Use Internal Linking To Boost Website Rankings
Skip | 04 November, 2005 17:43
Links pointing to your website are essential for good rankings in the search engines. Most webmasters know how to do this the right way. You should
use your targeting keywords in the linking text and description, every
time you send a link request. This way you get a boost for that keyword
if you get a lot of links with your keyword in the linking text on your website.
One thing that I still see when I surf the web, is websites that use "click here" in the text of the internal links when they want people to visit another page on their website. This is no good if you want to rank high in the search engines.
As I write this, the keyword "here" has 4,310,000,000 competing web pages in Google. And the highest ranking web page is http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html . This page has a Google PR of 10 and it has 635000 links pointing to it.
I bet that a lot of these links has the keyword "here" in them. Anyway you don't want to rank high for the keyword "here". You want to rank high for the keywords that gets the visitors you need, those that buy your service or product from you on your website.
So let's get back to the internal linking in a website.
The first thing you should use on your website, is a navigation system with text links. There's a lot of sites that use images of fancy buttons and other good looking stuff in their navigation. But this won't do anything to boost your search engine ranking. Use text links and use your keyword in the linking text. And try also to use a keyword phrase without to much competition.
For instance if you sell used cars, you will have a lot of competition for that keyword (89,500,000 web pages in Google). Try to narrow the area a bit. Add your country name or even city name. If you live in Norway as I do, you could use "Used cars Norway" or "Look for used cars in Norway". This could be the link to the list of used cars you sell.
Do this with all your navigation links. It will help the search engine spiders, as well as your visitors.
Next you must have a site map.
Go here to add a free Google Sitemap file.
The site map should contain all of your top level pages as well as maybe three level down. I all depends on how many pages you have (don't put more than 100 links on one page.) If you have a lot of pages you could have sitemap 1, sitemap 2 and so on. Or you could use the name of the content instead of "sitemap".
I have a website where I add articles about SEO, Internet marketing and business. But I don't list all the different articles in one sitemap page. Instead I make a page for each category. So I get one page that is called SEO articles, Internet marketing articles, and so on.
In those pages, I add the title of the article in the link to the actual article. Most of the time the title of the article contains the keyword or keyword phrase that this article is targeting. So by linking to the article with the title, it will count as a vote for that keyword. And you get a boost in the search engine rankings for that article.
Link from your Home Page.
Every time I add a new page to my website I link to it from my index page. My index page has, as I write this, a Google PR of 4. And this page gets spider-ed very frequently by all the search engine spiders. So, I am sure to get the new page indexed in the search engine listings by leaving the link on my index page for at least a week or two. Most of the time the new page is indexed within 4 days.
You could do this by having a section on your index page that is called new articles, new products or whatever your update is about. In this section you could have 5 to 10 links to the last pages you have added to your website. Delete the oldest link every time you add a new link to a page.
Start a blog about your website.
You should start to add posts about new updates to your website. Write a little introduction about the update and leave a link with the keywords in the linking text. After that you should ping the blog to notify about updates to your blog, to all the major blog directories. Use the service from http://pingomatic.com/ to do this.
Add a free Google Sitemap file.
I have used this on all my websites now, and it seems to work. This is a so called Sitemap formatted file that you add to your server.
Let Google know the URL to this file so the Google spiders could find it. I have added a post to my forum for more information about Google sitemaps. Find this at: http://everypleasures.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=35
About the author: Torgeir Sunnarvik is the owner and webmaster of http://www.everypleasures.com/ His site offers free marketing ebooks.
One thing that I still see when I surf the web, is websites that use "click here" in the text of the internal links when they want people to visit another page on their website. This is no good if you want to rank high in the search engines.
As I write this, the keyword "here" has 4,310,000,000 competing web pages in Google. And the highest ranking web page is http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html . This page has a Google PR of 10 and it has 635000 links pointing to it.
I bet that a lot of these links has the keyword "here" in them. Anyway you don't want to rank high for the keyword "here". You want to rank high for the keywords that gets the visitors you need, those that buy your service or product from you on your website.
So let's get back to the internal linking in a website.
The first thing you should use on your website, is a navigation system with text links. There's a lot of sites that use images of fancy buttons and other good looking stuff in their navigation. But this won't do anything to boost your search engine ranking. Use text links and use your keyword in the linking text. And try also to use a keyword phrase without to much competition.
For instance if you sell used cars, you will have a lot of competition for that keyword (89,500,000 web pages in Google). Try to narrow the area a bit. Add your country name or even city name. If you live in Norway as I do, you could use "Used cars Norway" or "Look for used cars in Norway". This could be the link to the list of used cars you sell.
Do this with all your navigation links. It will help the search engine spiders, as well as your visitors.
Next you must have a site map.
Go here to add a free Google Sitemap file.
The site map should contain all of your top level pages as well as maybe three level down. I all depends on how many pages you have (don't put more than 100 links on one page.) If you have a lot of pages you could have sitemap 1, sitemap 2 and so on. Or you could use the name of the content instead of "sitemap".
I have a website where I add articles about SEO, Internet marketing and business. But I don't list all the different articles in one sitemap page. Instead I make a page for each category. So I get one page that is called SEO articles, Internet marketing articles, and so on.
In those pages, I add the title of the article in the link to the actual article. Most of the time the title of the article contains the keyword or keyword phrase that this article is targeting. So by linking to the article with the title, it will count as a vote for that keyword. And you get a boost in the search engine rankings for that article.
Link from your Home Page.
Every time I add a new page to my website I link to it from my index page. My index page has, as I write this, a Google PR of 4. And this page gets spider-ed very frequently by all the search engine spiders. So, I am sure to get the new page indexed in the search engine listings by leaving the link on my index page for at least a week or two. Most of the time the new page is indexed within 4 days.
You could do this by having a section on your index page that is called new articles, new products or whatever your update is about. In this section you could have 5 to 10 links to the last pages you have added to your website. Delete the oldest link every time you add a new link to a page.
Start a blog about your website.
You should start to add posts about new updates to your website. Write a little introduction about the update and leave a link with the keywords in the linking text. After that you should ping the blog to notify about updates to your blog, to all the major blog directories. Use the service from http://pingomatic.com/ to do this.
Add a free Google Sitemap file.
I have used this on all my websites now, and it seems to work. This is a so called Sitemap formatted file that you add to your server.
Let Google know the URL to this file so the Google spiders could find it. I have added a post to my forum for more information about Google sitemaps. Find this at: http://everypleasures.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=35
About the author: Torgeir Sunnarvik is the owner and webmaster of http://www.everypleasures.com/ His site offers free marketing ebooks.
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