How To Build Internal Links For SEO In WordPress In 2024

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How To Build Internal Links For SEO In WordPress

Working on your On-Page SEO and On-Site SEO is the first thing you can do to boost your organic traffic. ShoutMeLoud has over 1.5 million page visits monthly, with organic traffic accounting for 80% of our traffic. Without high-quality content and technically solid SEO, it would not have been conceivable.

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Today, you'll learn about one key SEO component that may help you increase your total SEO score and, as a result, your organic ranking. Internal linking is one of the webmasters' most overlooked aspects of content creation and those who employ content writers.

In SEO, What Is Internal Linking?

Internal links connect one blog post or page to another inside the same domain. Internal links assist search engines in successfully crawling the pages. It also aids in the transfer of link juice from one page to another.

Let's have a look at an example:

Assume you have a webpage with roughly ten high-quality backlinks from different websites. Now that page is higher in the SERP, you may link to other pages on your website from that high-ranking page, passing link juice to pages that aren't as powerful in terms of backlinks.

To create an authoritative website, you must guarantee that all of your blog's pages are connected, which is where the internal linking strategy comes into play. Wikipedia is an excellent example of a solid internal linking structure, and we all know how highly Wikipedia ranks in search engines.

Now that you know what internal linking is, it's time to learn some advanced techniques for mastering this method.

What Is The Best Way To Get Started With Internal Linking In WordPress?

Internal linking's golden rule is that sites should be contextually relevant.

Use anchor text internal links to your advantage.

– After each article, there are related posts, and in the sidebar, there are popular posts…

…are a few simplest methods for adding internal connections to a website. Internal linking WordPress plugins are available in the WordPress ecosystem for easy internal linking.

In a 1200-word article, you should search Wikipedia and add 7-10 internal links. Internal links have no restrictions as long as they are contextually relevant and valuable to users. Internal links are frequently added when creating or revising a piece of material.

If your company has an editor, you should teach him how to create internal links when changing material. I just moved to the LinkWhisper plugin, which has a lovely function that suggests relevant articles to include inside the post. This plugin will save you a lot of time if you intend to add internal links to a site with more than 200 entries.

But What About Older Articles?

How do you locate pages with a low number of inbound links or pages with poor internal connections? You'll learn how to spot such sites in the following section. After then, you may begin altering them.

Identifying pages with a low number of internal connections (both incoming and outgoing)

Incoming Connections With A Low Quality

Identifying sites with the fewest internal connections is an excellent way to enhance your internal links. Every page should have at least 1-2 internal links (referenced from other pages).

Update: If you're using WordPress, the Linkwhisper plugin may help you locate sites with a low number of inbound internal links.

We may also utilize the site audit capability of the Semrush program. I've mentioned Semrush a few times in previous blogs, and it's the SEO suite I've been using for the last couple of years.

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If you're using Semrush, you can utilize the built-in capability to discover sites with a low number of inbound links. If you're not using Semrush and instead use the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin, continue reading to learn how to achieve the same using the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin.

You can obtain Semrush for 14 days for free (a $300 value) by clicking here.

Add your site to Semrush Dashboard's site assessment tool.
Conduct a thorough site audit (the trial version also lets you do that)

How Can I Tell Whether Sites Have A Low Number Of Internal Links?

We'll be utilizing Yoast premium for this. Yoast SEO Premium may also help you find pages with a low number of inbound internal links (I discovered that while writing this section).

Enable the text link counter option in the Yoast > Tools area, then navigate to the posts edit portion of the dashboard, where all your blog entries are shown. Two additional columns appear here, displaying the amount of outgoing internal links and incoming internal connections to the post.

You may arrange the columns here by a number of links in ascending or decreasing order. The option to view the articles connected to that article is one feature I miss seeing in the number of internal connections.

You can quickly pinpoint the problem with the Yoast SEO premium edition for WordPress sites. Semrush should be used to locate similar pages on any other website that isn't based on WordPress or BlogSpot.

Half of your work is done after you've identified posts with a low number of incoming and outgoing internal connections. From here on out, you should concentrate on upgrading your content to strengthen your blog's general link structure.

