SEOs sometimes take for granted things that can help them a great deal. Internal link building is one such technique. For many SEOs. internal linking is an obligation they are required to fulfill. Many who have learned their trade at digital marketing institutes simply add internal links to content because their trainer told them to all those years ago.
Think about off-page SEO for a second.
We all know why backlinks are important. They pass on credibility and equity to specific webpages of a website. A website with no relevant backlinks would not be trusted by search engines like no other website on the web is passing any link equity to it (even if on-page content is top-notch)
What is then the point of internal link building?
A tired explanation for internal linking is that it offers better navigation across the website. Through internal links, a visitor can read find more relevant content on a website by simply clicking on phrases or words hyperlinked.
While this point is true, like most things in digital marketing, it does not tell the full story.
Why is Internal Link Building So Powerful?
The main role of internal link building is to show search engines the most important content on a website. The page with the most internal links pointing to it naturally becomes the page which is most important.
For instance, a website trying to sell a product would most likely have most of its internal links pointing to the same. Rather than randomly linking website content, SEOs should view internal links as signboards for search engine crawlers.
Let’s say a website has three webpages. The first webpage is the most popular because the other two webpages point to it through internal link building. Furthermore, all the external backlinks are also pointing to the first webpage.
Naturally, the first webpage now has a lot of link equity. It has a much greater chance of doing well on search rankings. Thus, with the help of strategic internal linking, a website can make certain webpages it has gain an advantage in search rankings.
Spreading Link Equity with Internal Links
Let’s consider the example mentioned before again. The first webpage getting a lot of link equity is doing well and getting a lot of traffic.
Now imagine that you create a fourth webpage and want that page to do well in search rankings too. Again, you get external backlinks for the fourth webpage and use internal links of the second and third webpage to build its link equity. The smart thing to do here is to point your first webpage which already has a lot of link equity to point to the fourth webpage as well. This sharing of link equity is very important and separates the good websites from the best.
In Conclusion
In this article, we covered how powerful internal link building can help the cause of SEOs and bring authority to pages with less link equity.
About the Author – Gaurav Heera is a professional blogger and content curator. He works as a marketing specialist with DelhiCourses, a renowned institution known for offering the best digital marketing course in Delhi.