Seven ways to improve internal linking structure

Crawling to success

Enabling easy crawling of your website by the search engine bots or spiders requires good internal linking architecture, this also helps usability of the site overall and can direct users to find content of particular interest to them.

It is imperative to have good site usability and overall site architecture to obtain good ranking in the SERP's.

How search engines find web pages on your website

Search engine directories use little software programs called spiders or bots to seek out the content that in turn is added to the search engine directories. These little software creatures are pretty simple in their workings and can only follow text links in majority of cases. It is essential to make the job of the indexing spider as easy as possible, site maps both HTML and XML should be used to give them a helping hand as it were.

Flash driven menus, Java scripting menus, search boxes cannot be read by most of these visiting little creatures and as such will give them no idea what content is in your site or where it is located. These little spiders are also a bit on the slack side and will not often delve to deep into your site. If your site is a massive site, with a page rank of 8 and receives thousands of visitors a day they may just spend much more time on your site. Alas though the majority of websites are not like this so we must leave the food bowl where they can easily access it.

Seven internal linking ideas that will improve your search engine rankings and overall usability of your website

Most search engine spiders do not type into your search boxes and they do not use pull down menus. The following tips will help you to make sure that search engine spiders will index your web pages correctly:

1. Use simple text links to link to your web pages

Most search engines cannot index fancy Flash or JavaScript menus. Some even have difficulty with image links. If possible, use simple text links to link to your web pages. You can make text links prettier by styling them with CSS.

2. Your most important pages should not be more than one click away from the index page

Web pages that can be accessed with a few clicks from your home page are considered more important than web pages that are buried deep inside your website. It's easier to get high rankings for these easy to access pages.

3. Use descriptive link texts

The text that you use to link to your web pages helps search engines to better understand your content.

If you sell acne products on your website, do not use links such as <a href="greatcontent.html">Click here</a> but descriptive link texts such as <a href="greatcontent.html">Proven Acne Treatment</a>.

That makes it easier for search engines to put the page into a context and it will be more likely that the page gets high rankings for the keyword "Proven Acne Treatment".

4. Related content

More for user usability but very important overall, a related content module is a good way to engage visitors to delve deeper into your content. If not using a CMS platform than a simple nice CSS box containing related content to what the user is reading can do the trick. You can see a list of todays popular content top right of this post.

5. In content links

Using in content links can be a great way for users to find extra content relating to what they are reading, you will often see in our own posts hyper linked content to further engage the reader. This tactic also gives the spiders extra information about the content within your site. With more information the search directories can better categorise your site and serve more targeted results to the people searching for your goods and services. Here is an example of in content linking, have you visited our SEO frequently asked questions yet? Did you also know you can ask an SEO question if you cannot find what you were looking for.

6. Create a sitemap

A sitemap is a simple web page that contains link to all important pages of your website. You could add a link to your sitemap in the footer of every web page. By doing this, search engines can find all important pages with two clicks. It is even better to create a XML site map and submit it to Google, Yahoo and NineMSN these sites maps are specifically for the use of search engine directories. If you have one of our CMS websites this is all done automatically for you, and updates the site maps every time content changes

7. Check the validity of your HTML code

Errors in the HTML code of your web pages can prevent search engines from indexing your web pages correctly. For example, an HTML error might indicate the end of a web page before the actual content begins. That would mean that search engines would skip the content and any links of that page. Follow the linked text to access the official W3C HTML validator.

Internal site structure plays an important role in how a site is indexed and indeed how it ranks in the SERP's the more information you can give a visiting spider the better. Usability helps rank as well, the lower the bounce rate and longer spent on site all add up in the ranking factors, this all ultimately goes towards your sites over all rank.

It is a careful balance of looking after the search engines and looking after the visitors, of course if you are a client of We Seo we look after all of this for you. Maybe you should give us a call on 1300 78 50 60 or fill out our consultation form.

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