“How to increase the conversion rate?” is undoubtedly the biggest question in the digital world today. A lot of techniques to grow the conversion rate of your website get invented every day. In this unending quest to introduce latest ways, various effective ways often get ignored. One of such methods is internal link building that can keep the visitors on your website as long as possible and at the very same time redirect them easily to the end point of the conversion funnel.
You might be thinking how’s it going to happen? It’s very simple. The highlighted hyperlinks in the content of a page can attract the attention of the readers and can bring them to other comparatively more important pages where they may find what they are looking for, they may subscribe for a newsletter, sign up for your service or buy your products. To say digitally, it is internal links map or structure.
Types of Internal Links
Rationally speaking, links are the gateways that search engine crawlers had to pass through to reach each of your pages and to learn what it is all about. It entirely depends on you whether you open or close your link doors for search engines and potential clients. A good internal linking structure is the one that has a complex system of interlinking on a site and for that, it should include different types of internal links.
- Navigational links are meant for keeping a website in a structured order that should have menu links, sidebar links and breadcrumb links.
- The purpose of footer links is to work as sitemaps that guide new users to access the pages they are looking for.
- Contextual or editorial links are generally placed in the body of a page that serves a related topic. They are the most useful links amongst the discussed types. They, unlike navigational and footer links, help users and search engines move around your website easily. This is why they are called dynamic beacons.
Benefits of Internal Links
Internal links:
- Help search engine understand the entire theme of the website.
- Increase the number of page visits.
- Decreases the bounce rate.
- Make visitors respond to call to actions.
- Scatter the link juice all over the website.
What Would Be an Ideal Internal Linking Strategy?
Create a Lot of Quality Contents
Are you aware of the fact that Google trusts the websites that have some authority? There are various ways to present yourself as an authoritative website in front of the search engine giant. Gaining backlinks from renowned websites is really very effective. Another proven way is building internal links as many as possible.
For this, you have to create a lot of contents that include the links of other pages of your website. But you have to ensure that the contents are of high quality otherwise, the bounce rate of your site will increase if the readers don’t find your content interesting.
Use Proper Anchor Texts
While building internal links, especially editorial links, it is very important to use proper anchor texts. They not only tell the readers what they are going to find right after clicking the link, but also they give clues to the search bots. It means you should say “check out these effective SEO tools to improve your rank” rather than “check out these tools to improve your rank”.
While creating anchor texts you have to keep in mind that the anchor texts should be different from the alt tagged images. It will generate different signals for the search engines and you will be able to match different though related search queries.
Stick to Deep Linking
Most of the websites have a lot of links to the home pages and contact us pages. But it can’t produce the best results as these pages are already available on the menu of your site. Rather, you should concentrate more on linking posts and pages that are three levels deep.
Use Readable Links
The primary focus of internal links is to catch the attention of the readers and redirect them to the pages that you intend. They should improve users’ engagement on your site. To do this, you have to ensure that the links are easily readable and have user-focussed approach. Try to use phrases or words that explain the linked pages appropriately.
Include Follow Links
Using nofollow links was one of the popular internal linking strategies of past to increase the link juice on a particular page. These links are very beneficial if you don’t want Google to crawl a particular link that’s unauthorized. But it’s not ethical. Thus, you should use follow links so that the link value flows freely.
Use Relevant Links
There should be some logic in your internal linking method rather than tremendous labor. Don’t put links just because you have to. Think twice before you link the pages. Try and link the contents that are relevant to the source text.
Three Click Rule
If you are in the digital world, you should know the three quick rules. It says that there shouldn’t be any page on your website that’s more than three clicks away. It’s not mandatory but it helps the reader from not getting lost. At the very same time, it builds a fully organized SEO structure.
Your Checklist while or after Building Internal Links
You are done yet with the internal linking procedure by just following the discussed methods. You have to check whether it’s been done properly. This checklist will help you know that.
- The most important job is to check whether the links redirect you to the destined pages or they are blocked by the robots.txt file. You can check it from the analysis tool.
- Make sure that any Java, Flash, Iframes and other plugins are not involved while building the link map.
- Check whether the internal linking connects the most authoritative pages to the less authoritative ones.
- Ensure that the anchor texts are different from the titles of the linked pages. But they should explain the meaning of the contents appropriately.
- Check the loading speed your landing pages. It if takes more than 3 to 6 seconds, there is a probability that you lose potential customers due to poor user experience.
There you are with some of the valuable tips regarding internal link building. Try them out and increase your conversion rate with more customer engagement.