In the world of SEO, backlinks are a frequently discussed topic. The discussion almost always revolves around good and bad external backlinks. How do you build up good backlinks? How do you get rid of bad, unwanted links? Links remain one of the most important ranking factors in Google’s algorithm, so such questions are more than justified.
However, many website owners tend to forget the other part of SEO — internal backlinks. These are just as important as external ones. This time, we will be focusing on internal links, how they work, and their benefits.
What are the internal backlinks?
They are links to your own subpages which you can directly build into your site. When you compare internal and external links in your website’s HTML source code, you can see that both are constructed in the same way, the only difference being that the link target is a URL within your own domain rather than an external domain.
Why is it that we strive to collect external backlinks? The answer is that the link power from other, stronger domains is passed on to our own domain, allowing it to rank higher in Google.
A domain’s homepage is generally the most frequently linked page on a website — externally too, which means all subpages which are linked from your homepage also receive link juice directly. These links also help to guide Google’s crawler on its path from link to link, directly to important subpages. You can even link to further subpages directly from text content.
What’s a good backlink structure?
There is no single answer to what a good backlink structure should look like — every website should have its own internal link concept. One common method is calling Siloing, whereby clear hierarchies are established and vertically linked. Here, individual categories are linked “up” and “down” to each other.
First, cluster a website’s content according to topic areas so that your website has a clearly recognizable structure. Pages with different content aren’t linked to each other, but rather just pages which contain mutually relevant content. Google can recognize such a structure easily and it also helps users who can find their way around your domain more easily.
The best example of perfect internal linking is Wikipedia. Every single keyword or phrase in an article links to a further article. The screenshot shows a page with a content section with jump links as well as numerous linked terms and phrases within the text itself.
What next?
Well, if all that SEO lingo didn’t scare you off, you can always pick up a course or two on Bitdegree or Coursera. Spend tens of hours learning and customizing your website with internal backlinks and their structure.
If you’re not into that kind of stuff, you can always reach out and let us help you find the team that will do it for you, with the right experience, price, and work ethic.
