Correct Internal Linking Strategy
-
Hello.
So my website currently has 8 pages in total. (Homepage, 5 Service Pages, Contact, About). I currently have about 80 quality RD and my Homepage already ranks #8 for my main keyword, while all Service Pages (P1, P2, P3, P4, P5) are stuck somewhere at #30-60 positions for their target keywords.
My internal linking scheme looks like this https://i.imgur.com/2cA529v.png. The Homepage has a sidebar with links to all Service Pages, and each Service Page has the same sidebar that links to each Service Page, but doesn't link back to my Homepage. Contact and About pages can be accessed only via the links in the menu.
I don't have any contextual links on my website, so all pages that are important for SEO are linked only via this same very sidebar. All these Service Pages are equally valuable to me, but they don't seem to grow much in Google. The Onpage Score of these pages is better than those of TOP10 competitors, and my content provides more value (I used the Skyscraper Technique).
Taking all that into consideration, can you please tell me what might be wrong? Why
- Should I build more quality backlinks to these service pages instead of the homepage?
- Should I add contextual links to all my service pages from the homepage?
- Does my internal linking strategy look good to you? If not, what should I change?
- Can I hit top #10 with my internal pages for their target keywords if I mainly build links only to my homepage?
All keywords that I'm after have low to medium competition. My website has 90 RD in total, and my website's DA is 27.
Thank you.
-
Generally speaking, unless your site has a very high Domain Authority, then it will be very difficult to rank on the first page without building some external backlinks. Internal backlinks alone won't be enough to take your site's pages on the first page of the Google results for the targeted keyword.
Also, in regards to internal links, don't forget to cross-link within the article. If one of the pages is referenced on another page, then you can put a link to that. Take the very good example of Wikipedia's internal linking to master it. However, don't overdo the internal links or you might raise some flags.
After building more quality external backlinks for your pages, you should be able to see your pages slowly grow in rank and help increase your Domain Authority.
Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com
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
-
Does reciprocal linking carry any value?
No matter how much I research this one, there's no definite answer and there's a lot of contradictions. Basically we're looking to launch an article on 24 expert interior design tips for 2015. Each tip is submitted from a different interior designer we have chosen who have a reputable, trusted website. The main goal for this article is to generate various inbound links for our site from the designers and it will help to create engagement on social media. Although if we're giving out links to these designers for their contributions, the inbound links we receive in return will be little or no value as this is reciprocal linking? Some say this is okay as it's completely natural within the blog posts, others say to avoid it as it can be seen as an obsolete practice to deceive Google. Does anyone have any more information on this and how it should be carried out? Would a better process be to link to their social media accounts? Rather than reciprocal linking? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Jseddon920 -
Fake Links indexing in google
Hello everyone, I have an interesting situation occurring here, and hoping maybe someone here has seen something of this nature or be able to offer some sort of advice. So, we recently installed a wordpress to a subdomain for our business and have been blogging through it. We added the google webmaster tools meta tag and I've noticed an increase in 404 links. I brought this up to or server admin, and he verified that there were a lot of ip's pinging our server looking for these links that don't exist. We've combed through our server files and nothing seems to be compromised. Today, we noticed that when you do site:ourdomain.com into google the subdomain with wordpress shows hundreds of these fake links, that when you visit them, return a 404 page. Just curious if anyone has seen anything like this, what it may be, how we can stop it, could it negatively impact us in anyway? Should we even worry about it? Here's the link to the google results. https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amshowells.com&oq=site%3A&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i58.1905j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8 (odd links show up on pages 2-3+)
Technical SEO | | mshowells0 -
Assessing Link Profiles
Hi Guys, When doing a link cleanup, it can be sometimes hard to tell, how a link got there (i.e is it natural or not). Apart from spammy directories, blog comments and forum profiles, some link exchanges could have been done naturally with just very good outreach. If you were looking at this one:- http://5startemplates.com/communications_links(4).html Would you say remove if I know they have definitely taken part in link exchanges (their link profile seems to suggest they have) or just change it to a brand/url. This sites rankings have been tanking due to duplicate content and possibly (although not definitely) a penguin update too. Any advice would be great! Kind Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | nezona0 -
Followed Linking Root Domains and No Followed Linking Domains
If you have more NoFollowed Linking Root Domains than Followed Linking Root Domains is that a problem?
Technical SEO | | INN0 -
Are no follows leaking link juice?
Recently, in a discussion on resources pages EGOL informed me that just because I had no followed the links on my my resource page, I was still leaking link juice. He mentioned that this was a recent change in Google policy. This was quite a surprise. I have done a couple of searches on this recent change but have not found any information. Am I simply the last one on the planet to learn this and this change is widely known and understood? If so, does that mean honest resource pages (I have two such pages) that are there to help visitors are negatively impacting the site - at least in terms of SEO? If they are leaking link juice is it comparable to a followed link or a smaller amount that has less impact?
Technical SEO | | leatherhidestore0 -
Broken link
I know SEO Moz has a lot of info about 404 301 302 etc but I am trying to figure out easy way to fix two of the broken links from flash. I am redirecting following links with wordpress redirect plug in http://soobumimphotography.com/gallery.php?GalleryID=126&GalleryName=Wedding&OrderNum=1 http://soobumimphotography.com/gallery.php?GalleryID=126&GalleryName=Wedding&OrderNum=1 What would be the best way to solve this? Is there anyway I can remove those?
Technical SEO | | BistosAmerica0 -
Internal Links on eCommerce sites
I have been working on an eCommerce site; www.pretavoir.co.uk over the past year. Improvements in SERPs have been good with many top three positions. However, there are other important keywords of similar difficulty which refuse to behave in a similar way.... The site is PR4 and has a homepage PA 52. The homepage includes links to internal brand pages eg Prada, Gucci etc. Q Would it be worthwhile creating footer anchor text with eaxct text eg Prada sunglasses, Gucci Sunglasses?? Thanks
Technical SEO | | seanmccauley0 -
Redirecting broken incoming links
I have a number of 404s happening on my site due to other websites incorrectly linking to my content. Perhaps they typed the word wrong, or their software did. Here are some examples from webmaster tools: learn/ingredie.. shop/accessories_and_extras/professional.. lore/idx.php.. learn/step_by_step_instruc shop/prod shop/product lore/email_ As you can see, none of those are actual pages - but truncated URLs of actual pages. Should I find a way to redirect these pages - or let them 404? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | dreadmichael0