If you are not familiar with internal linking, you should get familiar. It is one of the most under-used methods of on page SEO that can have a huge impact on how well your site performs. This might be the only thing that is keeping you below your competition and it is something you can easily control and very easily automate if you use WordPress for your website.
An internal link is created by making certain keywords within your content clickable and pointing to another page within your website. So let’s say your main keyword that you want to rank in the search engines is “WordPress Widgets”. And suppose you have some widgets for sale on one of your pages. That would also be known as your money page.
One of the most effective ways to tell the search engines how important that page is to the site and how relevant it is to that specific keyword phrase is to create a link back to that page every time the keyword phrase appears in subsequent pages. The search engine robots crawl through your website following the links it finds along the way. If your internal hyperlinks keep bringing it back to the money page, it will quickly realize that that page is the most important page on your site. It will also recognize that “WordPress Widgets” is what that page is all about and that is the phrase you will be ranked for.
Now I am sure you are thinking that this sounds like a good deal of extra work but there are several very good WordPress plugins that will do all of the heavy work for you once they are set up. SEOSmartLinks (my personal favorite) and WPKeywordLink are both free plugins that will allow you to automate the whole process of internal linking.
These plugins allow you to automatically associate pages within your website to the corresponding keyword phrase. All you have to do is set it up once. You add your phrase into the plugin settings and the url that you want to point that phrase to. You can set up as many variations of keywords and urls as you like, decide how many times you want the links to appear within the content of your posts and whether you want multiple links to the same url within a single post. This gives you complete control over your internal linking.
From then on, whenever you create a new post, the plugin will automatically create the anchor text links for you. It is set and forget and you just go about your blogging as you normally do without ever having to think about the process again. The only time you would need to go back into the settings might be to add additional keywords and urls.
Now one word of caution: Like every thing else, a little is often better than a lot. Never do more than 3 internal links per page. You must remember that your visitors are more important than search engines. A page with every other word as a hyper link will look spammy. It isn’t necessary to over do it if you are doing it consistently. Set your limit in the plugin to 3 and only one clickable link directed to the same page. In other words, you do not want to have all three links within one piece of content all pointing to the same url. This will look like spam to the search engines too.
Internal linking is critical to your website success. It gives you an edge over any other site not using this powerful SEO technique. Since doing it manually does take a good bit of work, very few other sites within your market will be doing it. Don’t miss your chance now that you know how easy it can be with no time cost on your part.
More Information On WordPress and Internal Links
How to Get .gov Links To Your Website
Search Engine Optimization Tips- Internal Links Give Your Site Much More SEO Power
Pingback: Installing WordPress Plugins - A Little Goes A Long Way | Cathy Henry SEO Services Company