Internal links are the cementing force that connects your domain pages together. They support site structure, enhance the user experience, and provide context to the search engines. A digital marketing professional cannot skip them in formulating a successful link-building plan.
One of the significant benefits of using internal links in your SEO strategy is that you have control over your internal links. It often shows the results quickly and passes the link juice to the pages you want to rank higher on SERPS. Also, you can easily diagnose problems and fix them. However, not all mistakes can be fixed, and it is better to avoid them by using a careful and thoughtful approach to internal linking.
To help you create a strong internal linking structure, here we have discussed the common mistakes to avoid when building an internal linking strategy and how to fix them:
Links are placed in the content to guide visitors and take them to other relevant pages. Of course, they are important to boost your page rankings, but adding way too many links can drift away visitors rather than making them engage with your page. If you clutter your web page with too many links, it will neither look good nor be useful for visitors. It will also make it difficult for search engines to derive the value of the important links. For instance, in the screenshot given below, there are too many links on a page, which gives it a confusing and cluttered look.
Avoid building tons of internal links on a page simply because it has high domain authority. If you force too many links into a post or a web page, it will dilute the strength of each link. It can be overwhelming for readers as well. They may not like to read such a cluttered page that actually confuses them about which link to click.
In the past, Google’s guidelines recommended having fewer than 100 links. However, it didn’t force the webmaster to follow this link limit. But Google no longer has an explicit link limit and has even updated its guidelines to remove the previous link limit. In practice, it is important to use links reasonably on your web pages; otherwise, you may not be able to rank them.
As per Bing’s guidelines, webmasters should use a reasonable number of links per page. It has further clarified that pages should have no more than a few thousand links. Exceeding the limit would not make you get penalized, but Bing may restrict your website’s organic rankings for using too many links.
If search engine crawlers don’t follow the link to a web page, the page may not get indexed and eventually won’t rank in the search results. It will also not generate any search traffic. To encourage search engine crawlers to index all of your web pages, you should use a reasonable number of links per page. It will help you get more and more pages indexed by the search engines.
One of the biggest mistakes in formulating an internal linking strategy is not using the right links. When your website links send the visitor to a broken or unavailable link, it will not just increase the bounce rate but will also have a bad impact on the credibility of the website. Here are some common types of links that can have a bad impact on your internal linking structure:
It will take the URL much longer to load and put the viewer in an endless loop of redirects. If you send your visitors from one page to another through a long route, it will frustrate the users, and they might bounce off.
Thus, one should avoid adding indirect links that redirect to pages other than the final destination URL to minimize the bounce rate.
One must avoid using masked links, as they may get your website penalized by Google. Besides, these links are not visible to visitors and will not fetch any good results.
Pro tip: Use ESL Ranks Pro to identify and fix broken or irrelevant internal links.
One of the common mistakes in an internal linking strategy is choosing the wrong pages for linking. It happens when you link the content to pages irrelevant to it or when you link pages that are not important for your website.
For instance, if you have an e-commerce store dealing in a variety of products and you link your blog post about fashion clothes to the page that sells shoes, it will be irrelevant and misleading. Thus, it is important to be conscious that all your pages are logically linked and are not misleading the visitor. It will also hurt your rankings, as search engines may view your links as spam.
By keeping the above points in mind, you can avoid choosing the wrong pages for linking and improve your internal linking strategy.
There are two kinds of link attributes: follow and no-follow. The ‘follow’ attribute allows the search engines to crawl through the linked page, while the no-follow attribute tells the search engine not to follow a link. In other words, a no-follow attribute means you are asking the search engines to ignore the given link.
When internal links contain the rel=nofollow attribute, it means you are willingly stopping search engine bots from discovering your page. This will naturally hamper your website’s authority as well as prevent new pages from ranking in search results.
Right-click anywhere on your site to check for no-follow links.
Select “View page source in the options.
Press CTRL + F to search “no-follow” to find the links with this attribute.
Here are some examples when one must avoid using nofollow attributes on internal links:
If you are not sure whether or not to use no-follow attributes on a particular internal link, it is better not to use them. It is recommended to evaluate the content on every page and link only to the relevant page on the basis of it.
A page on your site is orphaned if it is not linked to any page on the website. For instance, if there is a product no longer in stock, it is now orphaned and has no links pointing to it. Similarly, if you migrate your site to a new platform and do not redirect all the pages from the old site to the new site, then some of your pages may get orphaned. As these pages have low visibility and it is difficult to find them, search engine bots are automatically discouraged from crawling them.
These links can cause users to get lost on your site as they lead nowhere. People won’t like to come back to your site if there are orphaned links or if they don’t find what they are looking for due to an orphaned link.
Anchor text is one of the important elements of link building. Anchor text is a clickable text link that points to another page. The ideal anchor text will provide you with comprehensive information about the Connect website. It appears blue most of the time; however, it is customizable, and you can optimize website link colors and styles using HTML or CSS. Anchor texts are an important part of building both internal and external links. One must use significant and expressive keywords to show the context of the page.
Crawl depth is the number of clicks it takes to move to any page from the home page. The higher the crawl depth, the less significant the page will be considered by the search engine bots. For instance, if you keep your most important page, say the product page, 5–10 clicks away from the homepage, then crawlers will take it as less significant and may not rank it. However, if your site’s main service page has a crawl depth of 1 or 2, search engines will automatically consider it an important page.
Create a logical site structure with your key pages located near the top of the hierarchy. This will make it easier for search engine crawlers to find and index your pages. Also, use internal links to connect to each other and to other relevant pages on your site. It will help crawlers better understand the relationship between your pages and find and index them.
Research has shown that the human brain is 60,000 times faster than text, and 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual. Images are an essential component of any website in order to connect with visitors. When images are used in the right way for internal linking, they can help your page get quality backlinks and leads. However, if they are not handled properly in internal linking strategy, it can prove bad for your SEO health.
When you insert an image into a web page, you should always include a link to the image source. This link is called an image tag. The image tag should include an alt attribute, which is a text description of the image. If you do not include a link to the image, it will not be linked to any other pages on your site. This can make it difficult for search engines to crawl and index the image.
Apart from that, if you do not include an alt attribute, the image will not be accessible to users who are blind or visually impaired. They rely on screen readers to read the text on web pages. If there is no alt attribute for an image, the screen reader will not be able to read the image description.
Here are some tips for building links for images properly:
Navigational links help users navigate the entire website. They create the menu for all the pages of the site, making it easy and quick for users to find what they are looking for on the site. Though the navigation bar is an important component of a website, marketers often forget to include it in their internal linking strategy. A common mistake is to include too many links to the navigation bar, while another is to leave out some of the connections.
Scoring top rankings on search engines requires a solid SEO and link strategy. A well-planned internal linking strategy helps improve the user experience, gain visibility, and build the authority of your site. A site audit tool can make it easy and quick to identify and fix errors in your internal linking structure. It can help you identify pages with broken links, irrelevant links, and even those pages that need more links. If you are building your internal link-building strategy, avoid the above-mentioned mistakes. Moreover, try to create a logical and intuitive internal linking structure for your website to reap the maximum benefits from it.