Thursday, August 19, 2010

What is an Internal Linking Structure?


Internal linking structure refers to how the internal pages of a website are linked. When a website has a well-built and coded linking structure, search engines can navigate the site with great ease. When search engines can crawl smoothly, users can locate your website easily.

 The general impression is that links from other websites matter the most. True, but not completely true. For proper SEO, internal linking is also very significant. When you launch your website, you need to ensure that your internal linking is functioning properly. This will enable you to have complete control over your website. Properly used internal links can be your launching pad or first step towards proper SEO. A well linked internal structure can help in the following ways:

 It ensures that your website is properly spidered. This means all pages are found by the search engines
 If the linking is not done properly, pages can be hidden from search engines because of incomplete or no indexing. When the search engine is able to index all the pages of your website, it increases the number of pages that a search engine credits your site with, and also promotes the keywords that your website has the potential to rank for. Internal linking structure helps to build the relevancy of a page to a keyword phrase.

 Building the Relevancy of a Page to a Keyword Phrase
 Most websites use their homepage to target competitive phrase.  The less competitive phrases are tucked in the internal pages. To make the page more relevant use the keyword phrase in the anchor text of the links to that page. This will make the page more search engine friendly.

 Increasing Internal Pages PageRank
 The closer a page is from your homepage, the higher will be the value of the page. Do not commit the mistake of linking all of your pages from your homepage. This will diffuse the weight of each individual link. Choose the best pages to target keyword phrases.

 Other methods you can employ to improve your internal linking structure are by text link navigation, footers and inline text links.

 When all of these are properly taken care of, your website is ready to be called search engine friendly.

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