Why Interlinking is a Must if You're Doing Link Building

No, I haven't gone crazy yet. I can distinguish between On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO.

However, in this past year, we have seen clear evidence that a good link building strategy is not very effective if On-Page SEO is not also addressed. And, since I have already crowned myself with the super link building guide for this year 2018, and I don't have much energy left, I will try to briefly explain (oh god, this is hard for me) why interlinking or internal linking of your website is a must before you start placing external links like a madman.

Well, with the introduction made, let's get to the point.

Why Apply Interlinking on Your Blog?

When I talk about internal linking as a must, I am not only referring to SEO issues, although that too. Do you remember how much they emphasized user experience at the beginning of 2017?
Well, it seems we have forgotten that, and that cannot be: users are still the foundation of the web.

• They seek information
• They browse through different websites finding answers to their informational needs.
• And yes, they also browse ON your site if they deem it necessary (and, you know, the longer they spend on your site, the better)

This last point is fundamental: Have you noticed that a few lines above I linked to the last post I wrote?

If a user arrives at this post looking for information about interlinking, I deduce that they are interested in learning about SEO, and in turn, they find a useful link building guide because I placed it there for them to see.

What happens then?

The user arrives at your blog through a search, but finds other relevant articles that they find interesting and that “force” them to spend more time within the blog.

• What’s the result for the user? More interesting information, a better opinion about your page
• What’s the result for your SEO? Lower bounce rate (as long as the main post satisfies their informational need or sparks their interest in your blog)

The main objective of linking the different entries of your blog to each other is that the Google bot can crawl and index all your pages more easily.

The Perfect Internal Linking Strategy

I'm sorry, the copywriter in me is coming out, but I have to tell you that there is no perfect internal linking strategy, but many.

The main thing before we go crazy and create a SILO structure or any other, and start placing links “willy-nilly” is to stop and think:

• About a clear linking structure.
• And about how to make it with common sense.

It is normal to link from top to bottom starting from the homepage, but it all depends on the type of niche or blog we are talking about.

If we think about the Unancor blog, it makes sense to link the latest posts from the home and then apply internal linking between the different related entries.

Are we good so far? Don’t get down, because now comes the good part. I’ll go into a bit more detail:

Internal Linking at the Design and Web Structure Level

Breadcrumbs

I hate them because in some WordPress themes they drive me crazy. They are those magical little words that let you know where you are.

Do you know the story of Hansel and Gretel? Well, they couldn’t find their way home because they didn’t have proper breadcrumbs. The same thing happens to the user navigating your site, except that they might get “angry” and close the browser, and that’s it.

Don’t know how to set up breadcrumbs? Check out this post from Web Empresa where they explain how to do it through plugins or by tweaking your WordPress template code. With Yoast SEO, it’s really easy to enable them:

Menu Links

Any website has a menu that links to different categories with a specific anchor and URL. But, be careful, it’s not enough to just put any anchor or any slug because this is also part of your web structure and internal linking strategy, and it’s very important to do it correctly.

For example: if you have a travel blog and one of the categories for inserting posts is “tips,” it would be advisable for it to be “travel tips” so you give Google more signals about what is found inside, don’t you think?

Regarding link juice when we talk about links in different positions on the web, there’s a good debate.

What happens? When we talk about link juice transfer and there are different links that lead to the same page from a menu link, breadcrumb, and contextual link in content, for example, Google would only count the first one (the menu link, in this case).

Is this still the case? Luis Villanueva has doubts, but the truth is that there is no updated experiment that can give us the answer. Better read the Twitter conversation and check out the video linked in the first tweet, and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

And to heat things up a bit more, I’ll add this response from John Mu to a question about this topic:

So position on a page for internal links is pretty much irrelevant from our point of view. We crawl, we use these mostly for crawling within a website, for understanding the context of individual pages within a website. So if it is in the header or the footer or within the primary content, it’s totally more up to you than anything SEO wise that I would worry about.

If you want to start a debate on this topic, the comments section is all yours. Do you think a menu link has the same importance as a contextual link? We’d love to hear your opinion!

Sidebar and Footer Links

Even though I still keep the sidebar on my blogs, the truth is that, with the current strong mobile navigation, we will be getting rid of it. But since I’m fond of it, I still think it’s a good way to gain subscribers and encourage navigation through other blog entries (and if not, just ask Javier Cabot, who felt compelled to put a sidebar on this very blog after a whole week of pestering. We love you, Xavi!)

The footer links and the sidebar links should link to relevant content or pages. Although a footer link will not be less valuable than placing it in a navigation bar, it is generally a bad practice from a UX perspective (it looks terrible and is outdated, it’s archaic SEO)

Sitemap

Large pages use this little SEO trick to show Google what the structure of the page is and index each one from the same URL. It’s the famous sitemap and is present, for example, on pages like El País.

