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.

How websites are affected by black hat SEO techniques?

SEO experts need to follow a set of search engine mandated guidelines to get their websites ranked on the Net. Search engines look out for relevant websites on the basis of these guidelines. However, trying to achieve ranks following the prescribed guidelines can be pretty difficult and time consuming. Many experts try to attain ranks by misleading the search engines. They flout the guidelines, which the search engine is unable to detect immediately, and easily find their way to the top. The methods employed to dupe the search engine is known as black hat techniques. Though these methods are highly effective, it is illegal and unethical to follow them. You cannot fool the search engine forever by pursuing such methods, and once caught; your site will be banned forever.

Black hat SEO experts employ a wide variety of strategies. The most popular and well known method is known as site cloaking. In this method your site is made to appear different to the search engine and to your visitors. When is this method employed? Some sites have more of flash and images than content. However, the search engine can neither see flash nor images. The only content they can recognize is the written content. So, some of these websites hit upon the plan to cloak, so that their site appears to have more content than it really does. In this way they find a short cut to achieve a higher rank.

Another black hat method is to stuff the website content with keywords. As search engines distinguish and pick up pages on the basis of keywords, many experts believe that overloading pages with keywords is a good way of currying favour with search engines. However, when the search engines scan the pages, and find it crammed with keywords, it interprets it as an attempt to win it over. Sniffing out the ploy, they will ignore the page altogether.

There is no end to black hat SEO tactics. However search engines become aware of these tactics sooner than later. So it is just not easy to get away. Those focussed on internet marketing must know better than others that slow and steady wins the race. The climb to the top may be stiff and slippery, but success attained thus is longstanding.

Ranking success through black hat methods is ephemeral!