Inbound links are incredibly valuable to a site's search engine optimisation. As time goes by, the search engines are using off-site factors more and more to judge the quality of a website. Getting inbound links is undoubtedly important for your site's ranking. With so much focus on inbound links, site owners often forget an asset that they have more control over †their internal links. Although your internal links won't count as much toward your ranking as inbound links, the fact that you have complete control over them makes them valuable. They might not have as much weight in the rankings calculation, but they do still have some weight, and you should use them as effectively as you can. If you are consulting a search engine optimisation company for your site's SEO, your consultant should have a look at your link structure as a matter of course. Even if you're optimising on your own, or even more importantly if you are, you need to analyse the structure of your site to check for potential weaknesses. While you do this, it's the perfect time to have a look at how you can improve your internal links. How internal links work Every page is treated separately as far as the search engines are concerned. Instead of your site appearing as a book, its pages bound together by your navigation, sites mostly appear looseleaf. The links coming in from anywhere on the net are analysed by the search engines and weighted according to the clout of the pages they come from, and the relation they have to your site. If the links are coming from somewhere else on your domain, they get a little less weight. Talk to us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk about link factors. On the positive side for internal links, if the pages have a high ranking, they can lend strength to your other pages. This means that if you have a page that naturally ranks well, you can use its established history to prop up your other pages. How to link with strength Every site has an established network of internal links, but sometimes the way in which these are structured makes it hard for the search engine spiders to follow. Search engine spiders are a lot like real spiders. They like to crawl on clear paths and generally like the strands they crawl on to be in order. Just as a spider web conforms to a certain pattern, your site's structure needs to be set to a pattern that makes it easier for the search engine spiders to crawl to important pages. This means straightening out your internal links. The thing to keep in mind for SEO links is 'as few clicks as possible'. Pages need to be as few clicks as possible away from each other, and as close to the home page as possible. If you want your pages fully indexed, keep your link structure clear and simple. Use powerful pages to support others and you will see your rankings improve.
Please Rate this Article 5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5
Not yet Rated
