8 reasons to use internal links

As website promoters , we usually focus on getting external links to the website , so we tend to miss the potential that internal links have in promoting the website and making it more attractive to surfers.

 

So why should you use internal links?

1. They can increase conversions - assuming you link to pages with interesting content and do not build casual links to the home page, your surfers will reach relatively strong pages on your website, pages that are focused on sales or conversions of certain products and services. If the surfer came to the page because he believes that the page will contribute something to him, it is likely that he will also be more interested in what you have to offer him.

Moreover, since each link has different text, the surfer already has a clue about what he should find on the target page, so this also plays a part in the conversion percentages being higher. In this context - do not skimp on the anchors ( the linking text ) - it is recommended and even desirable to use internal links in order to describe to the surfer the page he is about to enter (in some cases even the benefit he will get from it).

2. They increase the time spent on the site - a result of the previous section: if a surfer visits more than one page, he actually stays longer on the site ( for interesting information in this context about how time spent is measured in Google Analytics ), and thus he gives us a strong hint that he is interested in what the site has to offer, and thus also increases the chance that he will visit the site again, subscribe to a distribution list, etc.

3. They reduce the abandonment rate of the surfers - internal links reduce the abandonment rate (the percentage of surfers who leave the site after viewing one page): as soon as the surfer was not satisfied with one page, but moved on, there is a good chance that he was interested in the subject of the site and will therefore probably delve deeper into the content and will not rush to leave the site.

Of course, you can create a chain of links that will take the surfer from one page to another, and for this you can use a plugin or a model that issues a list of related pages (along the way, you can also use a service like Outbrain to earn money from the site - relevant for sites with significant traffic).

4. They help Google discover new pages - internal links help Google 's crawlers (bots) discover new pages on the site, especially if several new pages linked to them have appeared at the same time. It is true that you can also create a sitemap , but you need to make sure that it is regularly updated on all pages on the site, so updating it may be cumbersome, unless it is done automatically with the help of a plugin or other technical solution.

5. They help Google evaluate the importance of the various pages - if a certain page is linked more than other pages, Google will "realize" that it is a sufficiently central and important page on the site, which will help it advance in the search results for the relevant terms. Of course, it also depends on factors such as the level of competition for that phrase and even the internal competition between the various website pages.

In order to achieve this effect in the best way, it is advisable not to spread permanent links from all the pages of the site to pages that are not important so that they do not come up in the results instead of the pages that you really want to promote. I explained in detail about strategy and methods for building internal links in this guide .

6. They have a direct connection to the authority of the page - every page on the site has a measure of authority in the eyes of Google (this is quite clear, whether they admit it or not) and the more a page is considered by Google, the more the links coming from it will have a positive effect on other pages on the site as well as on external websites. If these are internal pages on the site (that is, the links are internal), this means that they can be promoted even if they do not have inbound links from other sites. This way you can actually increase the number of visits to them directly from Google without putting in too much effort.


7. They can help you earn more money from AdSense ads - the more pages the user is on the site, the better Google's ad algorithm (AdSense) knows which ads to show him based on his browsing history. Right. In order for this to work, it is better to display the ads in a different place on each page, for example, between paragraphs in articles and posts and not just on the sides of the page (which the surfer learns to ignore as soon as he passes one or two pages). For more information on Google AdSense ads .

8. They help your surfers fill in gaps - how many times have you read an article or a post on the Internet that half of the phrases in it were unfamiliar to you? Most sites will link you to Wikipedia or an English site, but if you use internal links on the site that point to a dictionary or a common terms page, you can be sure that your surfers will stay on the site and continue reading the original article.

Important things to remember when creating internal links

• Broken internal links (which lead to 404 "not found" errors ) create a suboptimal browsing experience for the surfer and also prevent Google from crawling the site properly. Therefore, it is important to check the integrity of all internal links on the website using software such as Screaming Frog , which I have mentioned quite a few times.
• When making internal links, it is important to work in sync with the website's promotion strategy , in order to always link to pages in context and with expressions relevant to them and not to spread out with many of the same terms to different pages or change the same pages to many different terms.
• In most modern content systems, you can save time by selecting the page you want to link to from the content editor. This also prevents you from making a mistake when typing in the address of the linked page manually.

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