Did you know that there’s more to linking between pages in your website than just creating a bond between them? Internal linking actually passes link juice. But that’s pretty simple SEO. Most webmasters naturally link to and from their content.
But is there a way to effectively link within your website in order to organically cause an increase in search engine rankings? The answer is yes. (Yeah, I just answered my own question… got a problem with that? 
The Basics
The best way to effectively link within your site is to link more within your site. Doing this makes it more complex and powerful in terms of linking. It also makes sure your link power is regulated along your site so one page can’t be too much more powerful than another and that if one page becomes more powerful so does the entire website, causing more opportunities to rank in search engines.
Using anchor text is another way you can effectively link internally. By targeting important keywords using anchor text, you are maximizing your gain from internal linking. In addition, you are focusing your link on a keyword that you feel captures your webpage, telling Google what your page is about and terms what to rank it high for.
The Harder Stuff
As mentioned before, it’s important to try to increase your internal linking as much as possible. There are certain tricks to do this.
My favorite is placing a link to an important page in the sidebar or footer of your blog. Again, you should always be taking advantage of anchor text when linking to content in your site, whether you’re linking from outside your site or inside your site. So placing an anchor text backlink to your homepage or services page in a part of your site that’s on most pages like the footer and sidebar is a really great idea to power-up that webpage with little efforts. However, don’t overdo this as the more you use this method and similar ones, the less each link is actually worth. A page with less dofollow outbound links will transfer more link juice with each link than a page with the same inbound links and a lot of outbound links.
Another way to increase internal links in your website is creating a “links” page. Your links page should link to important pages on your site, and if you want, recent posts. Make sure you link to your links page a lot so that the page has a lot of power to transfer to more important pages. If you’re blogging for income, you can also sell advertisements and links on your links page and inform buyers of your efficient internal network of links to persuade them to buy.
As you can see, internal linking in search engine optimization is very important and paired with an effective strategy, can boost your search engine rankings without external links in the picture.
Got an internal linking tip of your own? Share it in the comments!
PriyaMehta August 29, 2011 at 3:21 am
If you are a new to internet marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) is sometimes hard to understand in the beginning. SEO is the ability to make an article or a web page optimized for the search engines. Once the article or webpage has been SEO optimized the search systems such as Google, Yahoo and Bing now have the ability to rank and index the page or article appropriately
Kirsty February 27, 2011 at 11:19 am
Internal linking is quite hard compare with homepage linking. Not all webmaster accept it and post it on their resource page or site. Maybe only around 5% of the total contacted will accepted it.
Hesham February 27, 2011 at 2:51 pm
mmm.. How to you know about the 5%?
Christopher November 10, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Anyone can try the idea of blog farming. Another thing I want to add here is the fact that building backlinks and getting them will also bring a lot of traffic to your website. You can try out Google Annihilation and Neurolinker for getting some backlinks. You may also link your website to others where you can get Backlinks. Thanks for the information you provided.
Nasif May 4, 2011 at 3:06 pm
Thanks for introducing us about Google annihilation and neurolinker but the best way to have a backlink is to comment on blogs… Mind it “quality comment”
Samantha August 16, 2010 at 8:00 am
Hi Karan, very informative article!
I completely agree that your website internal linking structure is very important. However, you still need links from external websites to gain more trust in Google’s eyes – the more links you have the more votes of popularity you have. I would advise against having a links page; if you have your website structure and navigation set up properly, then a links page should not be necessary.
Thank you
Sam
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Rommel from Business Website August 7, 2010 at 7:00 pm
In doing link building for your website it is important that you also create some links in your internal pages. Internal linking is not just by your own pages but also from other websites.
Tere July 13, 2010 at 2:50 am
One thing that I like to do regarding internal linking is to link back to my homepage from each of my post pages with an “in text” (in article) link. This has worked well for me in the past and is just something I do as a matter of habit now. Thanks for this article and the tips, look forward to using them!
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Karan Singhal July 13, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Yeah, this is an awesome way to redirect some pagerank to your homepage so it can rank higher for the keywords that will really help your website convert.
Karan Singhal recently posted..Mini-Post: Why Search Engine Traffic Is The Best Kind Of Traffic
Colleen July 3, 2010 at 11:24 pm
Very good article on internal linking. I was reading an article at SEOmoz titled, “25 Ethical Tips That Will Skyrocket Your Search Engine Rankings” and this article was cited. Nice!
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Trafficke SEO Services July 4, 2010 at 7:03 am
Haha, I wrote that article too, thanks!
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Colleen July 4, 2010 at 7:12 am
That was a great article as well Karan. Ya know you’ve arrived when you can get a featured blog entry over at SEOmoz!
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Karan Singhal July 4, 2010 at 7:50 am
Thanks, Colleen, I try.
