How much do internal links help?
-
So I noticed in Site Explorer that my competitors mostly have internal links all over point to a page with the term I want to rank for, while very little external links.
How much do internal links help? Should I have a link somewhere on every page pointing to my target page with the keyword, and then grab some external links?
I link internally only when I see relevant, but maybe I'm not doing it enough.
Looking forward to replies!
-
Internal linking is so much more important now especially in a post Panda and Penguin world. Do it wrong and you could seem spammy to Google.
Here is a great video that will help give you a better idea
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/smarter-internal-linking-whiteboard-friday
-
Hey Hilary
Internal links are important primarily in that they help to indicate the standing of a page within your site.
So, a page that has only one link pointing to it, is fairly unimportant. A page that has has a link from every page is pretty important.
Beyond that, we have the internal anchor text to consider but you are really not going to move the dial a great degree with internal anchors so don't do something that ruins the chances of someone clicking the link for some perceived SEO benefit.
As with everything SEO there are a lot of moving parts and there is no one size fits all answer to this kind of question. If the site is an authority, then you may be able to really move the dial with internal links but if it is a new site then they are probably going to do very little.
If these pages are your main service pages then get them in the navigation so you can illustrate just how important they are in the context of all the other pages and then, to really give them a boost, you need some externals.
Again, a link from a really popular or well linked blog piece could add more value (from clicks as well as the SEO angle).
This is a great and relevant read:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whats-better-on-page-seo-or-link-building
Hope that helps!
Marcus
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
# of links and how it impacts ranking
Hi everyone I was running a competitor analysis in Moz Pro of my site and 3 competitors that are ranked above me. One of the things I noticed is that my # of total links is very high compared to 2 of my competitors(please see attachment). Other seo tools are telling me the same. This is mainly due to a few affiliate sites that have us in their footer. I was wondering if this could impact our ranking if some of these sites have very low domain authority and have thousands of backlinks to our site? I am looking into starting the disavowing process. Walau
Competitive Research | | wdsguy0 -
Best competitor analysis tool comparing my links with competitor links?
Hello All, Can anyone tell me best competitor analysis tool comparing my links with competitor links? Tool which define quality of links either low quality or spammy links etc? Thanks!
Competitive Research | | devdan0 -
Creating Free Website Accounts (Weebly, Wix, Wordpress.com, etc) for Linking Purposes?
Greetings Mozzers, I came a cross several sites and when looking at their link profile I found they had several links from these free services to gain links. Obviously duplicate content is bad, but if all the content on each one was completely unique, would these links be of quality? Let's say, 1 link per site that is external to your site. I know it's a tricky topic but just wanted thoughts, would the above be a potentially beneficial method for gaining a simple quality link. Your advice and information is much appreciated!
Competitive Research | | MonsterWeb280 -
Beating the Big Boys: help analyzing keywords in a very competitive space
Hi all! Long time Pro member first time question asker! We are in real estate in Barcleona and, although we create tons of content (daily blogs, free ebooks, videos) we have never properly optimized our root domain page for any keywords that might bring us specifically real estate related traffic from Google. Our website is www DOT SuiteLife DOT com. My question is about keyword analysis. We've had this sort of paralysis whereby we're nervous to start link building etc… for the wrong keywords. The problem we have is that most all keywords in our space are VERY competitive. So far the two tools we've used are: Google Keyword tool: About the top 20-40 keywords we'd like to go after are rated as HIGH competition. SEOmoz Keyword tool: Only the really too-obscure or long tailed keywords related to our business fall under a 50 rating. We were wondering if anyone could shed some light on how to further analyze keyword possibilities for our homepage when it seems like anything with any decent search traffic is super competitive. Please let me know if there's any important info that I've left out! Thank you SO much in advance for any advice/help. The SEOmoz community is so amazing! Rock on guys and gals! ~ Benny
Competitive Research | | SuiteLifeBarcelona0 -
Using Semantic Language to rank, how much stock do you put into this? (LSI)
In theory, analyzing the top results for a given phrase and comparing the common words and phrases would indicate what google considers relative language to the query. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) was and still is a buzz phrase for some SEOs. But how much stock do you give to the idea that if you can determine the common language for top rankers and then duplicate that language and density of common words that your website will then rank for that query you desire? Has anyone here tested the theory of using semantic language from the results themselves to better rank?
Competitive Research | | Thos0030 -
Much better authority and content than some competitors, why do they appear first?
On august we have lost the top positions for some keywords. Our website authority is 62 (google page rank 5), and some quite small competitors appear first now (some of them have authority 22, google page rank 3!). Our only big change was the DNS server, from godaddy to dnsimple.com, which seems to be some milisseconds slower. Every other metric is in our favor: from on-page repports to site speed. Sometimes by a factor of 3 or 4. What can be happening? We have also realized that, in private browsing, rankings will change a little bit in different cities, even if they are quite close to each other.
Competitive Research | | PauloSilveira0 -
Why does the link analysis of my website say I have no links?
When I click on the "Link Analysis" tab it says my website has a domain authority of 1 and has 0's for every other category. When I run it in Open Site Explorer - it says I have a page authority of 51 with over 4600 links. My website also seems to be at a stand still over the past several weeks. Anyone know why the two Link Analysis is not showing anything? Thank you
Competitive Research | | tyler7560 -
50,000 Links From The Same Website
Hey Mozers, I was conducting competitive research for a client of mine and I discovered one of their competitors has over 50,000 backlinks! After removing my heart from my stomach I realized that 99.9% of the links came from a single website that doesn't have nearly that many pages. Has anyone experienced this in the past? And if so what exactly is going on? C
Competitive Research | | calindaniel0