SEO basics: correct website structure through internal linking

Many webmasters associate search engine optimisation with link building. This is where external links (directing to your website) are generated in the hope of influencing search engine rankings in a positive way. Since the Google Penguin update, however, it’s been a lot more difficult to actively practice link building. This is because many – often dubious - link building methods that originally had a positive impact on a website’s ranking are now penalised by search engines. Consequently, the websites using these link building are punished with a decreased ranking. Because of this, many website operators have decided to optimise their website’s internal linking and link structure.

Since search engines don’t publish their algorithms, the extent of the influence of an internal link on a page’s ranking can only be estimated. What is known is that internal linking doesn’t influence a site as strongly as external linking. All the same, it is relevant for web crawlers, since they reward a user-friendly internal link structure.

Web crawlers (also known as robots, search bots, or spiders) are computer programs that are used by search engines to evaluate websites. They analyse sites by following their links, and including the detected pages in their index. If a website has a user-friendly internal link structure, this makes it a lot easier for crawlers to evaluate all the web pages, which in turn has a positive effect on the page ranking. A well-linked site is beneficial for both visitors and crawlers.

Additionally with internal links, you can make the most of the link strength of individual pages: link juice is also passed on in the case of internal linking. Link juice (also called link power) indicates the strength of a link, which is then passed on to the linked pages. If you compare link power to a river, each tributary flowing off from it would represent a link: each section carries part of the link power on further. While an optimal distribution of link juice is one of the most fundamental challenges for the search engine optimised structure of internal links, it is by no means the only one.

• Inheriting link juice: link power is especially high on websites with good reputations, meaning it should be distributed according to how important the subpages are. It’s important to know that link juice is evenly distributed from the output to all the linked web pages. The link power is divided by the number of linked pages. So if a web page links to ten other pages, the linked pages benefit from more link juice than if the web page linked to fifty other pages.

• The number of links pointing to a web page: if many internal links are connected to a certain page, the web crawlers will presume that this page is more important. Central pages (such as a site’s homepage, important subpages, or landing pages), should therefore be the most-linked to. It’s advisable to use internal links rather sparingly, i.e. only when they are useful to visitors.

• Flat link hierarchy: a website’s individual subpages should not go any deeper than they need to. The starting point is usually the homepage: if it takes ten clicks to reach a page from the homepage, the crawler will rank this page as less important than a page that can be reached in three clicks.

• Position and appearance of links: when working out the importance of links, the crawler also takes into account the structure and the design of individual web pages. A prominently-placed link (e.g. at the top of a page, in large font, or included in an image) is given more worth than less obvious links (e.g. at the end of a long article or in the website’s footer). Links in texts should always be highlighted (for example, in another colour).

• Context: links to other sites rank even better when both sites contain similar topics. This is where relevant anchor texts come into play. Anchor texts are the part of the text you click on to access the link. If you want to link to another page that has information on a product you’re writing about, make sure to include the name of your product in the anchor text. These link texts (whether internal or external) inform the search engine as well as the user about the content of the linked page. Anchor texts should also always be individualised, since this practice is rated more positively by search engines.

• Breadcrumbs: breadcrumb navigation enables website visitors to keep track of where they are on a website. This is often shown through a line of text, where the individual menu items are shown along with the site you’re currently browsing (e.g. an online shop homepage → online shop → trousers → jeans). Here, the whole website path is displayed which is helpful to users as well as search engines. If the navigational structure is labeled through schema.org, web crawlers can easily analyse bread crumb navigation.

• Accompany image links with alt text and title: if an image is linked, you should definitely provide a descriptive title and an alt text for it. Only then can search engines know what content lies behind the image link.

• Get rid of defective and unnecessary links: faulty links, which can lead to 404 error pages, should be deleted. The same goes for unnecessary links; otherwise, precious link juice is just getting wasted on meaningless internal links.