What is "internal linking"?

Basic Guide, about 5 min of reading

Links or URLs are not only needed externally. Internal links on the website are the linking of your website pages. Internal links are understood as menu items, and an indication of interesting products or articles, and links within articles. That’s all items you can click on and go to another page. Why relink?

Is it the proper linking and guarantees you to get the TOP?

Optimization of internal links is one of the essential points of internal website optimization. This is an important piece of work that needs to be done if you want to get into the TOP. Correct page linking is necessary because:

1. Relinking will improve the usability of the website. This factor automatically leads to an increase in conversion and an increase in search results positions.

Firstly, if your website is convenient for the user, he will quickly find exactly what he was looking for. And at the same time, he will order additional goods or services.

Secondly, search engines track behavioral factors. And the deeper people cross your website, the more confidence this will cause for search engines. Your main goals are: to help users buy faster and more often, to help you earn money and to help search engines increase your position in SERPs.

Some definitions and statistics

Those websites are considered slow, for which loading times are more than 3 seconds.

The recommended duration for normal websites is about 2 seconds.

When the download speed of websites decreases by only 200 ms, this leads to a reduction in the number of your visitors by 36% just within a few weeks. Similarly, with an increase in delay by 400 ms, transitions are reduced by 76% over the same time. Google highly recommends consistently improving loading speed.

How to link pages correctly?

These are some simple rules that you can easily implement.

1. No more than 1 link to 1 text block or paragraph.

2. Do not use circular references. This means that the page cannot link to itself. A very common mistake in linking happens when the main icon is active on any of the pages. Remember, if you are on the main page, this icon must be inactive.

3. No more than 30 links in 1 page. This number does not include a menu. Don't worry if you have a huge menu and many subcategories: search engines are well aware that this linking is necessary for the user. Here we are talking about links within articles, to banners, to popular services or products, etc.

4. The text of the link should contain keywords. If you are linking with the “Contacts” page, then the text of this link itself should sound exactly like “contacts”. If let’s say "Product Quality", then the link text should convey the information to the user where he will go. It's good if the link has the same name as the page itself. If the full name is too long, leave 1-2 keywords only.

Important: Absolutely every page of the website should link to the main page.

Your website will be able to get into the TOP of Google way much faster if you will follow these simple linking rules. Good luck!

Glossary:

(click on the links to learn more)

SERP - are the pages displayed by search engines in response to a query by a user. The main component of the SERP is the listing of results that are returned by the search engine in response to a keyword query.

INTERNAL LINKS - An internal link is a type of hyperlink on a web page to another page or resource, such as an image or document, on the same website or domain. Hyperlinks are considered either "external" or "internal" depending on their target or destination. Generally, a link to a page outside the same domain or website is considered external, whereas one that points at another section of the same web page or to another page of the same website or domain is considered internal.