Blog SEO: Boost Your Search Rankings With Internal Links

Internal linking problems are one of the common issues I find with my blog critiques. Bloggers are often not utilizing internal links to boost their search rankings as much as they could.

Do not underestimate the influence a good internal link structure can have on your rankings!

Also, internal linking is good usability for readers. You want visitors to find more of your great content, right?

If you link your older posts well you can give archived content a whole new lease of life.

Internal Link Problems

Here are the top problems I see with internal links and how to fix them:

1. Bad Anchor Text – While “click here” can actually drive a better click-through rate, it is bad for anchor text.  The best solution is to decide if clicks or keywords are more important, or in some cases use good keywords and a separate link containing the phrase click here. Bottom line, if you want to rank for “red widgets” don’t make the link say “here”.
2. Uneven Distribution of Juice – If one post gets all the link-love, generously spread that love around to your undernourished articles.
3. Broken Links – You might have all the right ideas with anchor text but be careful when you upgrade or change your blog software that your old links still work! I was trying to find some content on a certain blog the other day, and even the search found content that was no longer there.
4. Missed Opportunities to Link – You wrote about Plurk? Link to your All About Plurk post instead of Plurk.com!
5. Editing Instead of Linking – Sometimes there are very good reasons why you want to edit an old post, but if you are adding new information that does not nullify what you wrote before, write a new post referencing the old one.

 Automate Internal Links With Plugins

I am sure there are other plugins out there that help you create automatic links, let me know in the comments, but here are the two that I use.

1.  Cross Linker – Automatically link certain phrases to URLs so you never have to remember. So for example whenever I type “Flagship Content” that automatically links to my free ebook intro.
2. Related Posts –  Show a list of other posts on the same topic as the current article.

Over to you, have you got tips for internal linking? Anything I said you disagree with? Got suggestions for good link plugins? Please share in the comments …