, always use the absolute URL instead of a relative URL or file path. For example, always use:
http://www.yourdomain.com (note the www)
instead of:
index.html (or whatever the file name of your Home page is) or
http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html
to link back to your Home page. I would also use absolute URLs for any subdomain, subdirectory and other main “category” pages you might have on your site. Google has had problems assigning an accurate PageRank value to a page if it uses inconsistent or differing link URL forms to it.
9. Use “Bread Crumb” Link Navigation
Effective link navigation between your pages can provide keyword-rich internal links and assist your visitors in determining exactly where they are on your site. A popular technique called “bread crumbs” can be used for this. For example, if this book were in HTML format on the Web, I could insert a series of links at the top of each page.
For this particular page, the bread crumb links would be:
Optimizing Your Website > Linking Your Pages Correctly > Best Practices For Internal Linking
Note how this can increase both content and provide keyword-rich links.
10. Use the “NOFOLLOW” Attribute Link
The rel=”NOFOLLOW” attribute in a link has been used on blog and forum sites to block the Google spider from following a link to its target page, and hence blocking the passing of PageRank. This is in an effort to reduce link spamming.
You can use the NOFOLLOW attribute to your advantage on your site to channel PageRank to your most important pages. Here’s the syntax:
<A HREF=”yourpageURL” rel=”NOFOLLOW”>
Your tips is very informative and It is indicate about best internal linking.
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I have been always confused with Internal linking.But this article has helped me a lot.I always knew that if internal linking is utilized properly can be of great SEO value but couldn’t exactly figure out the correct way until reading your article.A very hearty thanks.
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With the help of this post we can understand the actual need of internal linking and also about its best practice.
Great tips…will definitely need to keep these in mind. Thanks!
Useful and interesting article. Thanks.
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Very useful post. Internal linking is very important for search engine ranking that’s why it should be done perfectly and professionally.
Is it possible to get link power from more than one link in an article?
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Quite simple but strategical and noticeable steps for internal linking of a site. A new term that i find here is “Bread Crumb” Link Navigation. It’s really a nice way for internal linking of your site. I will implement this in my site.
Great post, thanks!
I’ve made some of the changes, mainly the no outbound links from home page.
I was aware only of 7 tips from your list. Now I have to go to my website to fix the other 3.
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Link building is one of the key point in gaining a higher rank in major search engines. That’s why it’s important that it should be done properly and professionally in order to be effective.
Thanks for the nofollow syntax, helps to share no link juice.
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Very good advice. It’s amazing how many people overlook on-page factors in their SEO. Not sure how helpful the “no-follow” Pagerank sculpting is these days. Cutts says it is a waste of time, but then not always clear he is being completely forthcoming. In any case, it probably can’t hurt.