Don't Ruin Your Internal Link Structure

Your internal link structure is one of the most important aspects of your on-page SEO strategy. However, there are many ways that people tend to ruin this and today, we are going to address the common ways that users tend to ruin their internal link structure and how they can avoid it.

1. Not Internal Linking At All.

The most common thing is people often look at internal link structure as an afterthought mostly because it slows down the editorial process, and once you start off on the wrong foot it's very hard to fix. However, by avoiding this you're not only making your overall on-page SEO worse your content starts to suffer as well. By not properly linking your content to other sources you're leaving your users in the dark when they might have questions. 

Previously we have discussed ways to improve internal link structure on the Blogger platform but those strategies can b used on any website. However, if you want a model website take a look at ours, or simply go to a Wikipedia entry and you will see the advantages of a solid internal link structure. 

2. Linking The Same Reoccuring Word To The Same Page Multiple Times

So, this is the one that many users who are on WordPress tend to do. Many will install a plugin SEO Smart Links which will go ahead and link certain words to their category archives, and other archives and posts. 

However, say on this post every time I mention the word SEO and link it to my archives page, not only is this very annoying its incredibly bad for your internal link structure. By repeating the same link on the same anchor text multiple times it doesn't serve a purpose for Google, and search engines in general instead all you're doing is what would appear to be a form of link spamming which we will cover more in another post. Now, this doesn't mean you can't link the same or similar anchor text to another link but keep it varied as to avoid looking like you're spamming or trying to game the system. 

3. Not Linking To Your Archive Pages

So, you have a blog and you're linking to your other posts which is great but you're likely forgetting about another equally important page on your website and that is your archive pages. Archive Pages are what we refer to as they traditionally appear in WordPress. Categories, Tags pages or in Blogger your Label Pages these make for great internal links as you can use relatively limited anchor text sometimes even just the word and link it to your archive. 

Now many users are going to jump and say, I already have Breadcrumbs and my categories and tags appear at the bottom of my post, therefore, I am covered right? Actually, no you're not and this is because your article content would still be barren and by adding links you're doing your users a favor. 

Users often times ignore your breadcrumbs and your categories and tags located at the footer of your post its a form banner blindness if you would but instead of it being for advertisements it's for non-important content that appears on your website. So linking (at least once) in your post to your archive pages can really make your internal link structure fly.