What Are Internal Linkages, And How Do They Work?

Any connection on your website that connects one page to another is known as an internal link. Links are used by both your users and search engines to discover material on your website.

Users use links to browse your site and get the information they're looking for. Search engines also use links to traverse your site. They will not see a page if there are no links to a page.

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Internal linkages come in a variety of shapes and sizes. You may include links inside your content, homepage, menu, and post feed. These are referred to as contextual links. Contextual links direct your readers to be relevant and engaging information.

Furthermore, they enable search engines to estimate the worth of your site's content by determining what material is associated with it. The more links a page gets, the more critical it seems to search engines. As a result, effective internal links are essential for SEO.

Internal vs. External Hyperlinks

Internal and external links, including online retailers, may be found on any website. Internal links connect your website's pages and articles, whereas external links link your pages to other websites. Internal links and what they signify for SEO are the subject of this piece. Check out our link-building blogs if you want to gain more external links pointing to your site (backlinks).

Why Is It Vital For Google To Have Links?

As Marieke explains in the video, Google uses links to find website information and rank it in search results. Many links to a post or page indicate to Google that it is essential or valuable content. This applies to both internal and external connections.

As a site owner, you have authority over internal linking. You'll direct your visitors and Google to your most crucial pages with the right internal connections. Our internal linking tool (currently unavailable in Yoast SEO for Shopify) will assist you in finding relevant topics to connect to!

Content-Content Relationships

Using a crawler called Googlebot, Google scans webpages by following internal and external connections. This bot navigates to the website's homepage, renders the page, and clicks on the first link. Google can determine the connection between sites, blogs, and other material by following links.

In this method, Google can figure out which pages on your site are about the same thing. On the top of this piece, for example, you'll find connections to the categories ‘Content SEO,‘ ‘Internal linking,' and ‘Site structure.' By including these links, we ensure that Google recognizes that the material on those sites is relevant to the content of this article.

The Worth Of A Link

Google splits link value amongst all links on a web page in addition to comprehending the connection between content. Because it has the most backlinks, the homepage of a website often has the most critical link value. The link's value will be split across all of the links on that homepage.

The link value provided to the next page will be split amongst that page's links. As a result, linking to your most recent blog entries from the homepage rather than just the category page will increase their link worth.

In addition, if recent content is linked from the homepage, Google will locate them faster. When you understand how links pass on their link value, you'll realize that more links to a post equal greater value. Because Google considers a page with many quality connections to be more essential, you'll have a better chance of ranking.

Creating A Plan For Internal Connecting

Regularly evaluating and improving your internal linking strategy is critical for your site's SEO. It's one of the approaches to boost your website's fitness. By including the appropriate internal links, you ensure that Google is aware of the following:

The worth of pages;
The importance of pages;
The link between pages

There are a few factors to consider while planning your internal connecting strategy. Of course, how you go about it depends on your site and objectives, but the steps below are an excellent starting point.

1. Choose The Best Structure For Your Website

We constantly tell people to see their website as a pyramid. Your homepage is at the top; below are certain sections or categories, and below are individual articles and pages (possibly with subcategories in between). Your website's menu should match this structure if you do it right.

2. Determine The Most Significant Stuff

The next step is to figure out what your most significant material is. In a nutshell, it's your greatest and most comprehensive material about your business's core. It's the material visitors want to discover when looking for particular subjects or items.

Because you want Google to recognize that this is your most compelling content, you should link to it often. You may link to your cornerstone material from a variety of places. From the copy of your post to the navigation, we'll go through the most prevalent choices here.

3. Incorporate Contextual Connections

When you've produced many articles on the same subject, you should connect them. This will demonstrate to Google – and users! – that the articles are linked to the subject. You may add links after your post or link straight from phrases in your article.

You also want to show Google which articles are your cornerstones: the most comprehensive articles on the subject. To do so, you must provide a link to the cornerstone in each article on the subject. Don't forget to link back to the individual posts from the cornerstone.

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An example of contextual connecting

‘How Target Great Keywords With Blog Post To Rank On Google's First Page‘ is a cornerstone content piece on our site. This content will appear in Google search results for all connected search searches for [keyword research].

