Embedded Files
Internal Linking
Internal Linking
What is internal linking and why is it useful? Internal links are the links on a website that direct a user to another page on the same website. They can be used to help the user navigate around a website. Let's take an athletic clothing retailer's website for example. Say one of the sponsored athletes was interviewed about training for the olympics in a blog post. When the topic turned to the particular shorts the athlete trained in, an internal link can be added to take the user to that product's page on the website. That link would help a user learn more about the shorts if they were curious. Also, in the eye's of a Googlebot if the linking hypertext happened to be one of the retailer's keywords it would send a positive signal to that the website had some authoritative depth as a resource for that product.
For another example, let's say an auto repair shop's website has a blog post about how to get a car ready for winter and somewhere within the post is a mention of a car muffler. A savvy web copywriter would make sure that the text "car muffler" linked to the muffler repair page on the website. This technique is useful for the visitor as they will learn more about the keyword they have just clicked on in another part of the website. Internal linking can be great for SEO since they can help a search engine to better understand the site's hierarchy and contents.
External Linking
External Linking
External linking, on the other hand, is an SEO tactic that links pages on one website to a page on a different website, generally a different domain that has a high(er) domain authority. Domain authority is a 1-100 score that is determined based on a prediction of a website’s SERP ranking ability. Generally, the bigger the business, the more prevalent the company, the higher the domain authority. For example, IMDb has a domain authority of 95, whereas the Boston Film Critics' website has a DA of 47, and the local NH film blogger is only at a domain authority of 15.
This strategy can positively impact the Google rank of a website. A crucial step when externally linking is to be sure that you are linking to a credible, quality, and relevant source. This is important because if you have a source that’s well credited like a national association or organization that links to your relevant hypertext keyword, Google recognizes the authority, relevancy, and credibility between that source and the page that the link brings you to, which in turn, boosts your ranking.
Example: Let’s say you operate the same car parts website as above. On your “Car Mufflers” page, you sell a muffler specific for Mercedes-Benz vehicles. You could use external linking here by having the words “Mercedes-Benz” hypertexted, linking to the MB website (domain authority of 71).
Inbound Backlinks
Inbound Backlinks
These are probably the most important types of links. Top SEOs say backlinks are like dynamite, use them correctly and it can be a very powerful tool, but if used incorrectly much harm can be done.
Backlinks are the links coming in to a website from other websites on the internet. When the link to a website comes from a domain that is respected on the web it can be a very good thing for the website being linked to as some of the original site's authority will pass on to the site. For example say a local entrepreneur's website was linked to in a Forbes Magazine article. It would not only be great for the site because of all that referral traffic coming in from Forbe's readers, but Google's algorithm would notice that link and likely improve its ranking for future searches.
The problem with backlinks is that they are so coveted that at one point a shady sub-industry came about where people would buy or trade links to improve their rankings. Linking in that way is not authentic and does not serve the user well, so eventually Google began to punish sites who participated in this artificial form of the tactic.
Example: A publication has written an article on your business and that article has “*Insert Business Name*” hypertexted, linking to your website.
It's actually pretty easy to not get penalized. Simply have a good site that is a great resource for users and get genuine incoming links.
Pro Tip
Pro Tip
Remember that when a change is made to the URL of a webpage with backlinks coming to it, to always set up a 301 redirect. Otherwise the valuable inbound links would be broken and no domain authority would be passed to the website. It's actually pretty easy to not get penalized. Simply have a good site that is a great resource for users and get genuine incoming links.
Google Sites
Report abuse