Internal linking technical tips for SEO

Although it could reasonably be said that much of what I post on SEO Theory is opinion, anecdotal, etc. I want to make clear that what follows is entirely opinion.

Everyone’s opinion counts for something in search engine optimization. If there were only one way to do things we’d all be doing things the same way. This is especially true of how we structure our links. There are a million ways to link to your own content. I’ve looked at a lot of broken and confused links in my time. Some of those bad links were created by people other than me.

Search engine optimizers tend to place way too much importance on links. They talk about nonsense like “domain PageRank” (by definition, PageRank is only calculated on a page-by-page basis), ambiguous fluff like “link juice”, and tell people to check their backlinks on Yahoo! (as if that will tell you something about Google).

Now, I look at Yahoo! every now and then, too. I’ve even advised people on ways to use Yahoo! to study backlinks. But simply looking at backlinks on Yahoo! doesn’t tell you much about a site.

If you want to learn about a site’s internal linking structure, Yahoo! is actually a pretty good reference. So is Google although in a different way. One of the first things I do in evaluating a site is looking to see how many pages show up in a site search on various search engines (I look past the first page for small to moderate-sized sites).

After getting a sense of how many pages may be indexed by the major search engines, I run some test queries on the sites’ most important keywords (or, rather, on the keywords I think are most important to those sites). I’m looking to see which pages the search engines think are most relevant to those keywords. A site search tells you a great deal about a site.

If I feel Yahoo! has a good index snapshot of a site I’ll look at the inlinks the site gives itself. If I have access to Google’s Webmaster Central, I’ll glance at Google’s internal link report (although this is usually not up-to-date or complete from my perspective).

You can get an idea of how much credit a search engine gives to a Web site for its own internal linkage. Internal links carry only as much weight as you give them. You can suck the power out of your internal links by using Flash, Javascript, or dynamic URLs (even if the data is used for tracking the URL variables should really not be showing up in search results).

There are other ways to sap the strength from your links, but let’s focus on what makes a link strong as much as possible.

Of course, I recommend that you use the traditional HTML <a href=” structure but I also prefer the use of absolute URLs (where you start the link with http://) for a variety of reasons. First, if you fall into the lazy habit of using relative URLs, you end up with canonicalization issues. Your internal links for your root URL will all end with “index.html” but your external links will in many if not most cases just use your domain name.

And should you ever decide to change your page presentation and construction (for example, switch from static HTML pages to a content management system), you’ll regret all those hard-coded references to “index.html” for as long as you live.

Now, it’s true that you could just use internal relative links like <a href=”/”> but consistency in linking formats is a big plus for me. For example, if you hang subdomains off your Web site you’ll end up using absolute URLs anyway to link to some of your content.

Absolute URLs — especially when you use them for style sheets and images — can help you when you’re reusing content across multiple protocols (such as http and https).

Absolute URLs provide you with indirect benefits in unforeseen situations, such as when someone steals your copy and forgets to change the internal links. Absolute URLs also show you exactly where your links lead, whereas links using “…/somewhere.html” structures are ambiguous and, especially in deep-content sites, often cause links to break when pages are moved around.

The case for using absolute URLs has been made ten thousand times through the years and still people insist on using relative URLs, chiefly out of a desire to save time. Failing to pay attention to the details — especially easy details like link structuring — can hurt your search optimization efforts. You’ll have better control over your optimization if you see exactly what the search engines and browsers see in your link structures — because the search engines and browsers resolve all relative URLs to absolute URLs before following them.

Your internal link anchor text should be chosen carefully to help as many pages as possible. A link’s anchor text will be deemed relevant to both the linking page and the destination page. If you can, make sure that both pages are relevant to the link anchor text. It doesn’t always have to be that way. It’s perfectly fine for a page about cats to link to a page about horses (we’re talking about internal links so you’re just informing your visitors about other possibly interesting content you have to offer).

Anchor text should be concise but not spare. The more useful you make your anchor text, the more usable it becomes for you. Have you ever wondered whether your links pass value? What can you learn from generic anchor text? What can you learn from unique anchor text?

Through the years I’ve seen people try to hide their links by discoloring anchor text, using CSS to make links behave as if they didn’t exist, by embedding links around images, etc. I’ve never found a compelling reason to hide a link. I’ve been tempted but whenever tempted to hide a link I ask myself, “Is there a way to package this link so that it is useful and relevant?”

In other words, can I present a link to people without feeling like I need to shuffle my feet and mumble incoherently about why the link is on my page?

The whole point of embedding a link on a page should be to create a connection, to establish a path you want your visitors to follow. Even if your link is only there for search engines, it should be embedded in the page in such a way that the search engines won’t mind following the link. Some people purposely embed links in their blog articles to content they are launching into the search sphere, though the links add only marginal value to what they are saying.

It’s impossible to express an opinion with a link, but links are used in expressions of opinion all the time. Know the difference between the myth and the reality. Use links to show people something useful rather than to mistreat and abuse other people’s content. If you use anchor text like “this”, “here”, “there”, etc. that doesn’t accurately describe a Web page’s content, you’re probably too sensitive to the value that a link adds.

You’re creating an unnatural link, and an unnatural link doesn’t do you any good. I’m not talking about incurring penalties. I just mean you’re not helping yourself with description-poor anchor text. You care way too much about links if you doctor the anchor text so as not to help someone else’s site rank for something.

Then again, they’re your links. Build them any way you wish. Just understand that you have to choose between many tradeoffs.