Every webmaster knows the importance of backlinks in SEO but some of them don't know much about internal linking. Bloggers are mostly weak in optimizing blogs for search engines as they usually stay busy in adding content on their blogs. Internal linking is one of the sections of SEO about which very few bloggers know in depth. This article will make you understand about internal linking and its importance in SEO if you don't know what is internal linking and how it is important in SEO.
What is Internal Linking?
Internal linking is the linking across any website or blog's pages/posts. For example when you write a post on your blog and place a link to any already published post on your own blog, then it is an internal link. Internal links are originated from any web page and lead to any other page or post on the same site. Link under hyperlinked keywords "backlinks in SEO" in first line of this post is an example of internal linking.
Internal Linking and SEO
Internal linking is extremely important for building a search engine friendly site or blog structure. It plays crucial role in below discussed sections.
Spreading of Link Juice
Spreading of Link Juice
Internal linking spreads the link juice among your entire blog or website and the ranking is boosted greatly. This helps in getting higher SERP rankings. If you don't build a good internal linking structure, your posts will fail to receive rank boost and they may lose in search results. A good internal linking spreads link juice across all posts and they get visibility in search results.
Helps Search Engine Crawlers in Indexing Your Posts/Pages
Helps Search Engine Crawlers in Indexing Your Posts/Pages
Internal linking helps search engine crawlers to crawl and index all posts and pages on your website or blog. If you don't place links to any post or page on your own website/blog or anywhere else on the web, it may stay invisible from the eyes of both search engines and visitors. Search engine crawlers find pages and posts through links and then include them to the indices. So a good internal linking ensures that your all posts and pages are indexed.
Internal Linking Reduces Bounce Rate
Internal linking reduces bounce rate on your site and thus its ranking is improved. It has been seen that sites and blogs with high bounce rates are dropped in SERPs. Lower bounce rate helps in getting higher rankings in SERPs. Visitors navigate from one post to other and thus bounce rate is lowered.
Helps in AdSense Account Approval
A lot of website and blog owners face difficulties in AdSense account approval and bad site structure is one of the biggest reasons behind this. When a site or blog has a bad internal linking structure, AdSense crawlers fail to get information about the site or the blog and thus AdSense hesitates to accept that site in its program. When a good internal linking is built, AdSense crawlers grab all information about the site and account is approved if bad site structure was the reason behind delay in account approval.
Helps Your Visitors in Finding Relevant Content
Internal linking helps your visitors in navigating to other relevant content on your site and thus your visitors find more content to read. They start spending more time on your site and this is one of the indicators for search engines to consider your site as a useful resource. This results in rank boost.
Still don't have a good internal linking structure on your site or blog? Then you must start working on this section as it is one of the most important on-page SEO practices. Build a good internal linking structure and notice a great boost in SERP rankings of your content. Good luck!