Internal Links: How Important and How to Boost
-
A couple of my competitors have WAY more internal links than I do, and are outranking me. Could that be an important factor? (Let's assume all other things equal, i.e. don't bother explaining that it's complicated and many factors are involved, please.)
If boosting the number is important, what's the best way to do it (site is heliski.com)
thx,
tj
-
If all other things are equal AND you all have some crawlability issues, yes it could be a major factor. For example, if you have deep pages that are not indexed well then linking to them outside of the sitemap could help. Just because a page is in the sitemap doesn't mean Google wants to index it. If it has zero other links (either internally or externally) and the content is a little "thin" they may choose not to include it. Adding a decent internal link could make the difference there.
If all other things are equal AND those pages are indexed and linked to from your crawlable navigation, yes it could be a moderate factor if your competitors are interlinking from body copy and the only place you link from is the navigation - as these types of links are not treated exactly the same.
That's the short answer. The long answer is - it's complicated. Feel free to stop reading here if you really don't care about possible complications.
Some sites go too far on their interlinking strategy and end up with a penalty. I've seen this happen on a few Wordpress sites that use a plugin to automatically link every single instance of a phrase to a specific landing page. That just doesn't look natural, and you could end up getting filtered or penalized at the level of the page or, more likely, for that specific anchor text.
Another thing to look out for is future scaleability. For example, I don't often like to hard code links to specific products within the body copy of an eCommerce site because products tend to come and go. What you'd end up with a few years later is an avalanche of 404 errors that you'll have to manually go in and fix. I tend to leave product interlinking automated (e.g. Related products widget) and save the hard-coded links for linking to category pages, which tend to stick around longer.
-
Hi TJ,
While internal links do help your websites ranking, they aren't a major factor. They can be used for keywords and boosts a few website analytics such as bounce rate and total time spent on page.
Your time would be better served focusing on producing content and getting external link clicks to your website through multiple channels. This will increase your SEO and page rankings. This is most likely why your competitors are out ranking you. Not because of their internal links.
It seems to me you already have a large number of internal links under the heading 'Heliskiing Canada Operators'.
Best of luck with your SEO!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Moz bot not discovering important links (high DA sites link)
Moz bot is unable to crawl and discover my links on the high authority websites like microsoft, linkedin, pinterest, etc. Where is the problem?
Link Building | | TechG0 -
If i have 6 posts in a niche site, i want each one to rank for separate keyword. Should i internal link all of them together?
I have the following posts X + Word-1 + Y X + Word-2+ Y X + Word-3 + Y X + Word-4 + Y X + Word-5 + Y X + Word-6 + Y Should i internal link them all to each other? I want each post to rank for its keyword Untitled.png
Link Building | | EslamElewa100 -
When pitching a whitepaper as Push Content for Link Building, is it ok to give the person I'm pitching a link to a landing page with a form on it?
When pitching a whitepaper as Push Content for Link Building (i.e. pushing out content that my client has created), is it ok to give the person I'm pitching a link to a landing page with a form on it? Or should I create a landing page with the whitepaper included on it? I’m not sure if the client will be ok with this b/c I know they use the whitepaper for sales purposes to gain leads. For example, my pitch email would include a line such as this, "the whitepaper can be found at LINK and I'd love if you could share it with your readers." I think it may be weird/a little wrong to ask a webmaster to include a link on his site to a landing page with a form to get the whitepaper. Does this make sense? What have others done with whitepapers as Push Content for link building?
Link Building | | ArketiGroup1 -
Internal Linking Questions
Hello, here are my questions. 1:Should I be internal linking back to my home page from every subpage or lower page on my site. Or, is that going overboard? 2: If i'm internal linking back to a page with an anchor text that has no relation to the page, will that pass less relevance? So for example lets say the current page is about mazda cars. Then, I link to a page about ford cars with the anchor text Mazda cars that would pass less relevance, right? Thanks for your help
Link Building | | PeterRota0 -
Deleting links
I've got 280 links on my wordpress blog site, apparently it's recommended to keep under 100 links. How would I know which links to get rid of and which links to keep?
Link Building | | gimes0 -
Link Targets
What do you think of getting links from... high quality sites, with many non spammy high trusted links to them....but their traffic has been majorly hit by panda. I suspect perhaps for having too many thin pages. Is persuing links on these sites a good idea or not? I'd welcome opinions.
Link Building | | PeterM220 -
Which link should I use for link building?
I have an article which have high rank on Google. But recent, I use mod rewrite url so this article have new url. old: mywebsite.com/c1/p-1 new: mywebsite.com/c-e/p-1 Now, google is indexing old url. I want to ask when I build linking to my site, which link should I use for link building? I should build linking for new url or old url. Thanks
Link Building | | sonzin13040 -
SEOs and web developers frequently leave links to their site in the footer of their clients' sites. Does this negatively impact the site with the links?
Does this provide any SEO value to the receiving site? Has anyone experienced problems doing this?
Link Building | | KatMouse2