Internal Link Building
-
For a large part of our SEO we have been focusing on inbound links (mainly from guest posts and blogger reviews). But our rankings have dropped (though I understand there is a natural fluctuation in rankings quite often) this week and it occurred to me that we should be focusing more on internal link building as well. We, of course, link often to our home page and have related products on every page but we lack a lot of direct key word links in in our description. Would it behoove us to be on a specific product page--take for example owls and friends wall decals--and somewhere in the description add something like "our nursery wall decals are safe for....and have "nursery wall decals" be the direct link since that is a key term for us?
I just wanted to make sure that we are headed in the right direction before I spend a massive amount of time updating all these product pages.
Any input would be really helpful.
Thanks so much,
Elizabeth
-
How "getable" and appealing are the images? Is it easy to tell what they are?
Have you optimised the ALT text and FIlename?
Adding a caption can help too - but try to customers in mind, keep them snappy and try to include the things that help them differentiate between the the relevant options.
Definitely something worth testing.
-
We try to keep unnecessary links to a minimum. If any.
We do have recommended products at the bottom of each page, but they are images. I was just curious if it would behoove us to have more anchor text in our descriptions (if it was helpful and applicable of course).
Thanks guys.
-
Agree, Doug. Links for link sake is not a good idea, but for an ecommerce site without a ton of navigation, links are a great way to cross-merchandise their products.
In fact, they might be wise to use a product recommendation engine to elevate and expose more products during the shopping experience.
-
Thank you Lisa! This is what I thought but gave me some new insight. Really appreciate it.
-
That is so awesome! Haha I love that.
-
My daughters have those owls on their bedroom wall.
-
I'd be cautious about adding unnecessary links for the sole purpose of getting some anchor text relevancy.
Do make sure that if you are naturally linking to another page/product that you use clear relevant anchor text that makes sense to your visitors in the context of the page that you're linking from.
Do consider the user experience, and the goals of the page you're creating the links on. You don't, for example, want superflous links drawing your visitors away from your conversion goals, adding confusion and uncertainty. Unlike your main navigation, in-line links can disorient visitors to your site. (What works for a wiki type site isn't necessarily a good idea for an e-commerce one!)
If you have a blog, or ever-green content that's been around for a while, attracted some links, been shared then do remember to go back to some of the popular content and update it, linking to the latest products/services/articles. It's easy to remember to link back to older articles, but updating your old content to link to the latest material can really help, especially if you're old pages are ranking well, attracting visitors and are still relevant.
Doug.
-
Elizabeth, think of internal links as walking a visitor to content you'd like them to read, or that you think they might find valuable as relevant to the content they're already on.
Links not only help the user experience, but they tell every audience which pieces of content you find valuable and relevant.
The anchor text you use should be intuitive and helpful for the reader. Sometimes that means using the exact title of the page you'll be going to. Other times it means developing the anchor text as if you are the reader i.e. why would I leave the page to visit this link? Is it more helpful than the page I'm on? Is it supportive research to support my story?
If you're an ecommerce site, it is helpful to link to related products within that category or collection or other products someone might need.
If you think of every page as a standalone page that someone entered from search, how would they know to get to related products?
I hope this helps!
Lisa
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
-
Do links from International SEO counterpart site carry weight?
Hi everyone! One of our clients has a competitor who has an international reach with their website. Their hreflang goes from Brazil, German, US, China, etc. We found that the Chinese site (.cn) sends over 900,000+ backlinks to the main US site (.com). The hreflang for the site has the .com US version of the site as the canonical. So my question is - does our competitor get any link equity from the 900,000 links they are getting from their Chinese (.cn) version of the site? My initial thought is that because they are marked up with hreflang and canonical tags, those 900,000+ links wouldn't' have any equity? Would love some thoughts/guidance on what others think.
Link Building | | JKhoo0 -
HELP! New Link Building
Any recommendations on where to start with link building for an automotive dealer site? Our ultimate goal is to drive traffic to the inventory pages and increase lead submissions. Should we build links to new and used inventory? Also, any recommendations regarding anchor text would be extremely helpful! Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | AMSI0 -
Link Building for Landing Page
Hey Guys, I have a client that is launching a website in about 2-3 months time. They have had a flash site for the last 4 years and have had no SEO/Link Building to the site and are now going to undertake my services for Content Strategy, Social Strategy and Link Building. In the interim (from now till the next 3 months) they will be launching a "coming soon" landing page. What I want to know is when doing their initial link building do I just concentrate on brand related links through local directories with the aim of getting a few local keyterms? Or should we be deploying a longer term strategy of going after the competitive keyterms now? Thanks,
Link Building | | ecentricmarketing
Michael0 -
Creative link building ideas for law sites
I have a client who does not actively participate in the content writing or resource providing part of optimization or link building. I want to build some more links to the site outside of content spreading and guest blogging. I have read a lot of the recent articles on creative ways to build links but feel that most would not apply to this kind of site. Any ideas on creative link building methods for a law services info site?
Link Building | | webfeatseo0 -
LINK BUILDING - Does it really matter if the link is not relevant?
Hi guys, I have just done a lot of link buillding and I thought I am just going to link build and I am not going to go after RELVANT links. I have property/real esate website and I have been any kind of link builidng and I have noteced some good increases in rankings.. So my questions is; Does it really matter if the link is relvant to property or real estate if I have got ranking increases? Or will it later harm my site?? Thanks Gareth
Link Building | | GAZ091 -
Selling link building - Show me the money !
Week after week we get enquiries for Link building services. Time and time again we are losing out on contracts and deals... My stance - We work on your site for a period of time doing link building so 2 days in the month a link building member will research competitors , yadi , yadi, ya 🙂 You get the picture right... But the customers are being told by less scrupulous companies the numbers of links they will receive. Impossible unless you are buying them right ? So it reaches that point when you start questioning being 100% honest... What advice would you give me on selling link building services...
Link Building | | onlinemediadirect0 -
Please critique my link building plan
Hello, Here's my revised link building plan for nlpca.com Let me know if I'm off or missing anything. 1)Identify a list of competitors that are strong enough to have good backlinks (probably about 15 in our industry Look at top content for top competitors and see what type of content is being linked to. build infographics for each area we want to target based on top content Using OSE, analyze competitor backlinks and decide which sites might link to the infographics and which sites might just link to us if we asked them (our site is already an authority). In this step we would also expand the backlink analysis to include sites on pages 4-8 Only choose link aquisition for sites based on the following criteria: Age A lot of unique content A clean site Backlinks going to that site Facebook followers Which of course means high search engine rankings Publish infographics and do outreach
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Link Building - I have asked this question but nobody has responded to me
Hi there, I have asked you guys this question already, but nobody has got back to me.. Can you tell me please how to best use your tools to build links to help with SEO? You seem to have a few tools for links, but which one is the best and how do i best use them..?? Can you alos provide me with some link building tips??? Please can you help and repsond, I would be very gratful.. Thanks Gareth
Link Building | | GAZ090