So we've included links to the main post from related articles like ‘How To Start With Keyword Research,' ‘What Are Shorttail Keywords For SEO,' and ‘How To Use Longtail Keywords.' We also link to these posts from the main article. As a result, Google will recognize that the ultimate guide has the most [keyword research] information. As a result, Google will favour the final guide above the other shorter keyword research pages.

4. Create A Link Between Pages In A Hierarchy

If your website has hierarchical pages, connect parent pages to child pages and vice versa. Also, don't forget to connect the sites of siblings. On a well-organized website, these pages should be connected, and connecting them in this way makes perfect sense.

5. Think About Adding A Section For Similar Posts

Many plugins and modules allow you to include comprehensive related post sections in your articles. We suggest checking whether you use one to see if the associated articles are related. If unsure, manually connecting to articles is the best option. On Yoast.com, we do something similar: we manually choose a similar post and link to it at the bottom of the article.

6. Experiment With Adding Navigational Connections

It's feasible to make your cornerstone content more authoritative by adding links to it from the homepage or top navigation and linking from topically-related articles and pages. This should be done with your company's most significant articles and pages. This will increase the link value of these articles or pages, making them more powerful in Google's eyes.

7. Include Hyperlinks In Your Taxonomy

Taxonomies, like categories and tags, help you structure your site and make it easier for people and search engines to comprehend what you're talking about. If you have a blog, adding internal links to the taxonomies that the article belongs to may be advantageous. Adding links to categories and tags helps Google comprehend your blog's structure and makes it easier for users to find similar entries.

8. Include Links To Recent Or Popular Blogs

The last consideration is creating internal connections to your website's most popular or newest content. Create these sections in your website's sidebar or footer to ensure that they display on all pages and articles.

These most popular/recent articles get a boost when link value from many different sites goes to them. Aside from that, visitors will be able to reach the content more efficiently, which will boost traffic — and more traffic is a good indication for Google.

Internal linkages are discussed in further detail.

Nofollow Links Are Links That Are Not Followed

You're also likely to have links on your website that aren't crucial for SEO. You don't want to leak link value to your login page if you have a login link for your clients on the homepage, for example, since that page doesn't need to rank high in the search results.

Giving irrelevant links a nofollow tag protects them from losing link value. A nofollow tag instructs Google not to follow the link, resulting in no loss of link value. “I'm going to nofollow less important links to give the most vital connections greater link value,” you could think now.

While this method worked in the past, Google has improved its capabilities. It now seems that the nofollow link value does not immediately propagate to the other links on the page. The nofollow link will be treated as if it were a regular link, and its link value will be lost. As a result, having fewer connections on a page makes more sense than following some links.

It's important to note that putting a nofollow tag on a website doesn't guarantee it won't show up in Google's search results. If you don't want your pages or posts to appear in search results, add a noindex tag to them.

The noindex element tells Google that the page should not be rendered and that the content should not be included in the Google index so that it may appear in search results.

Texts That Serve As Anchors

It's critical to utilize the correct anchor text after establishing which links should be on a page and which sites should get link value. The anchor text is the text that visitors may click on. You may harm your website if you over-optimize anchor text. We mean keyword stuffing when we say over-optimizing.

Previously, you could use the same keyword in all anchor texts, and Google would boost your website's ranking for that term. Google has evolved to the point where it recognizes that the material around the anchor text reveals more about the keyword's relevance than the anchor text itself. So make sure the anchor text in your material seems natural: utilizing keywords is acceptable, but don't repeat them in every link's anchor text.

Conclusion

Internal linking is crucial for on-page SEO. This blog post showed you why it is essential and how to do it.

I trust you enjoyed this article on How To Build Internal Links For SEO In WordPress. Would you please stay tuned for more articles to come? Take care!

JeannetteZ

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Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? I would love to hear from you. Please leave me your questions, experiences, remarks, and suggestions about How To Build Internal Links For SEO In WordPress in the comments below. You can also contact me by email at Jeannette@WorkFromAnywhereInTheWorld.com.

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