Karan Singhal recently posted..Why Blogging = Success For Your Online Business
Simon Dalley July 1, 2010 at 4:49 am
Great post – I don’t agree that internal links are as important as external links, however they become more and more important especially as pages start competing with each other for the same keywords (which generally happens when the pages across a site become more potent in the search engines.
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Matt from Australian SEO June 15, 2010 at 8:48 am
Thanks for this info about how internal linking can help for SEO.
There’s another benefit to doing this. It applies if you are unlucky enough to have someone plagiarizing your blog by scraping your RSS feeds. If you have links within your pages, then those links will appear in the scraper site and count as backlinks. So even though in one way these lazy plagiarists are hurting your blog, they’re also helping it as well. And that’s good to know.
Karan Singhal June 15, 2010 at 2:30 pm
That’s some great out-of-the-box thinking, Matt! Thanks for your comment and your thoughts.
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Hermancool June 12, 2010 at 3:36 am
I think this tips suitable for SEO Smart Links plugin. It automatically turns your keyword into internal link on your own post.
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Hesham June 12, 2010 at 3:41 am
This can be true, I love that plugin, and I am actually using on our blog!
Asad June 3, 2010 at 3:31 am
Internal linking with anchor text do help in seo of the website or blog.It helps search engines to better know about your niche.
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Biodun from UK webmaster Forum May 20, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Proper Internal Linking can help the site gets properly spider visit ,build the relevancy of a page to a keyword phrase and increase the PR of the internal page.
.-= NEW from Biodun @ UK webmaster Forum´s last blog ..I need Links from Music/Movie/Celebrity niches =-.
Genite May 20, 2010 at 6:02 am
Yes, From my personal experience i can say that internal linking with specific anchor text (Keywords) gives better result in Search engines.
Dennis Edell May 19, 2010 at 9:53 am
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m curious as to why you’re advocating and advising link pages and link sales? …Two things Google will slam you for if do follow.
.-= NEW from Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..10 Social Share Sites Chosen – Do You Agree? =-.
Karan Singhal from Trafficke SEO Consulting Firm May 19, 2010 at 3:51 pm
I do not promote selling links or ads, and the only way I personally make money blogging is from Adsense. I’m merely stating that is this is your type, selling ads and links on a links page is a great idea.
.-= NEW from Karan Singhal @ Trafficke SEO Consulting Firm´s last blog ..What Most Search Engine Optimization Companies Don’t Want You To Know =-.
Dennis Edell May 21, 2010 at 6:19 pm
I didn’t say YOU do it. I said you were advocating it, which you did again by saying it is a great idea; my point is, it is not a great idea.
Selling (do follow) links, and “link pages” in general are both on Googles hit list; big time.
Selling text links with the no follow attribute in-tact is fine, and can be done as long as the blogger has proof of good traffic stats.
.-= NEW from Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..Aweber Affiliate Link Contest! – This Is It!! =-.
Jason Jumat from I need lots of money now May 19, 2010 at 9:11 am
Didn’t realize at all that there was a plugin for this. Heck . . . I guess there’s a plugin for everything! This is exactly why one should come and read other people’s posts and articles often to get to the understanding of many things you wouldn’t have know. Always new that cross linking your posts to each other was one part to optimally get PR in Google . . . but didn’t really bothered.
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Tinh May 19, 2010 at 12:26 am
I use duplicate content plugin that facilitate this process easily when writing. I am confident that internal linking is really important to ensure that our blog is one body!
.-= NEW from Tinh´s last blog ..eBlogTip April Earning =-.
Karan Singhal from Trafficke SEO Consulting Firm May 19, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Yes, it is essential to keep your blog together one way or another, and the most simple way is internal linking.
.-= NEW from Karan Singhal @ Trafficke SEO Consulting Firm´s last blog ..What Most Search Engine Optimization Companies Don’t Want You To Know =-.
Agent Deepak from Blogging, Markting & Success May 18, 2010 at 1:26 pm
If you are on WordPress there are few plug-in available which help in internal linking. I use one such plug-in called SEO Smart Links which link through keywords and post titles. Wherever a keyword is mentioned in a post it will link to certain post or category or a tag. You can customize this.
Just try it.
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Karan Singhal from Trafficke SEO Consulting Firm May 18, 2010 at 3:08 pm
I use the same plugin on my own blog. I think of of the best features is that the plugin allows you to set keywords that will automatically link to any page you choose.
.-= NEW from Karan Singhal @ Trafficke SEO Consulting Firm´s last blog ..Writing Tweetworthy Content =-.
Bit Doze May 18, 2010 at 1:24 pm
If you are using wordpress interlinking will be easy to achieve becouse you can use some plugins like: interlink and similar posts.