Relaunching a site that has had thousands of posts linking to the same 20 articles. How to properly setup internal linking?
-
I'm in the process of relaunching a music news site (www.prefixmag.com) that once did quite well in search (over a million monthly search visits in its prime). The site got crushed by Panda, etc. and we stopped updating it.
I'm starting to do more research but one thing that I noticed was we have modules in the right rail (desktop) that are found on all of our article pages that point to the same posts. (Edit: Added attachment. The links in the right rail under Editor Picks, Features, News, Media, etc. are found on every page of the site).
In other words, we have thousands of posts that all link to the same 20 or so articles. Should we not do this if we're not trying to emphasize these posts in Google? Assuming this is the case, what is the proper way to do internal linking? Do we simply setup a sitemap and link to it? I'm hoping to have the thousands of articles we've published over the years have a chance to rank in search again. Also, we have a number of posts that are thin in content should those pages not be submitted in the sitemap? Thanks in advance!
-
Hi Leggo, thanks for the question!
Your current setup is definitely not optimal for SEO, as you are discovering. There are a few things that you can do to help yourself out here. First, there are three good resources here on Moz that you should check out (the last 2 done by me in 2012, but still very relevant):
- https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link
- https://moz.com/blog/internal-linking-strategies-for-2012-and-beyond
- https://moz.com/blog/smarter-internal-linking-whiteboard-friday
On to your specific questions.
You ask how to set up your internal linking. Your current setup of linking to just 20 pages internally is definitely not helping you out because you are effectively just telling Google about those 20 articles and not the longtail of articles that you have. XML sitemaps are for discovery purposes for Google, not ranking. An HTML sitemap is a must for you if you have a lot of content and can also help with discoverability and a bit with rankings as well, but it's definitely not all you need to do.
If your content is structured well (in categories that make sense, tagged, etc), then you can set up a system (all depends on your CMS how this is configured) that links similar articles with other similar articles. Some sites have done smart things with linking to specific articles that have more potential search volume, and deprioritizing the number of internal links to articles that don't have much potential.
In the latter case, eventually you should audit if you should remove those lower volume or quality pages to help your site overall. You say that it is indeed the case that you have these pages. I would at first not put them in the sitemap. Then, decide if you want to a) update them to make them quality or b) remove them. That's an internal decision based off of current available resources (time, people) and opportunity. I've done both in the past (updated or removed) and both can definitely help. It just depends on your overall strategy for your site!
Good luck!
-
Thanks for the tip Tymen. In response to when you say "post everything online at the same time again", I do not plan on taking anything offline and the site has remained live for years even though it was not being updated with new content. By relaunching we'll be focused on adding new content. To summarize, you're suggesting we get rid of the modules in the right tool bar that point to specific articles, correct? And we could just put key articles and topics in the footer?
The aim with the site is to provide features, news, and reviews on various bands/artists.
-
Hi Leggo,
I would not go for a relaunch and post everything online at the same time again. This would seem very unnatural. Also I would get rid of the linking to the main articles. You could put the most important articles/ topics in a footer menu and get the same idea. If the content is unique and actually gives answers for those looking for information it is valuable. I also see you put new articles on so this adds to your credibility. What is your aim with the site?
Good luck regards, Tymen
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
-
Internal linking dilemma
My company is running a submission contest. All submissions will live on the the main contest page. When clicked, each submission will open up into their own page (with a unique URL). Each submission will also have internal links pointing to a few relevant product pages. My question: Say we receive 1,000 submissions. Is it better to have internal links from 1,000 unique, lower authority submission pages? Or should we canonicalize each submission page to the higher authority main contest page and effectively have all those internal links coming from the main contest page? Is one better than the other? Are there link spam issues to worry about with either? Thank you in advance!
Link Building | | StevenLevine0 -
I have managed to land a few expert pieces on external sites for my company and would like to document that on our blog in the form of mini-blurbs which lead through to the article... but if I link back to it, is that bad practice?
Of course link sharing can be punishable if it is done to share juice, and I understand that on the surface it could look like link sharing, but in reality it would just be nice to document the different successes we've had. Thoughts?
Link Building | | MatthewWhatley1 -
Are links with space considered to be the same as links with %20?
I wonder if Google would consider those three links to be the same? http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test+page.html
Link Building | | lucek0 -
My Question : why site explorer not showing yahoo directory link
why site explorer not showing yahoo directory link i have tried many different sites which listed in yahoo directory but site explorer not showing ?
Link Building | | amreen8470 -
Local service site link building
I have a local service site http://winecountrycarpet.com/ and I have been link building as much as possible for my landing pages (which aren't local to my city, but are within 20 miles). I would like to keep my link building as above board and white hat as possible (so i do a lot of forum sigs and links in do follow forum in my industry) I do not seem to be seeing any results though. My pages are on the first page for their targeted keywords, but I think this has more to do with onsite SEO and non competitive keywords. I am wondering if anyone can recommend any strategies that I might find more effective. I have thought about leaving blog comments on do follow blog's but it just seems so spammy its hard to imagine it working. I am open to any ideas.
Link Building | | ayetti0 -
Mobile sites link strategies
Hi, I am working for a large mobil-site (+200.000 pages), to improve their SEO, and am trying to figure out the best way to set up a linkbuilding strategy for the site. The urls are very dynamic and often rather long so deep linking is difficult. Any input/ideas would be welcome 🙂 Jens Peter
Link Building | | jpndk0 -
What are your views on linking to wikipedia within an article post?
So lately I have seen alot of link building articles which link to their target URL and also within the site they link to Wikipedia. Anyone know why? Thanks
Link Building | | HaymarketMediaGroupLtd0 -
Internal linking
I 'am using a seo component (sh404sef) for a joomla website, for the time being, any internal linking is organized. I've been said the sitelinkx is not advised (a component dedicated to build internal links) with sh404sef... How could i manage to set it up fastly ? Tks a lot..
Link Building | | mozllo0