Internal Linking & Site Depth

Now that you know about PR and linking, I’d like to lead into the concept of internal linking and deep linking. This is a very powerful tactic than can be used by an SEO consultant to quickly impact the rankings of a large and authoritative site.  Deep linking and proper internal linking allows you to properly control your internal PR, makes your site easier to crawl, and makes your site look more authoritative. It starts simply by having proper site web site architecture, which includes sitemaps, back linking to your home page and interlinking related post.

Site Architecture

This all starts with having solid site architecture, which is about your navigation and the depth of your site. First, for every page on your site, I want you to ask yourself two questions.

From your HOME page:

How do I get to that page? And how many clicks did it take?

You want to have multiple link paths to an individual path. The more ways Google can locate the page, the better. They want to see a page linked from multiple sources. Second, Google does not dig deep. If a link is more than 3 clicks from the home page, it will drastically decrease the chance that Google will index it, especially if it has no external links. So lets go over a few ways to improve these.

Don’t isolate a page

Recently I helped a friend with a site and noticed that a page he wanted to rank for was not linked any where on his site. I visited his site’s home page and could not find a way to it. Google needs you to have your menu and site structure so that it can easily find all your pages in few clicks. So if you want a page to rank and to index… you need to make it accessible SOMEWHERE on your site.

Really simple, a sitemap

A simple explanation of a site map is a long list of links to all the pages on your site. It is useful for both humans and search engines. With a sitemap linked on every page, Google is never more than two clicks away from any page!

A sitemap helps reduce the depth of your site, gives Google bot a list of links to crawl, and improves your overall crawlability.

In addition to HTML sitemaps, your site can also have an XML sitemap. These are similar to HTML sitemaps but are produced in the form of an XML file and can be submitted to search engines. They contain not only links and anchor information, but also page priority and change date. No need for me to explain more, check out Google’s page on sitemaps.

Deep Link

Many people make a common mistake, which is not getting links to pages other than their homepage. Many times you’ll see pages with 98% of all their links going to their index page. This isn’t the best practice, it is best to deep link. Deep linking is linking to pages deeper in you site, which are pages that are NOT your home page. So when I build links for this site, I will try to get links that point to specific posts and not just my home page.

When you link to just your home page, it creates a shell site, which means it has no internal value past the surface of the site. Google has no reason to index many pages on your site if you’re only getting links to your home page. So link internally to deep pages.

Deep linking has a couple of side effects.

It will build authority for pages other than your home page

You can build PR on all the pages of your site. Sub pages of your site can be just as authoritative as your home page and can be more authoritative for specific keywords.

A great effect on your overall site PR and authority

Having high PR sub pages will increase the overall authority of your domain.

Lastly, it will increase the number of pages indexed

Google does not index all of your sites pages. It may only index 60% of your pages. By linking internally to sub pages, you send more authority into the deep levels of your site. This will result in an increased amount of indexed pages.

Internal Deep Linking

In addition to getting outside links pointing to your sub pages, you should link to sub pages throughout your site. When making a new page, try to link to other pages on your site that are related. This will increase the ease a bot has crawling your site, will reduce your site’s depth, provide multiple link paths, pass internal authority, and associate keywords with a post.

So trust me, link internally often.

Many times you’ll see me linking my keywords to my home page or to other posts. For example, if I say Nashville SEO, I will link it. The reason I do this is I want to pass internal authority for the keywords “Nashville SEO” to my home page. It tells Google “the page is about Nashville SEO”, then because I point a link to my index on many pages, it will tell Google my home page is the most important.

Controlling Internal Authority

One cool aspect of SEO that is ignored by many, is proper management of internal authority. This can be done using nofollow tags.

Ok, follow this.

Lets call Google authority “Google Juice”. Its a sweet liquid that gets you ranked. The more you have, the better. When sites link to you they pour you some Google juice. The more links, the more juice.

Now you have hundreds of inbound links and a fair bit of juice. Now consider we freeze in time and look at the amount of juice you have. It is a set amount, like a gallon of sweet tea or something. This Google juice is distributed among pages on your site and some pages have more than others. Think of each page on your site as cups with varying amounts of liquid in them. The more liquid they have, the more important they are.

Now with nofollows, we can put a lid on these cups and tell Google not to give those cups any juice!

But, why do we want to do this?

We do not want to waste this awesome Google juice on useless pages like our contact page or privacy policy. We want to put a lid on them and pass the juice instead to more useful pages. So don’t waste juice with site wide links to your privacy policy. If your site, like mine, has a site wide footer link to your privacy policy, put a no follow on it.

How to Do a nofollow

<a href=”http://link.com/crap-page.html” rel=”nofollow”>anchor</a>

Conclusion

So that’s how you can improve toy sites design, layout, and architecture to improve your on site SEO and to properly manage your internal PR and authority. These are not major factors in SEO like links and page title, but they make it easier for Google to crawl your site, find pages, index pages, and understand associations inside of a site. It also allows you to control the importance of pages within your site. If you need a boost in your SEO, try everything I’ve mentioned here to properly link internally and to reduce your website’s depth.

Tagged as: Friends, On Site SEO, SEO, SEO Factors, SEO Lessons

Related Posts:

Recommended SEO Plugins for Wordpress
SEO Basics
Flow of Internal Juice
Introduction to Google Juice
Similar Posts For SEO Success