Internal Linking – An introduction ----------------------------------The web as they call it is a mesh of links. The wired world is now being counted for what it is. A Network. The more your pages are wired or integrated into
overall web linking architecture, better it is from search engine ranking point of view. Google specially thrives on crawling on links. Its pagerank is a measure of this.
We will, in this article, measure importance of good internal linking architecture on googles pagerank .
When setting up linking architecture of your site keep in mind that links are of two kinds:
-Internal links
-External links
Internal links are constituent elements of way your web site is organized. They are bridges by which one page of your site connects to other & more importantly outlines, which page of your site will connect to which other page/s.
External links on other hand are community tools by which online community votes for you by linking to you. The more popular you get is a function of more incoming links into your website. This in turn is interpreted by search engines as a measure of your online value creation.
In essence, if your pages are orphaned (no one links to them) or lying isolated within your web site thats not good news from a pagerank point of view. To enjoy a good pagerank for pages it is imperative to have proper linking amongst various pages within website as well as having good quality external links coming into page.
A factor to be cognizant of while linking is that one should focus on quality links & not always quantity. Consider that, there is a huge difference from a link, to your page from another page with a good pagerank than a page from a low pagerank
Internal Linking: A Primer --------------------------
Proper internal linking ensures that web pages are accessible to search engines & that they are indexed properly.(This is not to discount navigational ease of end user) A good internal linking structure should be intuitive as well as functionality driven. That will benefit everyone.
Internal linking on other level decides pagerank flow within website. The pages that are linking to that page get a pagerank benefit from that page. Then it stands to reason that if maximum number of pages linking are internal pages they will retain maximum pagerank emanating from that page. This will boost their ratings as well.
Hence one rule of thumb says that have as many incoming links to your web page as possible(this will boost PR of that page) from outside resources or may be good PR pages of your site. Try & pass on benefit of that page to other pages of your site by proper interlinking. Inward looking as it might sound, this makes lot of good online marketing sense.
External linking ----------------
External linking on other hand is more difficult to control & hence more valued by search engines. This is what really builds up PR of webpage. Good quality (High PR) incoming links are craved by online promotion experts all over .
Linking Attribute -----------------
It is always preferable to have a text link rather then a Graphic/Image link, because in a text link you can use Keywords as text on which hyperlink is given(anchor text). In effect you can make your anchor tag keyword rich. Anchor tags’ text is a very important criterion in search engine ranking matrix.
Search engines look at not only how many people are linking to you, how important they themselves are but also what they are saying while linking to you. In fact search engines like google have gone a step ahead. They not only look at anchor tag but also text surrounding it. Essentially they are trying to establish relevance of that link to your pages content.
