Discussion on the best practices of 12 internal links

Before I officially start talking about the best internal link practices, let's first talk about what internal links are and why they are important? And the relationship between your website and search engines.

Internal link truth

The link is like a door. Search engine crawlers can use it to find valuable content on your page. Therefore, keep the internal links as concise as possible, which is more conducive to search engines to capture your website. Each link on the original page will deliver value to the target page. This is often called Google juice ". You can also learn a lot about internal links on seomoz. A link can have a property that controls whether to output "Google juice" to another page ". It is usually called follow/nofollow, which is generally controlled by rel = "nofollow" or rel = "follow.

The link on the original page can indicate the meaning of the target page. For example, "Please click here for the latest updates to search engine optimization" is far less valuable than the "latest updates to SEO" link. Because a link like "Click here" cannot describe the value of the target page. The link text is called "anchor text ". The anchor text is very important for describing the value of the target page.

Internal link type

There are several types of internal links, including links in menus, sidebar, footer, and context or content. Here we will talk about what each internal link is and the main differences between each type of internal link.

1. Menu Link

The menu link is usually on all webpages of the standard website. This type of link is not as valuable as content or context link.

2. Sidebar links

A sidebar link is usually a context link that directs users and search engines to a specific part of the website. If you have a personal blog, the link on the sidebar is: the latest published articles or comments, the article category, or the tag cloud.

3. footer link or bottom navigation

Footer links or bottom navigation are often used to allow users to browse your website or use it as a website map. Generally, if a user sees your website page but does not find what he has been looking for, the footer will provide them with the structure of the entire website, and provide links to the most popular content, which is very valuable to them.

4. content link or context Link

Content links or context links are the most valuable links. They are located inside the article. These links do not belong to the List, and such link types are very valuable links for search engine crawlers.

Next we will talk about our theme and 12 best practices for internal connection.

In essence, an appropriate internal link is necessary to simplify the search engine's understanding of our website. An appropriate internal link structure can guide crawlers to capture valuable pages, and Google's algorithms will rank these webpages with higher links. Based on the above definition and introduction of internal links, the following 12 are some of the best practices I recommend.

1. understand users' search modes. First, conduct keyword research to learn how users can search for your products. Use these entries when you start the planning or adjustment phase of your internal links.

2. construct your website structure based on your product structure and how people search for your product.

3. Use descriptive anchor text. Use the keyword to pin the text to the target page.

4. Use HTML instead of java scripts or flash menus. The link of the HTML Version ensures that the search crawler can capture the website link smoothly, while the flash and JavaScript menus cannot be crawled.

5. Do not use the nofollow attribute in your internal link.

6. The number of links on each page is limited to 75-100. Any page that exceeds the number of links may be considered bad. Major-negative links will include more "Google juice" to the target page. You can use a free link detection tool Xenu to check the number of export links on each webpage.

7. Use related links and establish internal or context links to guide users to browse more website content. If you use WordPress, you can install the relevant article plug-in. It will automatically create a list of related articles or pages on your blog article page.

8. Make sure your new article references some previous articles. If you are using WordPress, you can consider installing the internal link auto-add tool. WordPress has a very useful tool that can quickly link to other published articles on its own website.

9. Add a cross-link to the topic or content. If you use WordPress, consider installing the internal link keyword policy. This plug-in automatically connects to keywords on the website page.

10. Use the bread navigation. This will improve the user experience and tell the user where he is and how to retrieve the previous page.

11. Avoid invalid links on your website. If WordPress is used, we recommend that you install an invalid link checker plug-in to detect dead links.

12. Pay attention to your internal links. Internal link management is not a one-time task. With the accumulation of website content, new content will be added each time, new links, new products, and changes in the key word center. So keep an eye on your internal links. You can use Google analysis to check what kind of content the user searches for, find out where new opportunities are, and update your links and anchor links accordingly.