To learn more about sitemaps, their creation, and their advantages, I recommend the post from our colleague JoseLab published on the Webpositer blog.

Good Interlinking

Vertical, Horizontal, or Mixed Interlinking

Analyze the number of searches for the main keywords for which you have optimized your pages, group them by themes, and create the interlinking template. To understand it, I recommend watching this WONDERFUL VIDEO by Romuald Fons where he explains the different types of interlinking you can do on your site.

The first time you see it, you’ll end up a bit dizzy. The second time, you’ll get the idea. The third time, you’ll be modifying the links on your blog and adapting them to a coherent internal linking structure.

Is Romu too intense for you? Don’t worry, you can read the post where he explains the types of interlinking in written form and save yourself the shouting (We love you, Romu!)

I’m rambling, I’m sorry, it’s getting out of hand.

But let’s continue!

Want more about interlinking but in a practical way? Check out my colleague Pablo’s post: Road to One Million. He is applying pyramid interlinking on a new niche he is going to rank from scratch.

Natural Internal Linking: Contextual Links

This isn’t too mysterious. It’s about linking those pages or entries that are related through anchors spread throughout the text. By the way, use exact anchor and semantic variations so the search engine understands better what you are doing.

I recommend setting up a level linking system and then applying natural linking because if you only apply this of placing related links, you might end up going crazy).

Ah! And don’t place internal links only thinking about SEO because an irrelevant linking is synonymous with bounce.

And in case you were wondering: NO, I don’t like “smart link” plugins that place links haphazardly in tags and words in your text. It’s madness for you and for the reader.

The Cluster Trend, a More Hipster Interlinking

We return to Romuald Fons (is this man everywhere?)

You probably remember the controversy sparked by the launch of his Orbital Theme and its good results (a nice link for my blog, which never hurts).

Well, this theme is designed to use clusters and graphically link internal pages to each other. As early as mid-2017, we read related content about “topic clusters” that talked about the next evolution of SEO (this from Hubspot, for example)

And, guess what? They are here and they work. They work very well:

• They improve the user’s internal navigation.
• They improve the bounce rate.
• They look great in terms of design.

So, why not include them in your internal linking strategy? You can even do it through photo galleries. It’s something more archaic than using a theme with clusters, but it works just the same, right?

Caution, Builder Friend

There are people who go crazy linking the same URL from hundreds of different pages.

And others who go on to place internal links as if there were no tomorrow.

Dear padawan, don’t try to manipulate the SERPs excessively because you can end up very messed up. Don’t be spammy, and you won’t be penalized.

Nuriconsejo 1:

Place a link when you can introduce it naturally in your text, but don’t write the text artificially to place your internal link.

I explain myself well, you can’t say otherwise.

Other Internal Linking Tips

Don’t Always Link the Same URLs

A basic rule might be not to link from posts whose main keyword has more organic searches to posts whose keyword has fewer searches.

For example, if “internal linking” has 3,000 monthly searches and “on-page SEO” has 12,000, it’s better to link from the former to the latter and not the other way around. But this depends on each niche and each particular case, so I won’t get into that.

Nuriconsejo 2:

Generalizing is not good, neither in SEO nor in life.

Also Link Categories or Pages like “About Me”

This seems very logical, but there are Unancor clients who spend all day buying links directed to the home. And what can Google think if your page only receives incoming links to the home? I’ll leave that question hanging.

Total Freedom

Don’t be afraid to use exact keyword and phrase anchors with keywords in your internal links because this is where you can do it.

Forget about brand links or generic links like “in this post,” “here,” etc. Leave that for your link building strategy and focus on what you want to rank because there’s no better way to let Google know than calling things by their name within your page.

Interlinking + Link Building: The Power of the FORCE

Now that we are clear why interlinking is a must in any SEO strategy and that link building is essential to reach the top positions in the SERPs, why should we work on both? Let’s think logically:

Imagine you get some fantastic links that attract the attention of users and the Google bot. The moment they click and travel through that link to reach your site, they expect to find what your anchor suggested they would find.

Once there, the visitor may close the browser and never be seen again, or thanks to your excellent web architecture and your perfectly designed internal linking, they may be browsing around for a good while (you need good content, okay? They won’t settle for any “piece of shit”)

On the other hand, setting the user aside, the fact that the Google bot follows a link directed to your website and once there can continue its journey through the different internal links will allow you to achieve complete and updated indexing.

If your On-Page SEO is not well worked out, it is evident that getting the best links will be of no use because you will be missing the other part of the equation.

Nuriconsejo 3:

Prepare a good link building strategy, but first, get your web architecture and internal linking in order.

You need to have your house well-kept and nicely decorated so that visitors are interested in discovering all the rooms and don’t just stay in the guest room (the destination URL of your incoming link)

And, well, that’s it for my tips on interlinking and internal linking. The truth is that if you have this part of web positioning well prepared, you can start looking for good links because you will rise in the SERPs like foam.