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 -
Link Building for Charities?
Hello there! I'd like to get some advice/tips about link building for charities. I am doing an internship on SEO in a charity in London and I have Moz Pro to work with. So, I have to work on the links building but I don't know how to start, what value I can offer, etc . Thanks! 🙂
Link Building | | Ignacio.Puglisi3 -
Affiliate link building
I saw articles that said affiliate link building is not good. We are a training company that offer only some training programs. My idea is get other training company to link back to us, but only if they do not offer the same training as we do. We could reward them by giving them commission if the sale happens. But to do this we will need to track the URL where the hit came in from from our website. Is this a good idea or not?
Link Building | | Heinwest0 -
Most significant link building factor
Am I right in thinking the most important link building factor is the number of unique linking root domains? Multiple links from a domain won't help me so much?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
What are the new ways of Link Building which will get quality links?
Hi We are doing following kinds of Link Building: 1. Article marketing 2. Directory Submission 3. Guest Blogging 4. Press Release submission 5. Infographics (Viral Marketing) I know blog commenting and links from discussion forums are considered as greyhat / blackhat by google. So I want suggestions on some other ethical(Whitehat SEO) ways of Link Building to get quality Links. Also suggest me some Free article submission sites which give " dofollow-links" Thank You
Link Building | | Virrtuo0 -
Where did the link building section go?
Used to be a section on link building before the redesign. Where did it go?
Link Building | | waynekolenchuk0