The Logic Of Internal Linking

The Logic Of Internal Linking

15 Tips to Increasing Your E-commerce Site Traffic

Internal linking is an essential strategy for any web designer, internet marketer, or anyone else looking to become involved with a website on any level.  These tips are suggestions and observations of proven techniques to get the most out of your internal linking.

The best time to begin internal linking is during the planning stage of the website.  Before you begin, you’ll want to include the following in your planning.

1.)  The sitemap will be the most important resource for you when planning out your internal linking.  Brainstorm and think of different pages on the site until you have every possible angle covered.   Then begin building your sitemap. 

2.) Defining the description and content of each page on your sitemap is very important.  This gives your website focus, and will help any marketing campaign as well.

Page Types – These are Web Pages that should be included in the site map by default to help with internal linking

3.) Home page – Link to all of your main pages form the home page.  These are known as category pages.  These category pages should be the main sections of your website. 

4.) Navigation Bar - Have a dynamic navigation versus a static navigation menu.  Each category page could show the specific products or service pages on the navigation menu.  This way, the navigation menu differs for each category page and is more valuable.  A breadcrumb trail is also important, as it helps the user and also helps dynamically create keywords.

5.) Sitemap - For internal linking purposes, there should be more than one sitemap. A Google sitemap is a sitemap created specifically for Google indexing.  A Google sitemap is a complete list of the pages. A general site map should also be included, to help visitors navigate more easily throughout the site.  The most updated, highest content pages should be on the sitemap.

6.) Glossary Page – The site should include a glossary page.  Be sure to link to this page as well, as it is high in content.  The glossary page should be a static page, not a popup.  This way it is more search engine friendly. Also, link to it, as it’s a high content page. Categorize the glossary, this way you have more detail. Feel free to link to other sources, whether it’s to Wikipedia, images and more. This increases relevancy.

7.) Link Directory – It’s important to have a link directory. This allows you to have data and content on different genres and categories. Add interactivity, and web 2.0 services, and related data on the site. Add tags, and tag clouds. Don’t make it too prominent, as it could annoy visitors. Perhaps offer the ability to comment on the directory site as well.

8.) Relevancy – Today the search engines are taking a large amount of the relevancy into account when indexing websites.  Relevancy factors to consider include content, popularity and age.

9.) Link format – Home page links to the category pages, the main pages link to the detail pages. Add a description page that explains each product, another page that talks about the history of each product that is listed.

Specific Web Pages – These are internal linking techniques that can be applies to each specific product or service page on the site.

10.) Duplicate Content – Try to avoid duplicate content, but if duplicate content is necessary at least use the keywords that relate to that specific page. Avoid linking to old pages (stale content), the older URL’s are more valuable, but if it’s not updated don’t link there.

11.) Video for Specific Pages – Create a video tab for each of your specific pages.  You can embed the video, or link to it directly.

12.) Links Page for Specific Pages - Have a page that links to other sites for each specific product page. Be careful to avoid over linking, however, as Google considers this spamming.

13.) Keyword clouds for the Specific Pages – Create a keyword cloud for each product page, but make sure it is out of the way and unobtrusive.  Also, taking it a step further, turn the keywords that appear in the tag cloud into hyperlinks themselves.

Bonus Web Pages – These are pages to add to take internal linking to the next level and get an edge over the competition

14.) Recent and Top Search Terms – Create a static page filled with the most recent and most popular search terms, and a small description for each term.

15.) Referrer page – Create a static page that lists the sites your visitors are coming from.

These tips can help maximize internal linking within a website.  The most important time to begin internal linking is before the website even goes live; proper planning can create an environment great for SEO, and make navigation of your site easy and logical.